The circle of life

A personal story of how I introduced my daughter to Bromley

I don’t know if I ever made a conscious decision that Aurora had to be a Bromley fan. I bought her a Bromley teddy bear when she was one year old because it felt like the right thing to do, but she dashed Br'er Teddy to one side with a look of disdain. Perhaps she was turned off by the Bromley branding on its hoodie.

It never occurred to me that Aurora must love my football team because it’s integral to who I am. Then again, I’m sure she frequently overheard me talking about Bromley’s results, though I doubt she grasped the reason for my sighs of despair.

When Aurora turned two, and our mode of conversation progressed beyond a few sentences, I enrolled her at my local Little Kickers club. It was never about her getting to love football. It was just a fun activity that she could do with kids her age while learning the fundamentals of the game. She took to it like a duck to water and continues to play to this day.

I wasn’t plotting that Little Kickers would make Aurora love Bromley by osmosis. As far as she was concerned, Little Kickers was the only football club she knew. 

The first time I noticed that Aurora might genuinely understand football was during last year's European Championships. During Spain v Sweden, she pointed at the screen and said “Come on Spain, you can do it!”

Still recovering from the shock of Aurora claiming allegiance to her 1/4 Spanish heritage and not Jamaica, whose lack of presence in that competition is neither here nor there, I marvelled as she informed me that Spain needed to score a goal to win the match.

I realised at this point that she needed to know who Bromley were. If she wasn’t going to claim allegiance to Jamaica, she at least needed to stake a claim to Bromley.

It took me the best part of a year to get around to it but, on October 15th 2022, at the age of four years and two months, I finally took Aurora to her first Bromley Men’s game. 

At this juncture I will admit that I had already taken her to see Dulwich Hamlet Women. She also has a scarf from that occasion but, in my defence, she slept through the entire second half so she clearly didn’t want to be there. I also took her to watch Bromley Women in a pre-season friendly this year. It was a graded introduction but a necessary one. But I digress.

The decision for Bromley Men’s FA Cup 4th Round fixture against Hereford to be her big bow was effectively made on a whim. There was no rhyme or reason other than the gamble that it would be a smaller crowd than usual, ergo less stress with getting her into and around the ground.

That proved to be right, but the day itself also served to be a genuine moment in my life.

Following our outing to watch Bromley FC Women, she was already familiar with the ground. The only difference was the size of the crowd. Taking our seats in the Glenn Beverley Stand, I looked on as a proud dad as she commented on the training drills that the Hereford players were going through in front of us. My personal highlight was her questioning why someone other than the goalkeeper was touching the ball with their hands: “But, Daddy, coach Jack says we mustn’t use our hands to stop the ball?”

More than that, the day showed me that sharing something you love with your child and seeing them embrace it is priceless. I’d like to think that Aurora's interest in Bromley scoring wasn’t to just please me but due to the natural exasperation of watching them fail to get the job done beforehand.

When Hereford took the lead in the second half, she shot me a pained expression that I told myself meant she was incredulous as well.

This was confirmed when she asked me why Bromley had let the red team score at the end, causing us to fall to defeat in injury time. I could only inform her that this was how it was meant to be.

That we spent the second half in Bear Island colouring in pictures and watching the TV screens is neither here nor there. We didn’t leave until about 6 PM that day as Aurora sparked up a friendship with Chris Bush’s children. I tried to get her to leave much earlier but she wasn’t having any of it.

The following day I tried to catch her out and see just how much she had paid attention to the football. I remarked that it was really good to take her to the football and see Bromley win, her retort was everything I needed to know.

“No they didn’t Daddy, the red team won because Bromley let them score two and Bromley only scored one because they’re silly. Don’t worry though, Daddy, they’ll win next time.”

At that moment, my heart beamed with pride. My life had gone full circle. Not only had she paid attention but she had also grasped the fundamentals of Bromley’s footballing heritage. We are silly but we will win next time.

My hope is that Aurora has caught the bug and will be with me for plenty of those next times.

For those of you who introduced your child to football, how did you go about it? What did it mean to you when the penny dropped for them?

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