The Mark Of A True Fan
I’m seriously starting to question my support for and it has nothing to do with the team’s atrocious start to the season. After all, the mark of a true fan is that he or she sticks by the team through thick and thin.
No, what’s really cheesed me off is the careless disregard they appear to have for one of their youngest and most loyal fans – my ten year old son, to be precise. (I may be biased, of course.)
He, like one thousand others, ordered a special away shirt from the club. Everyone who coughed up a hundred quid would be guaranteed to have their name added to a list and that entire list would be emblazoned on to the shirt. As a fund-raising idea it seemed quite neat even though the delivery of the shirts was held up by several months because Inverness Caley had secured a new sponsorship deal with flybe.com. In a nice touch we were sent a £10 voucher by way of an apology for the delay.
Then last week we got a call to say the shirt was ready and could be picked up today from the stadium shop. Mrs Zed went down to collect it and eagerly scanned the list of names for a ‘Zycinski’. It wasn’t in alphabetical order, so she had to look twice, then three times and then she found it.
Except it was ‘Sycinski’. The shop assistant checked our order form and her computer and agreed we had actually asked for ‘Zycinski’. That is, after all, my son’s name.
Of course we’ve been offered a full refund…perhaps even a shirt signed by Caley players…but that isn’t the point.
The point is, if you have a slightly unusual name then you can expect that organisations will decide the spelling based on letters randomly drawn from a Scrabble bag.
I wonder how Kraig Brooster would feel if it happened to him.
