Pats Fans Nationwide Mobilize for Super Bowl
Clubs Around the Country Celebrate Victories Together
Kim Forrest, Contributing Writer

BOSTON -- In Phoenix, Ariz., people think Mike Allen talks funny. But when the Dorchester native gets together with fellow Patriots fans at the Vine Sports Tavern on Sundays, Allen and his Boston brogue are just part of the crowd.

Patriots Fan Club Links Patriots Fan Club of Rochester Murphy's Patriots of Northern Virginia/Washington, D.C. New England Patriots Fan Club of Arizona

Allen is the founder and current vice president of the New England Patriots Fan Club of Arizona. Despite the fact that the New England Patriots do not have an official fan club, clubs like Allen's have been sprouting up around the country, with displaced New Englanders and other Patriots devotees gathering at pubs and taverns to cheer on their team.

The Patriots organization recognize three of those fans clubs, said Doug Roberts, who currently lives in Washington, D.C. He is the president and runs the Web site of Murphy's Patriots the Virginia Patriots-recognized fan club. The other clubs are Allen's Arizona club and one in Rochester, N.Y.

Murphy's Patriots is a Patriots fan club named after Murphy's Pub in Alexandria, Va., where the club meets on Sundays to watch games. This coming Sunday they will be an especially rowdy group.

"We have a monster bash going on," Roberts, a Warren, Mass. native, said.

While the club boasts about 100 regular members, most of whom are former New England residents, Super Bowl XXXVI saw more than 200 fans pack Murphy's pub.

"We're expecting the same thing [this year]. The die-hard regulars get here earlier, usually around 2 o'clock. Everybody knows everybody. We're very excited," Roberts said.

Jim Brown is a vice president of the Patriots Fan Club of Rochester, which has about 50 members. The club meets every Sunday to watch games at local pub called "What's On Second," whose owners are from Boston. The Super Bowl will be no different.

"[The owner] has his dining room reserved for us," Brown said. "We have that whole dining area to ourselves and [the pub owners] put out a spread of food for halftime."

Dean Nicosia, president of the Rochester club, said he expects 70-80 people to attend Sunday's festivities and there will also be a raffle with proceeds going to charity.

As for the game, "we're just going to hope for the best," Nicosia said, though, in true Pats fan form, he predicted a 28-14 victory for the New England team.

Allen's Arizona club has several hundred members from the Phoenix area. At the AFC championship bash two weeks ago, 350 fans packed the Vine. Allen expects about 500 for this weekend's Super Bowl party at the tavern.

"We have a big get-together planned," he said. "They're putting in extra chairs and tables…we'll have lots of giveaways and prizes and contests for Pats shirts and paraphernalia… the fans are unbelievable."

Allen was a season ticket holder for 28 years, "since [the Patriots'] very first day," before moving to Arizona in 1988. He started his club in 1996, when the Patriots were playing the Packers in Super Bowl XXXI.

"I was listening to sports radio…and it seemed that there were a lot of Pats fans out here," he said. "So I thought why can't we organize a small Super Bowl party?"

Allen's "small" party turned into something much more for the hundreds of members, which include mostly former New Englanders.

"Ninety-eight percent [of members] are former residents of all six New England states," he said. "We have some members who have never been to New England. They are Pats fans just on virtue of watching them on TV."

The club also welcomes Patriots fans who are vacationing in the Arizona area. As it is recognized by the Patriots organization, the Arizona club has seen some big-name guests, including a surprise visit from Patriots owner Robert Kraft and his wife four years ago.

Murphy's Patriots was started in 1994, Roberts said, when showings of Patriots games at Murphy's Pub started getting huge, rowdy turnouts. Roberts, who went to his first Patriots game when he was 10 and whose family had season tickets throughout the 70s and 80s, said that the fan club has gotten especially large in the past few years.

"The first couple of years were rather lean, but after the 1997 season and once they got the Super Bowl, we grew exponentially," he said, adding. "It's amazing how excited people are when they find out about us."

The Rochester fan club was founded in 1993, Nicosia, a Lawrence, Mass. native, said. There were twenty members the first year, and there are 50 paying members currently. But in the Rochester area, there are about 100 members that know of them and join them for events.

"There are people that find us every day," Nicosia said. "A lot of people migrated from New England to upstate New York."

While neither Nicosia, Brown, Roberts nor Allen are headed down to Houston themselves, there will be some representation from the Arizona and D.C. clubs at the big game.

"We have two [members] that are going down there, but neither of them had tickets," Roberts said. "They're going to make a game time decision."

Living in another state, it would be easy for these fans to give up on their hometown team and jump on the bandwagon of their residence's franchise. But these true blue fans have kept up their Patriots love.

"I think it was probably easy for some to give up on them," Roberts said. "But we stuck with them. They're always A-number-1 to me."

Especially for the Rochester fans, things can get a little tense because they live so close to a major football hub: Buffalo, N.Y. Bills fans can get more than a little raucous. Brown said that his club goes to the Buffalo-New England games each year. Last year's game was especially difficult because of New England's hard 31-0 loss to the Bills, one of only two losses this season.

"That's pretty rough to sit there with your Patriots gear on," Brown said. "[At some points during the game], I was looking for a place to hide. There aren't many in a football stadium. But you just keep quiet…what goes around comes around."

Nicosia said that at the Buffalo game, fans from the Murphy's Patriots club were able to come and tailgate with them. He admits that it's difficult to be a Patriots fan in Rochester, but it's a lot easier now that the Patriots are on a winning streak.

"[In Rochester], it's pretty much Bills territory," he said. "But now we can dish it back."

Brown said that he has stuck with the Patriots for so many years because of their humble attitude.

"I can look up to my team," he said. "They just come to play the game…they don't brag about their success. They don't show off on the field. That's a class organization -- they're not showboats, they just come and play."

Even though they won't be at the Houston game or back in New England, these Patriots fans will feel right at home. Allen said he's brought stuffed clams to game watching parties and a chowder house that serves Fenway franks has opened up in the Phoenix area.

"It helps all of us. It brings us back to our roots," Allen said. "When we're all together people understand each other."

Allen added that being a Patriots fan in Phoenix does have one advantage to being back in Boston.

"It's like being at Gillette Stadium except it's 70 degrees out," he said.