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Many have asked me why and how I became a Walsall supporter. It is not that common that a person without a local connection to become a fan of a 3rd/4th division team that no one outside the UK has ever heard about before.
My story started in the latter part of the 1990s. The season manager Jan Sörensen and striker Roger Boli made their entrance into the Walsall history books.
Championship Manager to blame
I had played a game on my computer called Championship Manager, today that game is called Football Manager and is the most popular football management game and has probably been that way since their first version came out in the early parts of the 1990s.
I found Walsall by randomly picking a team to manage in the game, and I had such success managing The Saddlers in the game that I started to look out for their results. Back then, in the late 1990s, it was pretty hard to find information about Walsall FC since the Internet wasn’t that developed yet.
Created my own website
When I later got access to the Internet and started an unofficial Walsall website which then turned out to be a blog about Walsall in Swedish which hardly got any visitors, and I closed that down when I didn’t have time to manage it. No one else besides me was interested in reading about Walsall, mainly in Swedish, anyway.
My obsession with playing Championship Manager/Football Manager made me the Walsall supporter I am today.
Two visits so far
I’ve been to two matches so far, the first was at Wembley in 2015 and the second was at home vs Swindon at the end of the 2021/22 season.
As the Internet has become better and faster I’ve been able to follow matches live. First with live radio commentary but since last season I’ve had an iFollow subscription to be able to watch matches live. This has made it easier to see our progress on the pitch but also watched in agony when things haven’t gone the way you wished.
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