Who's The Daddy: Why I love watching my local team Morecambe play football

1 The Fans. Morecambe supporters are a passionate, loyal, forgiving bunch. They are slow to criticise and quick to praise. Full disclosure, I’m not a lifelong fan, but whenever I’ve seen the Shrimps I can’t recall the crowd turning on a player or moaning too much after a right hammering. Anyone who has watched a top-end Premier League team every week for years (that’s me, by the way) knows only too well the brattish entitlement of grown men who expect to win every game 4-0 and act like a petulant toddler when they don’t. And I’ve had enough of it.

2 The Players. While no one’s expecting a gilded procession to the League 1 title this season, Morecambe are steely battlers who fight for every ball. Most fans will turn a blind eye when things go askew if they see their players putting in a shift. Sadly, for some cosseted multimillionaires in the rarified atmosphere of the Premier League, this isn’t always the case. Strict libel laws prevent me from naming names here but he’s just re-signed for Juventus after six forgettable but lucrative years at Man Utd.

3 The Games Kick Off At The Same Time. The Premier League fixture list is nothing more than a rough guide. If it says Man City will play Liverpool at 3pm on Saturday, April 1, that’s just an approximation. It’ll kick off when TV says it does. So your team or their rivals might play on a Friday night, Saturday lunchtime, 3pm Saturday, Saturday tea time, Saturday night, Sunday lunchtime, late Sunday afternoon or Monday night. So don’t make any long-term plans. The great thing about League 1 football is its more or less done and dusted in less than two hours on Saturday afternoon or a Tuesday night.

4 The Money. Morecambe season tickets are incredibly reasonably priced. But I’d rather my money that doesn’t jiggle jiggle, it folds, went here than it lining the pockets of certain Premier League club owners who see its rich and proud history as an asset to be leveraged and their own personal piggy bank.

5 The Connection. Without wishing this to be a compare and contrast with the Premier League, after the final game of last season when Morecambe stayed up despite a 1-0 home defeat to Sunderland, many of the players turned up in the supporters’ bar still in their match kit and had a drink with the fans. There’s loads more reasons but it looks like I’ve run out of room