How to make a Swans fan!

This Saturday the Swans will be in Ipswich, playing Ipswich and I will be in London, drinking beer.

As I will not be in Swansea, I had already resigned to the fact that I would have to check the Swans score on my phone, as listening to Swansea Sound or BBC Wales is out of the question unless you are in Wales (even digitally it isn’t allowed for some reason...). However, imagine my delight when I found out that this game will be shown live on Sky Sports! I can find a nice pub with a large TV screen and watch the game from start to finish! Perfect. Or is it...

Currently I face another problem. The reason I am in London is to visit a friend. Unfortunately, this friend openly frowns upon football. He actually hates it. So how do I convince him to watch it with me? The last football match I persuaded him to watch was during the World Cup - England vs Algeria. Okay I knew it wouldn’t be as good as a match like, say, Spain vs. Brazil, but there were bound to be either lots of goals from England, or a big exciting upset from Algeria! Unfortunately, however, as we took our seats in front of the pub TV, we were treated to the most boring game known to man. Nil-nil. He smiled smugly. He knew he was right. I knew he was right. Football was shit.

So how do I now convince him to watch the Swans? This isn’t the World Cup! This is just a Championship match! I think he may have even heard me moan last season about how boring some of the matches were (take your pick from any of the Swans’ nil-nil’s under Sousa). This is where the idea of collating an entertainment value from real football fans came to me.

I would set last year’s Swansea City Entertainment Value at about a 4.5. The aforementioned nil-nil hair pullers contribute to this low score (it would have been a 4 actually, but Shefki Kuqi’s open-goal miss (vs. Barnsley) adds a ‘.5’ to the season as it really was entertaining (if excruciatingly painful to all Swans fans watching)! This year, however, I would personally set the entertainment value at a 7.5. It seems that many fans agree with me (thanks to all the Tweeters who helped collate this data)! Scott Sinclair’s first few games added a good 2 points, but the overall performance of the team has been superb for the majority of the season (alright, there have been a few woeful moments, but generally very entertaining).

So this Saturday I will be watching the Ipswich game in a London pub. I will run through this entertainment data with my friend (he likes data) and will convince him that many Swans fans cannot be wrong! He will enjoy and he will be singing and he will be cheering. So, please, Mr Rodgers; don’t give him any ammo to hate football with (England sorted that out). Keep making them play as they have been playing, and give us some goals. Who knows you may end up with a new recruit to the Jack Army (it is a big ask)!

I will post a blog after the match with a roundup of what happened and maybe my football-hating mate can give us his own Swansea City Entertainment Value rating!

To entertain you all until then though, I present you with Shefki Kuqi’s entertaining (yet painfully annoying) goal miss from last season. Don’t close your eyes!