My Leeds United - A cult, a doomed social experiment and a frequently inexplicable existence

Jon Howe is a writer, editor and the author of Author of The Only Place For Us: An A-Z History of Elland Road

“My Dad was born and raised in Wortley, Leeds, where I live now.

He’s 76 but he still has a season ticket next to me, and I still walk the same path to Elland Road that he used to walk in the 1950s to watch John Charles and the early Revie years. Football has a unique way of binding families and merging generations like that.

Being a Leeds United fan has always been my identity. On social occasions [remember them?] it is all people want to talk to me about, but that’s a blessing and a curse because, sometimes, it’s all people want to talk to me about.

Writing about Leeds United is a privilege. Sometimes it’s quite cathartic but, at other times, it’s genuinely the last thing in the world you want to do. But writing has always helped me with self-confidence and self-belief, both of which I have a chronic shortage of.

As a 12-year-old I used to produce my own matchday programmes and Match Weekly magazines.

I completely ruined numerous actual programmes by using carbon paper to trace pictures of Tommy Wright for my publications. I once spent an entire summer holidays producing a relatively lavish ‘Season Review’ magazine of the 1986/87 season.

It was like an ‘early learning’ exercise in documenting heartache and, furthermore, I’m the only person who’s ever read it.

Life got in the way after that, but I can still remember the absolute thrill of first seeing something I had written in actual print. It was The Square Ball (TSB) in December 1993.

We’d drawn 1-1 with QPR and I was with both my elder brothers. We raced into town post-match and settled in The Central pub on Wellington Street.

In those days there was no communication whatsoever between TSB producers and the contributors – not like today when I’ve met a wide circle of amazing and very talented people through the mag – so I had no idea my article would be in it. But there it was, spread over three whole pages. It is still a lovely thing to see something you have produced being published, but it’s not quite the same as that first time.

Just like I still get a thrill walking up the steps to see the expanse of green at Elland Road on matchdays, but it’s more routine now, and I would kill to still feel that overwhelming rush of my first game in 1978.

I contributed regularly to TSB until the late 1990s but then stopped writing for a few years; I’ve no idea why. And then, somehow, the purgatory of Leeds United being in League One made me start again.

Since then I’ve always had some kind of outlet for writing about Leeds United, in print or online. And I’ve gradually forged a second career out of writing.

But Leeds United has provided a unique life education.

It’s like a cult; something you can’t escape from and something you’ll never understand if you’ve never lived it.

Away games are like a doomed social experiment that’s gone too far.

I’ve seen, heard, smelt and eaten things you simply don’t experience anywhere else in life.

Ultimately, being a Leeds United fan is a frequently inexplicable existence, but one I’d recommend to anyone.