Growing up in Ohio in the 1980s there were lots of options to play various sports as a kid. Baseball, basketball, football (the American variety), and even soccer, were wildly popular, and many kids played a variety depending on the season. However, if you wanted to watch sports on TV you were limited to baseball, football and basketball. Even when sports tv channel ESPN first arrived on the scene the options it opened included Aussie rules football, bowling, and even rodeo. Alas, European football was never even mentioned by kids on the playground, or even in soccer matches. Our exposure to the beautiful game was limited to clips on TV of Pele, the movie Escape from Victory, and some halfhearted attempts at early US soccer leagues (which even the likes of Pele and George Best couldn’t help to make a success). That isn’t to discount the multi-cultural areas like Washington, DC and Los Angeles, where futbol was king, but that was largely limited to the communities that brought the sport with them from their home countries, and they weren’t wearing European team kits. Football was just not in the American psyche.
The first instance where the sport started to gain traction in the US was when we hosted the World Cup in 1994. It seemed that this was the first time a wide array of players and teams gained the attention of kids and casual supporters. This was strengthened by the creation of the Premier League a couple of years prior, and as a result, access to the sport started to grow in the US. It still wasn’t massively popular, and you had to still try hard to watch a match, or even get news about scores. Initially, there were a few matches televised, and those were usually big club rivalries like Manchester United and Liverpool. For me, I started to follow the sport around 2005 when I started to work for a company based in England. My boss was a diehard Liverpool supporter and would often stream match reports when they played. I recall many a meeting where she and I would grab a conference room and she would have live text updates being projected on the wall. So, I guess you can say I was a passive Liverpool fan that tried to watch whenever they were on TV, which was maybe once every month or two.
In 2012, my family and I moved to the UK for work. We sort of blindly looked around for a nice area with good schools and settled into the Kew area. At this time, my two boys and I were becoming more interested in the sport, and we decided we would try and get tickets to see some games. At the time, our familiarity with Premier League teams was decent enough, but our knowledge of lower leagues, outside of knowing they existed, was nearly zero. As one might image, we learned quickly that getting a ticket to a Premier League game was nearly impossible without paying exorbitant prices on the secondary market (and most of those were a scam). Over the next year or so we secured tickets to games like FA Youth Cup matches, a League Cup game, but never to an actual league match. We enjoyed them, but it was just a casual, fun thing to do.
At some point we were complaining about the inability to see a Premier League match and one of our neighbors pointed out that there was a great club in League One just across the river that always has availability. So in April of that year, we made our first visit to Griffin Park with no expectations. From the moment we entered you could tell it was completely different to one of the larger grounds. You could smell the fresh cut grass, the people in the stands were all talking to one another, and you felt like you were on the pitch with the players. I vividly remember Alan McCormack standing out to me as a guy that never finished a match with a clean kit, and how difficult it was for the opponents to deal with the athleticism of Clayton Donaldson. It ended up in a 3-1 win against Notts County. We weren’t hooked at this point, but it set up a run of matches we attended against teams, up to that point, I had never heard of. The match that made me a true fan, and when I felt this is MY team was our next match against Crawley Town on a Tuesday night. There were only about 7000 fans in attendance, but the crowd was lively with promotion excitement in the air. It was a close match and I remember one of our fans got into an altercation with a Crawley Town player which set the crowd off. We enjoyed a few discussions with some folks around us, and by the end of the match we were discussing the emotion of the game and how it felt like we were actually a part of it. That season for us culminated in attending the famous Preston North End match. It was Gentry Day for PNE fans, so it started off with a bit of a buzz as the away supporters all filed in with their bowler hats, and there were at least a couple of flares thrown during the match. We had a group of 12 of us and we all stormed the pitch with the rest of the crowd. It was the best sporting experience where I wasn’t playing. I still remember the feel of the grass, the smell of the wet pitch, and the away fans staying behind and clapping for us.
Shortly after we moved back to the US, but our love of the club only grew. I was fortunate enough to travel back to the UK for work several times a year, so I managed to make it back for 3-4 games per season. I was also lucky enough to attend a fan engagement session at the hive in our first year in the Championship. I remember asking a question and Mark Devlin singling me out for coming several thousand miles to be there. After that event I got to meet several fans and staff, including Richard Merritt, the head of BIAS at the time. A group of us went over to the Griffin for a pint our two, and by the end of the night I was the US director for BIAS.
I coached the US Junior Bees (“The Bees “) 2014 to 2020 We were an Elite Boys team. Here they are in great form, at a Pennsylvania tournament in 2017.
Those first couple of years the US fan base that I was aware of were largely expats across the US that grew up around Brentford. We hosted a few watch parties when it was possible. During those first years getting a Championship game televised was infrequent at best. Managing the US group largely consisted of linking up the few fans that popped up in different cities and helping people find the right channel for the games when they were on. This all changed after the famous Arsenal match. While getting promoted increased the visibility of the club here in the States, new fans didn’t start to turn up until after the first Premier League win. Overnight there seemed to be hundreds of new supporters.
One of our early watch parties was at the pub called “Settle Down Easy,” Falls Church, Virginia
It has been interesting to see how the club has grown in the US. The appeal of the underdog with a different model for managing a team is something that attracted fans. The US loves a Cinderella story, especially one that beats the odds to achieve success – even better when it is linked to statistics! The beauty of the growth is largely around the US supporter base completely buying into the club ethos.
I have always said it is easy to be a Chelsea, Real Madrid, or Bayern Munich supporter. Their fans are everywhere, games are always available, and any soccer pitch in the US is adorned with kids wearing their kit. It creates a generic fan base with no single element that binds them together. That is not true for Brentford, which has a very engaging and familial feel to it. New supporters are welcomed with open arms, and the history and lore of the club is passed on by the supporters that remember the more lean times.
We now have groups that are getting together in New York, Washington, DC, Chicago, St. Louis, Columbus, Minneapolis, and many smaller cities. We have fans in nearly every state now, and we are all connecting over our shared passion. As a result of this growth, we have taken the supporters club that was started in 2014, and are now creating a more robust group.
Virginia’s very own (Hawk and) Griffin is the home of the Washington DC/Northern Virginia Bees supporters group
The new version of the Brentford USA Supporters Club just kicked off in late March. Within a week of founding we had over 70 individuals sign up. We have reached out to Bees United, BIAS, and HerGameToo to work with them directly and amplify their message and causes to the growing fanbase here.
We will soon be working with local Bees groups to officially make them part of our club. We want to make sure that the old and new supporters here in the US have the ability to share their love of the team and provide a voice for them in the larger community. It is definitely still a work in progress, but the club itself has taken us under their wing and could not be more supportive.
This is also very much a passion project for those of us involved. For those in the US, or US folks abroad, you can keep track of our progress and be informed about official membership and other planned ideas by signing up here: Brentford USA Supporters Club (google.com).
It has been an epic journey for me and my family, and it is quite impossible to believe where we are today thinking back to the first time I walked into Griffin Park 9 years ago. I am excited to see where the next decade takes us!