Spirit of Place: The Curse on Birmingham City Football Ground

Unusually for a place where things tend to go in multiples (three cathedrals, five universities, two exhibition/convention centres, and so on) Birmingham only has one football team, unsurprisingly called Birmingham City Football Club*. It had its start in the winter of 1875 when the choir cricket team of Holy Trinity church, Bordesley, formed a team called the Small Heath Alliance to play the new-fangled game of Association Football.

Ultimately they moved to their current ground, named St Andrew's after another nearby church in 1905 and have been doomed ever since. Relegation has tended to be the watchword and the club has been plagued by all sorts of problems, financial and otherwise.

The reason given locally was that some travellers were moved off the ground (picture at the top) to build the first stadium and one of them put a 'gypsy' curse on the land. Of course this is exactly the sort of thing I love.

All sorts of spooky stuff has been tried to get rid of the curse, even hanging crucifixes in the stadium and having the manager pee in the corner of the pitch. An upholsterer who did some work had a priest bless the cloth with holy water in the hope of getting rid of it.

Each time there is a slight upturn in the club's fortunes before everything starts going wrong, and to me this is a sign that it is actually cursed because if you're going to do it they'd better stay cursed but you might as well mess with their head while you're about it. The best part of this trolling is that you'll read that the curse would last a century - this in itself tickles me no end. As if! That curse is going nowhere.

Nonetheless we'll still make fun of Wolves fans. 😂

*Technically there are two other teams, Romulus and Sutton Coldfield town in Birmingham but they're semi-pro.