What is a football club?
Simon Marriott provides another fan view on the big story this week....

WHAT IS A FOOTBALL CLUB?  Sound’s like a pretty simple question doesn’t it. Well for about a second at least. Hibernian is my football club and this is what they are to me.

It’s Saturday, it’s raining but I’m still out with my new friend playing Japs and Commandos. Suddenly I hear a roar, not a roar like someone shouting in your ear but a roar like thunder rolling down the mountainside. Confused I ask my friend what the noise was, he laughs and says “that’s Hibs, they must have scored!!” Later that day I ask my Dad who Hibs are and why could I hear when they had scored…not only does he tell me that my Grandad supported them when he was alive but that the ground was only a mile away from our new house so we could hear the crowd whenever a big game was on. That night I couldn’t get that sound out of my head and the next day, although I didn’t quite know it then, was my first morning as a Hibernian supporter.

Hibs and Hearts and football - it's about more than hard cash (sns)

Neither my father or the rest of my family was football minded but over the next few years I managed to pester them into buying me a scarf, would beg to get a strip for each Christmas or birthday (with only limited success) and would desperately try to collect all of the Hibs players in my Panini album (with even less success!) all on the back of hearing that first roar. Finally a friend of the family agreed to take me to my first match, little did I know what was in store. In a moment that has lived with me forever I remember climbing the stairs in the old stand to be met with an air full of pungent pipe and cigar smoke, the pitch seemed to be miles away and shrouded with a haze of smoke. I was amazed how loud the crowd was and how everyone seemed to react to something that I had seen but had obviously not understood. The emotion I remember the most was thinking how strange it was that the men around me seemed to know every player’s name!! The fact that on the football front I only vaguely remember that we might have been playing St Mirren and that I doubt we won shows how overawed I was with the whole experience. Now walking to school was not quite the same, each time I caught a glimpse of the Easter Road floodlights it was enough to remind me of that smokey night in the old stand, I wanted to go back.

And back I went, infrequently at first because quite naturally my Mother was forever worried about trouble, happily though with a paper round and a few ‘innocent’ lies I managed to go more and more often. The half way line on the terracing was where we would all meet; the laughs, the songs, every goal celebrated with a swaying celebration. Each victory and defeat accepted with a simple mind, one that didn’t quite grasp that Hibs were destined to win so little, one that wasn’t concerned with players wages and shiny burger stalls. Winning wasn’t the reason we were there, Hibs were the reason we were there. Simple days maybe but ones that engrained Hibs, the football club, in me forever.

Every time I passed the stadium I would feel the good and sometimes even the painful memories come flooding back.  I would always choose to go past the stadium when I could easily have went another route, just the sight of the place would bring a feeling of pride and belonging, growing up around Easter Road was, and is, a major reason Hibs are so strong in me.

Hibs are not just a company, a collection of numbers on a profit and loss sheet but a reminder of great games, even better laughs, a reminder of growing up and a reminder of where I belong. Easter Road stadium is the root of these experiences, a place that has been home to my football team for over a hundred years, somewhere that still retains the raw emotion and energy that only football can create. Take away Easter Road stadium and you take away a large part of what it is for me to be a Hibernian supporter.

I still go past the ground just for the sake of it, I still look for the stadium when I know it can be seen from a distance and if this story is why a football club is more than eleven men chasing a leather ball then this story is why Easter Road is more than just a stadium.