This article was originally published back at the beginning of 1997, but the offer at the end still stands...

Ah, there's nothing to beat the excitement of going to see a LIVE football match! The thrill of watching your heroes in real live action at close quarters! The witty banter and camaraderie between supporters, huddled together against the extremes of an English winter! The not-to-be-missed fun of attempting to cross Manchester Road, experiencing the unique rush of adrenaline that comes from dodging two buses and a taxi, finally gaining the Gigg Lane side by vaulting over a moving M.G.Midget!

But the very best thing of all about actually being there in person has always been the SINGING - for me, anyway. As well as being good fun in itself (and an excellent way of relieving stress), this always makes for a better atmosphere in the ground and can, of course, give tremendous encouragement to the players. You get the feeling you can actually influence the outcome of the game itself, just by being there and getting behind the team.

Many years ago, as young and impressionable teenagers, many of us used to include the CROWD's performance in our post-match verdicts, along with the more usual evaluations of the players. "Another bloody draw then?" "Yeah, but the Manny Road End played a blinder, specially second half!"

The trouble is, a lot of the chanting and singing seems to have died down in recent years. Probably because we all sit down to watch our football these days. Don't get me wrong, this phenomenon isn't confined to Bury, it's everywhere you look. And I don't want to take anything away from all the shouters and singers in the South Stand (and elsewhere), of whom I'm proud to be one, who continue to give it some welly whenever the chance arises. But you have to admit it's not like the old days.

One clear indication of the way things have gone is the lack of VARIETY of the songs you'll hear these days. Here at Bury there are probably no more than a dozen or so songs in frequent use. For example, at Number Five in the Gigg Lane Charts, we have that old favourite, "Who The F*** Are Bolton Wanderers?", traditionally sung to the tune of "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah", and which includes a somewhat less-than-probable quote attributable, we are asked to believe, to His Holiness.

At Number Four, we've got "We Are Bury" ("We Are Sailing"), which invites listeners to consider the possibility that even less people like us than do Millwall - unlikely, I know - but then they don't have to put up with Elton Welsby, do they?

At Number Three there's "Going Up, Going Up, Going Up", which we all hope will be just as popular next May as it was this time. Another popular ballad is still showing strongly at Number Two and can be used when you're pushing for promotion (or even if you're just successfully staving off relegation, I believe). Yes, it's the "Eeh Aye, Eeh Aye, Eeh Aye Oh, Up The Football League We Go" version of "Knees Up Muvva Brown".

But still at Number One, there's the sheer brute force and Zen simplicity of "Come On, Bury" - four notes repeated at top volume like some techno anthem or tribal chant gone haywire.

Happily, there's little place these days for the version of "Come On, Bury" sung to the dirge-like strains of "Auld Lang Syne", but you never know - if Robson and Jerome can keep getting to Number One, this one might be in for a revival too. Other songs that keep getting an airing on the odd occasion include "Aye Oh Bury" (to the tune of the Pompey Chimes), or "Deano, Deano, What's The Score?"

But it still makes you wonder what happened to all those great anthems of the 1970s. There was a beautiful little ditty to the tune of "In Our Liverpool Homes" which alleged that whoever we were playing that day lived in extreme poverty and were in the habit of searching through refuse containers for food. Remember it? What about "You're Gonna Get Your F***ing Heads Kicked In"? - just one example of a whole genre of lyrics designed to make the other lot think you were ten times harder than you really were. Here's another puzzle - how come we haven't got anything that uses the "Lord Of The Dance! Tune? It's strangely popular with certain West Midlands clubs (eg. "Fight, fight, wherever you may be…"), but I'm told it's actually an old SHAKER hymn.

Still, it could be worse - look at our pals from Bootham Crescent, who only seem to have ONE song of any note at all, and that's the monotonous "We Are York, We Are York, We Are York" (is this something to do with Yorkshire? Leeds are remarkably similar with their repertoire as well). You'd think that in a city with over three hundred pubs, they'd be able to muster a bit more inspiration than that.

In conclusion, we'd like to apologise if we've failed to mention YOUR favourite tune - and offer an open invitation for you to write in with any suggestion YOU might have for a song you'd like to hear reverberating around the ground. Good tunes will be published in The Hatchet, so come on, get writing - and in the meantime, KEEP SINGING!!