It's just not right.

Number one son, who's 12 and about to start secondary school is about to embark on a huge life-changing event. No, I don't mean puberty, it's bigger than that. He's going to switch his football allegiance.

(Those of you who are in Ukraine, Texas or Queensland will have to stop reading now because none of this will make any sense to you.)

There's a pretty decent rule of thumb that says that after the age of 10 you can't change teams. There's a few exceptions: if you move cities you can change, or if you are severely mentally disturbed you can (my cousin, for example, went from being a life-long Melbourne supporter to being a rabid Collingwood supporter at the age of about 40. But that just shows you how unbalanced he is).

So Number One Son really should stick with his current choice. But after a fair amount of soul-searching on my part I've worked out that he gets a dispensation from the rule. We were living in London when he decided to go for Brisbane and so I think he can be excused on the grounds of poor information. Unless you're in Melbourne you can't possibly know enough about the teams and, more importantly, the cultural stereotypes around their supporters to make an informed choice. (Pies fans don't have their own teeth, Demons supporters live in map59 and go to Falls Creek, Dogs supporters are pessimistic and long-suffering, St Kilda supporters don't really follow football at all, and so on..)

On the weekend he said he was going to go for Hawthorn. I suspect this was just done for effect because he knows how I feel about the Hawks, but I did point out to him that if he goes to Scotch AND barracks for Hawthorn he'll be a walking stereotype and everyone's going to hate him.