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# Keep Right On: What Being a Bluenose Really Means
- URL: https://lifeinproduction.co.uk/keep-right-on-what-being-a-bluenose-really-means/
- Published: 2026-09-25T08:24:01.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-25T08:24:01.000Z
- Description: From Pukka pies and Bovril with Dad to finding my way back to St Andrew’s decades later. A story about Birmingham City, family, friendship, finding purpose when I needed it most, and why being a Bluenose ultimately comes down to one thing: grit.
- Author: Eric MacFarlane
- Tags: Football

*Football is supposed to be about 22 people kicking a ball around for 90 minutes. Supporting Birmingham City has taught me it's about almost everything else.*

There’s a walk up the hill towards St Andrew’s that I must have made hundreds of times.

The club shop comes into view. Then the ground.

I've been making that walk, on and off, since I was about ten years old. Some things haven't changed much. Others have changed beyond recognition.

But there's still something about getting near the ground that feels familiar.

It feels like home.

## I didn't inherit Blues. Dad didn't either.

My dad grew up in Rochdale and originally supported Manchester United. It wasn't until he moved to Redditch and made friends who followed Birmingham City that Blues entered his life.

Mum, meanwhile, was supposedly an Aston Villa fan, although I'd hesitate to describe her as the most committed Villa supporter in Birmingham.

So there was no grand family tradition dictating that I had to become a Bluenose.

In fact, I remember actively not wanting to support one of the big-name teams.

What appealed to me was something much simpler.

**I wanted to go to the football with my dad.**

When I was around ten, Dad took me to an open day at St Andrew's.

That was pretty much it.

I was a Bluenose.

Birmingham City itself dates back to 1875, meaning generations of families have passed the club down in their own ways.

My route into that family was through Dad.

## Pie for me. Bovril for the old man.

Football felt different back then.

I remember standing at games rather than sitting neatly in a seat. There was a thin wire fence separating us from the away supporters and plenty of banter travelling across it.

There was a Pukka pie for me and a cup of Bovril for the old man.

Eventually football became our Saturday routine.

Home game? We'd be there.

Away game? We'd probably be there too.

Dad did draw the line at taking his young son to some of the rougher away grounds. Apparently there were limits to the father-son bonding experience.

But most Saturdays revolved around Blues.

The football obviously mattered, but looking back now, I'm not sure it was ever *just* about the football.

It was about being with Dad.

## Wembley, 1995

Then came one of those childhood days that stays with you forever.

I was 14 when Birmingham City reached Wembley for the Auto Windscreens Shield final against Carlisle United.

Dad and I were members of the Redditch supporters' group and travelled down together by coach.

As a kid, Wembley was almost mythical.

This was before football was available constantly. Before you could watch virtually any match, anywhere, on a phone in your pocket.

This was **Wembley**.

And my Birmingham City were playing there.

We won.

There have been much bigger games in the history of Birmingham City, but football memories aren't ranked by importance in a record book.

They're ranked by how they made you feel.

For a 14-year-old travelling to Wembley with his dad and a coach full of Blues supporters, it was magical.

I'll never forget it.

## And then life happened.

When you're a kid, you assume things will always stay roughly the same.

They don't.

I left school. Rover closed down. Dad's working life changed and he started doing weekend shifts.

Then I started working weekends myself.

Saturday afternoons became harder.

One missed game became several. Several became seasons.

Slowly, almost without noticing it happening, Blues disappeared from my life.

There wasn't some dramatic moment where I announced that I wasn't interested in football anymore.

Life simply got in the way.

Eventually I'd become so disconnected that I couldn't tell you who played for Birmingham City.

At one point I couldn't even have confidently told you what league they were in.

The kid who had spent his Saturdays travelling around the country with his dad had gone.

Or at least I thought he had.

## “Why don't we go to a football match?”

Fast-forward to 2023.

I was going through one of the hardest periods of my life.

I'm deliberately going to leave the details of that period private. Some things belong on the internet and some don't.

But I wasn't in a particularly good place.

Dad was retired by then.

One day he suggested something incredibly simple.

**Why didn't we go to a football match?**

So we did.

I can't even remember who Blues were playing that day.

Strangely, that doesn't matter.

What I remember is everything around it.

The walk towards the ground.

The club shop.

St Andrew's appearing in front of me.

Not much had changed.

And yet so much had changed.

I was home.

## Finding the football family again

Something else happened after I returned.

We started bumping into members of Dad's old football gang.

These were people I'd known when I was younger. Except now their kids had grown up too, and they were around my age.

Before long we weren't simply bumping into each other.

We were meeting at every game.

New friendships became close friendships. Old connections returned.

After games we'd all head back to the social club together.

Football had quietly given me something I'd badly needed.

People.

Routine.

Somewhere to go.

Something to look forward to.

A family.

And Saturdays became important again.

## Matchday is not a 90-minute experience

These days, a Saturday home match is an all-day operation.

And I mean **all day**.

We're on the 9am train into Birmingham.

First stop is Wetherspoons at Grand Central for a full English. You need a solid nutritional foundation for the highly athletic activity of watching other people play football.

By about 10:30 we're in the Bull Ring Tavern.

Cold Dark Fruits cider.

Lovely.

The rest of the gang slowly trickles in and the pints start flowing.

Three pints later it's midday and we're heading up to Cleary's Irish Music Bar.

Three pints for a tenner.

What could possibly go wrong?

Obviously at some point I decide the group hasn't consumed enough alcohol and introduce shots into proceedings.

Baby Guinness.

Four for a tenner.

Yes please.

Fourteen shots later — and I appreciate there may be questions about our approach to responsible pre-match preparation — it's suddenly 2pm.

Time for the football.

Outside the ground there's just enough time for chips and curry sauce and a look at what the badge man has got in this week.

Then around 2:30 we're inside.

The music starts.

The pyrotechnics go off.

The players walk onto the pitch.

Dad and I sit right in the corner of the Kop, next to the away supporters.

As you can probably imagine, the banter is strong on that side of the ground.

Then the crowd roars.

Loud and proud.

And for 90 minutes, nothing else matters.

Afterwards?

Back to the pub.

Are we celebrating?

Are we drowning our sorrows?

With Birmingham City, you don't necessarily know which until about five o'clock.

Eventually, around seven, it's an Uber back to the social club, where a collection of people who've been drinking since mid-morning conduct an extremely detailed and obviously completely rational tactical analysis of the match.

Drinking continues.

Ten or eleven o'clock, it's finally time to go home.

That's matchday.

The match itself is only part of it.

## The memories aren't always on the pitch

Some of my favourite Blues memories barely involve football.

There was another Wembley trip where, frankly, the game itself was rubbish.

But the night before?

Brilliant.

Our football family effectively took over a local hotel.

Drinking. Food. Laughing.

And one member of the group sleepwalking through the hotel corridors virtually naked.

For the record, **that wasn't me**.

There was a Boxing Day where I volunteered to be designated driver while everybody else danced on tables.

By the evening I'd managed to drop the car off, meaning everyone apparently decided I deserved rewarding for my sacrifice.

With vodka.

Lots of vodka.

We eventually got home and Dad was so drunk that he fell getting out of the taxi.

He ended up on his back, legs in the air, looking like a stranded turtle and shouting:

**“Help!”**

That's Birmingham City to me as much as any goal or league table.

It's the stories you still laugh about years later.

## Promotion

Then there are the moments where the football itself really does matter.

For me, promotion is right up there.

Blues have provided more than enough difficult seasons over the years. There have been plenty of times when I've questioned players, performances and just about everything else associated with supporting this club.

That's part of the deal.

But when things finally come together, those bad years make the good moments feel even better.

The promotion back from League One in 2025 felt particularly special to me because this time I wasn't watching Birmingham City from a distance.

I was back.

Dad was there.

My friends were there.

I was part of it again.

## Now it's my turn

Perhaps the strangest thing about getting older is realising you've quietly changed places with your parents.

Dad once introduced a ten-year-old boy to Birmingham City.

Now I've started introducing my own children.

The boys aren't particularly interested in football. Josh is much more likely to get excited about Formula 1.

That's fine.

I'm not going to force Birmingham City onto them.

But Beth is different.

She's shown an interest.

And because she's my only daughter among three boys, the relationship I have with her will always have its own special place in my heart.

I wanted her introduction to football to be enjoyable rather than overwhelming.

So we started with Birmingham City Women.

A smaller crowd. A gentler introduction to the noise and atmosphere. Somewhere she could experience St Andrew's without being thrown immediately into the madness of a packed men's match.

Then I got to do something my dad had done decades earlier.

Take my child to St Andrew's.

There's something quite special about that.

One generation takes the next.

Maybe one day she'll make that walk up the hill and remember going there with her dad.

I'd like to think so.

## The next Birmingham City

For most of my life, being a Birmingham City supporter has involved a certain amount of gallows humour.

You learn not to get carried away.

You learn that things can go wrong.

You learn to question the players occasionally — sometimes rather loudly from the Kop.

But right now there is something else around the club.

Ambition.

I'm genuinely excited about what comes next, particularly the proposed Sports Quarter and the prospect of a new home for Birmingham City.

And that produces slightly mixed emotions.

Because St Andrew's matters to me.

The club's current ground may officially be St Andrew's @ Knighthead Park, but to generations of supporters it carries memories that have nothing to do with sponsorship names. Even Birmingham City's current home kit has been described by the club as a tribute to St Andrew's and the generations of Bluenoses who made it what it is.

For me it's where a ten-year-old discovered football with his dad.

It's the club shop.

It's the walk up the hill.

It's standing on the terraces.

It's Pukka pie and Bovril.

It's old friends.

It's new friends.

It's Dad beside me in the Kop.

It's taking Beth through the gates.

A new stadium can give Birmingham City an extraordinary future.

But wherever Blues eventually play, those memories aren't being demolished.

They're coming with us.

## Keep Right On

There's a phrase every Birmingham City supporter knows.

**Keep Right On.**

When you're a kid, it's a football song.

You sing it because everyone around you is singing it.

As you get older, the words start to mean something slightly different.

Life doesn't always work out the way you expect.

People come and go.

Circumstances change.

Things you thought would always be there disappear.

Sometimes you find yourself somewhere you never expected to be.

And sometimes something as simple as your dad asking:

**“Why don't we go to a football match?”**

can help you find your way back.

Football didn't magically solve my problems.

But it gave me something incredibly valuable when I needed it.

Purpose.

It reconnected me with my dad.

It brought old friends back into my life and gave me new ones.

It gave me somewhere I belonged.

And now it's given me something I can begin sharing with the next generation.

People sometimes wonder why football supporters put themselves through it.

Why follow a club that can ruin your entire Saturday afternoon?

Why travel hundreds of miles?

Why keep coming back after the relegations, terrible performances and players who make you question whether they've encountered a football before?

For me, supporting Birmingham City teaches you something useful.

**Grit.**

You turn up.

You take the bad days.

You enjoy the good ones properly when they finally arrive.

And whatever life throws at you...

**Keep Right On.**

*KRO.*