Can you help? What have you missed the most?

[Scott_Palfrey]

Hey all, Looking for a bit of help! We are looking to share some stories with some social media posts of what people have missed the most about heading to SJP, it can be as small as the smell of a pie!

Ideally if you had a photo of you at SJP or in City clothing to go alongside it that would be amazing!

 

[Pete Martin (CTID)]

Personally, it has been a tradition for a number of years that myself and a small group of friends have met for breakfast in the city on a home matchday Saturday at 11am for a feed-up and a chin-wag (about City and other pertinent stuff). In doing so we frequently met others doing similar. At around 12.30pm we'd amble up though town, getting to SJP, generally, at around 1pm where we would frequently split up, meet up with other friends, some in the bar, some in Red Square. Some would soak up some ale, others just the pre-match atmosphere. I have probably missed that experience more than any other and it has made me realise just what the social side of following a football team means to so many people.

For a number of years I was also a regular traveller to away games on Grecian Travel and that was often another experience that you don't really appreciate until it's not there any more. The friendships made and fostered, the camaraderie, the social aspect at "the other end", meeting and chatting with rival fans, usually very amicably.

The last 18 months or so have been hard for many of us who have followed City for years and have never encountered the like, ever before.

Just my personal take on it Scott.

 

[Scott_Palfrey]

Personally, it has been a tradition for a number of years that myself and a small group of friends have met for breakfast in the city on a home matchday Saturday at 11am for a feed-up and a chin-wag (about City and other pertinent stuff). In doing so we frequently met others doing similar. At around 12.30pm we'd amble up though town, getting to SJP, generally, at around 1pm where we would frequently split up, meet up with other friends, some in the bar, some in Red Square. Some would soak up some ale, others just the pre-match atmosphere. I have probably missed that experience more than any other and it has made me realise just what the social side of following a football team means to so many people.

For a number of years I was also a regular traveller to away games on Grecian Travel and that was often another experience that you don't really appreciate until it's not there any more. The friendships made and fostered, the camaraderie, the social aspect at "the other end", meeting and chatting with rival fans, usually very amicably.

The last 18 months or so have been hard for many of us who have followed City for years and have never encountered the like, ever before.

Just my personal take on it Scott.

This is perfect Pete! Thank you!

 

[Red red]

Getting the 11.15 train from Yate arriving at St David’s at 12.45. Taxi to SJP for 1 pm or up to Henry’s Bar. Meeting up with long standing friends for a few pints getting into SJP at 2.50 standing in same spot meeting more friends basically running the game from the Big Bank back in the Bar for a quick beer after to celebrate a city Win Lol and walking back to St David’s and catching 6.26 back to Yate

 

[Oldsmobile-88]

Pete has summed it up perfectly for many of us i would imagine.

 

[David Treharne]

I'd go along with Pete's account, except, of course it has a category, which is "ritual exchange". What he describes will probably manifest itself in completely different ways for many groups of City Supporters who will miss the structure that a match day supports. For me it's mainly been about 'away days'. meeting up at St David's, blearly eyed to meet up for a Rawz Tours away day, which has a comfortable structure which can loosely be observed (No drinking until Tiverton Parkway!) and the certain knowledge that lunch will be in a Wetherspoon's, or meeting up with London Exiles (NEVER in a Wetherspoon's!), often post-match disappointment (not always!) and the rush to get back to a station (often Paddington). Otherwise piling into a car for a dash up the M5 to one of the (increasingly rare!) nearest fixtures.
Home games bring their own set of 'rituals', but it starts at around 10 o'clock with a weather report, and 'lunch' will probably be a bacon sandwich before a stroll down to the ground, which is only about 400 metres away to meet up with a small coterie (such a precise word!) before taking my seat (up until this season the same one since the IP stand was built) to exchange ritualistic small talk with the group of people who sit near me -and whom I've found I miss more than I ever thought I would. When I met up with one of them (in Budleigh Salterton!) all that we talked about was about missing the ritualistic meeting pre-match.
So I'm afraid it's anthropological, innit?

 

[SEA Grecian]

I'd go along with Pete's account, except, of course it has a category, which is "ritual exchange". What he describes will probably manifest itself in completely different ways for many groups of City Supporters who will miss the structure that a match day supports. For me it's mainly been about 'away days'. meeting up at St David's, blearly eyed to meet up for a Rawz Tours away day, which has a comfortable structure which can loosely be observed (No drinking until Tiverton Parkway!) and the certain knowledge that lunch will be in a Wetherspoon's, or meeting up with London Exiles (NEVER in a Wetherspoon's!), often post-match disappointment (not always!) and the rush to get back to a station (often Paddington). Otherwise piling into a car for a dash up the M5 to one of the (increasingly rare!) nearest fixtures.

It must be 15 years since I last started an away day at St Davids but I love the fact this rule is still in place.