It doesn’t end at school! I get it daily at work. Has you get older tho it’s easier to accept we’re a pub team but at least we know it Unlike these brummies and Albion lot
Got to admit …it’s tremendous giving the Walsall born ManU fans some 'ommer.
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Part of what makes it particularly difficult, for me at least, is having unshakeable pride in a town widely considered by the rest of the country to be a place worthy only of embarrassment.
The fortunes of the football club amplify that pride and embarrassment accordlingly.
My school was full of Villa kids, think there were 2 Walsall fans in our year, the odd blue nose and a solitary Coventry fan.
The claret and blue infestation is appalling.
My son has grown up surrounded by Dingles and the usual Man Utd/Liverpool glory hunters. His response was that he at least went to matches being a season ticket holder since he was 9.
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Lots of sound advice on here.
My lad suffered similarly - not too many Walsall fans in Liverpool!!!
But. At around the age of 14 it completely turned around. As the understanding of football and it’s culture developed his mates started admiring him. Then they started looking out for our results. Then they started coming to games with him. At Northwest away games on a Saturday you will hear a small knot of scouse accents.
Last season as the premier league title race hotted up, Man City played Wolves. One of his Liverpool supporting mates family all went to the pub proclaiming themselves Wolves fans for the night. My lads mate stayed at home saying that whilst he wanted Man City to lose, he couldn’t sit there, watching a match supporting “the dingles”.
What I’m saying is that it will get better. Hope he’s OK.
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The difference is that Walsall aren’t a local club. People round here who support other clubs have more reason to make their little lives and choices look better by sneering specifically at Walsall.People ridicule their neighbour’s old banger more than one they walk past on the other side of town. I’d say that applies to glory hunters (of all ages) even more than long-term ones.
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A good post…yes it will turn around at some point. It always does but in the current era where the richer clubs get ever richer it will be more difficult than in Graydon’s time.
As for the youngster I would be telling him that is easy being one of a crowd but be your own person. This advice would not just be about football but life in general. On reading the first post on here it is clear that he also has that essential family support.
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I think I would tell your son take pity on them, all Villa fans are the same, and have to walk round sharing the same brain cell. I would just get him to tell them a few things next time they start taking the ####:-
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They are lucky that they have got one of the best Walsall managers from recent years.
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introduce them to the folklore of Remi Garde, possibly one of the worst managers ever to grace the Premier League. Then were really sh*** themselves then as well.
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Down load from You Tube the Ollie Mellberg own goal against the Blues in 2009 when he managed to throw the ball straight past his own keeper from a throw in. Now that’s crap!!!
No…It’s the teachers who are bullying him…
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SuttonPark,
I have sent you a DM 
No it wasn’t the teachers just other kids.
He’s usually a pretty tough character and fights the Walsall corner really well. I think results this season in the bottom division have caused this.Kids can be cruel.
I appreciate the support and comradeship of fellow Saddlers. Thanks guys. I’ll show him the thread this evening.
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Had exactly the same grief when I was that age, usually by Glory hunting Liverpool supporters who didn’t go to matches. This was around the time we got promoted in 88 then followed it up by getting relegated twice in successive seasons. Fast forward a few years and just as I had a team to shout about again that rainy afternoon in Crewe happened! Its character building at the end of the day and your son will have days and certain matches that he will go to and never forget , for example Sheffield Wednesday on boxing day. Those Villa supporters will just never experience that or get what it feels like to be a proper supporter!
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I can put up with Dingles, Bagladies, Villans and Bluenoses. They are, at least, local clubs. Bear in mind that post-war housing Birmingham overspill means that Brownhills and Aldridge are infested with Villa fans and, to a lesser extent, Blues fans. Similarly with Dingles in South Staffordshire.
What really pisses me off are the glory-hunters, particularly those that claim to support Scumchester United To be one of their “fans”, you need to live at least 80 miles from the Theatre of Nightmares and have a replica shirt and a Sky Sports subscription. The same applies to a lesser degree to so-called fans of Scousepool and the two moneybags clubs Man. City and Chelsea. Gooners have been bit quieter in recent years, though! 
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At least those teams are in this country !
I think I just have a special kind of loathing for the Villa fans, the stench of their own self importance sticks in the craw. I particularly dreaded the rare occasions when Walsall would be on the TV down the pub because it meant two things:
- We would play ■■■■■
- There would be a constant dreary commentary from the Vile fans forced to watch lower league dross banging on about how Villa would wipe the floor with us.
If only they had been in the Championship during the Graydon years and I’m certain we would have put them to the sword like the other local opposition.
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To be fair they haven’t beat us in the last 4 competitive matches.
Tell the plastic " big club " supporters that !
One of my best WALSALL FC days beating the Vile 3-0 at Fellows Park