3 YEARS AGO TODAY SCARFGATE THE DESPICABLE RED

‘ 3 YEARS AGO TODAY SCARFGATE THE DESPICABLE RED ”

By Ross Bowden

http://www.cardiffcityforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=169317

How ironic we are playing Brighton today considering 3 years ago today, Brighton beat us 2-0 with 95% of our fans selling their souls taking the free red scarf.

Hopefully today will be a different result, but nights like 3 years ago reminds me that our football clubs heritage, tradition, history and identity will always mean way more to me than anything else.

Forget future wins, losses, promotions and relegations, the colours and badge defines the identity of every club. Whatever the result today, I will just be pleased to see Cardiff City playing in their rightful blue colours.

Before the rebrand, I thought we were a loyal, passionate fan base who really cared about our club. The rebrand showed not many of our fans cared for our club at all. The rebrand showed our loyal supporters I grew up with watching City back during the Eddie May era were taken over by glory hunting plastics who used our local club as a convenience to watch Premiership football.

Those plastics have now gone back to their armchairs watching Sky TV which is why we now have crowds of 13,000, but that still doesn’t take away the fact that whenever I set foot in our stadium, I know that 95% of the fans around me took the red scarf. Those 95% were happy to extinguish the tradition, heritage and identity of our club. From that point onwards, it has never felt the same for me, as I know the local pride I thought our club once had is no longer there.

How can I still feel really passionate in an environment where I’ve lost respect for 95% of our fans? The detachment I feel from those 95% will never go away. Before the rebrand, I thought of our fan base as one big family passionately uniting together, all pulling in the same direction. I will never feel that way for a home game ever again.

If it wasn’t for our loyal fans at away games continuously wearing blue and protesting for our identity to save our club, I would have honestly walked away and never come back. In a way, I’m glad we failed and got relegated from the Premiership as if we succeeded, we would still probably be a red club now. The 95% who sold their souls only jumped back on the blue bandwagon when we struggled. The more we struggled, the more the blue bandwagon grew.

Thankfully we now have our identity back, but I will always think we are back in blue because we failed to stay in the Premiership, not because of the majority of our fans. The majority of our fans tried to kill our club and would have happily continued to kill our club if we stayed successful in the Premiership. I would have been surrounded by them telling me to “grow up and move on” just because they could watch Rooney live.