Why Leeds United's tribal loyalty makes the Elland Road club what it is

You’re either with Leeds United, or you’re against them. Marching On Together. Or Leeds are falling apart again.

A football club born out of the ashes of controversy one hundred years ago has seen little else since.

Travelling the breadth of England and beyond you’d be hard pressed to find a team who polarise opinion quite like the Whites.

Dirty Leeds, some would say. They’d take more, you’d hear from others with a chuckle.

While the first is a tired cliche, the second would be said with a tinge of envy. If you’re Leeds United, you know. If you’re not, you don’t.

“There is certainly an element of persecution factor that goes with being a Leeds fan,” says Graham Hyde, of the Leeds United Supporters’ Trust.

“We’re a one club city. We are minded to have an us vs them attitude. We’re expected to be ‘Dirty Leeds’, nobody likes us. We don’t expect any favours from anyone else in football.

“I think that creates a quite special tribal loyalty to each other. And yet within the fan base, like anything where you have thousands of people, you have vast differences between what people are actually like.

“But there’s that binding thing of being a Leeds United fan that sort of brings people from all sorts of walks of life in one kind of religion.

“There’s something that is quite unique about it all.”

It is that religion that brings the masses from all over the globe together for a common cause. One big family.

The Whites boast supporters in the far reaches of Australia and closer to home Ireland has always been a United stronghold. Norway too shows incredible support for a side now 16 years absent from Premier League football.

You don’t have to be from Leeds to be Leeds, but other outsiders are just that. Outsiders.

“Together” as the song goes, to be a supporter of the Whites is to be part of clique that is relatively untouched by modern day football. A defiance, if you will.

The riches of the top flight are yet penetrate the walls of the Elland Road experience and many who visit call it a throwback to more simpler times for a game that has been so muddied by money.

Ex-Manchester United full-back Gary Neville recently described it as “a different place to play”.

In Leeds, though, they just call it support.

It’s the way to back your team, your city and your own – whoever and however the paths of those who wear the famous white shirt came to be.

Loyalty can be a hard thing to find, but it is something that the club from LS11 has in abundance from their supporters. A loyalty as much to each other in the stands as those on the pitch; side before self, every time.

Misrepresented? Maybe. Misunderstood? Absolutely. But Leeds fans wouldn’t have it any other way.

The great Don Revie team who are swept aside by many in history because of their tough nature. Or the 1975 European Cup final robbery in Paris by Bayern Munich... to minus 15 in League One.

For every knock down there is a riposte. A strong one too. Revie has his own stand at Elland Road. WACCOE is still bellowed from the terraces and seven games in a row were won at the start of the 2007-08 season.

It’s United against the rest of the world, and that is just how Leeds like it.

“I think that loyalty comes from that, certainly,” Hyde continues.

“If you go right the way back to ‘75 and the European Cup final. It’s sort of seen from that point onwards that things are against us. You could even go even further back to when the FA were making us play four games in seven days every week.

“There’s always been that sense that we were outsiders trying to break in or we weren’t welcome amongst certain clubs. Through that you get that tribal loyalty that no-one is going to look after us unless we look after ourselves.”

It’s that reason in part that a club in the second tier of English football can attract a head coach of Marcelo Bielsa’s standing. A club that doesn’t do it any other way but their own. A romantic tale of resurrecting a fallen giant for the hardworking people of Leeds.

It is also that reason in which 1500 supporters travelled to Old Trafford for an Under-18s FA Youth Cup match and why over 7000 were due to travel to Blackburn Rovers for a Friday night game live on Sky Sports with tickets priced over the forty pound mark.

“When I arrive at Leeds, I felt a Latin club behind Leeds, fans who take this club like a religion,” director of football Victor Orta said recently.

That passion is evident in anyone who walks into Elland Road or sings Marching on Together without a Yorkshire twang through a television screen – they’re as much a fabric of the club as anyone else.

Players, owners and coaches all come and go but one constant remains; fans.

Then there’s the salute. A secret signal to those around you that you are indeed, Leeds. And if you know, you know.

“It is something that we do wherever we are,” Hyde concludes.

“It’s seen as a marker. You’re one of us. You’re part of the tribe.

“Were in not for Leeds United I think there are a lot of people in the city that would never speak to each other. But this common interest brings us all together.”

Together is the right word.