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Would you dive off a bridge to save Brentford fans from a train heading towards them? 

It turns out around one in five Crystal Palace supporters would take the plunge to rescue fans wearing their team colours.

That fascinating statistic is contained in research featured in a new BBC podcast. 

Oxford University psychologist Dr Martha Newsom wanted to test the commitment of football fans to members of ‘their tribe,’ so she set them a test. Imagine that you are on a railway bridge and below you can see a train rushing towards five people, dressed in the strip of your football team.

“Would you”, she asked the fans, “be willing to sacrifice your life to save them?” 

That sounds like a big, melodramatic question – but around 20 per cent of Crystal Palace fans that she asked responded positively. Yes – they would give up their life for a fellow Palace fan. Far fewer Arsenal fans, it emerged, would jump from the bridge.

Dr Newsom’s research shows that the more turbulent, the more traumatic the experience of following a club, the stronger the bonds that tie the fans together. Supporters that had faced the most disappointment had the strongest connection.

So the six points that Brentford has taken from Palace this season has probably done wonders for their fan base.

Dr Newsom, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich, London, and Leader of the Changing Lives Lab Group at the University of Oxford, has studied emotions among football fans for many years. 

The story of her research is told in the BBC podcast, ‘Why do we do that?’ in its new episode on Why do I get upset when my team loses? It’s a fascinating listen for any Bees fan. 

Despite being someone who doesn’t “particularly enjoy the game,” Martha Newsom is drawn to football. “Football is one of the most exciting games to watch as an anthropologist,” she told an interviewer. “I’m not watching the ball go around the pitch – I’m watching the fans. I’m transfixed by them! You go through all the emotions in a single match.”

Bees fans were not included in the survey, and I wonder how we would fare, given our history of almost disappearing, rattling collection buckets and ultimately rising up through the ranks to where we are today.

As the Club likes to say, ‘We remember where we came from’ – and that’s a key part of our shared identity. It’s one that makes life-long fans like me view the Club differently, perhaps, to newer fans, drawn to the team by the glamour of the Premier League and our smart new stadium.

Dr Newsom’s research demonstrates how we bond as tribes as we suffer together. It’s called identity fusion – where you and the group get ‘get glued together’. When you go through a traumatic event, you need to pull together more.

Football, it turns out, is very much a replica of warfare or hunting big game. It feels very much that you are part of it. 

As Brentford fans, we share a sense of community, of pride in the Club and a key part of many fans’ identity is linked to supporting the Bees. Your football team is your tribe, say psychologists, with tribalism hard-wired into our DNA.

All this sounds familiar to me as a Christian minister. Jesus Christ told his followers, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” He then paid the ultimate sacrifice himself, before coming back to new life. The Church has grown fastest at times when it has faced persecution with the bonds strongest among believers under pressure.

So all this talk of suffering, commitment and identity rings true for me. It underlines for me how there’s so much more happening at the GTech week after week…than what’s taking place on the pitch.

Rev Peter Crumpler is a Church of England minister in St Albans, Herts and a lifelong Bees fan.