The emotional burden placed on the average sports fan is a strange concept.

For example, you can have a multitude of girlfriends (or boyfriends, we're very 21st century here at the Echo) throughout your life.

Sometimes you change and drift apart, and what seemed like a match in heaven and suddenly become reminiscent of the bowels of Hell themselves.

As such, partners can come and go through the revolving door of life and no-one will bat an eyelid.

But if you dare change your team, you will forever be viewed with doubt and suspicion. You will be cast as a pariah for the comforting bosom of society. Or at the very least, whispered about.

Now, this is a complex and delicate matter. Whilst changing teams is bad, sporting bigamy is tolerated and indeed celebrated.

For example, I support Saints in football and Leinster in rugby, with more than a passing interest in the goings on at Celtic, Dundalk (the home of football) and Bath Rugby.

I even know a footballing hipster who has long considered Dortmund his second team (I think he tries to dress like Jurgen Klopp, in an ironic fashion).

There's nothing wrong with adding to the roster of teams you support.

I imagine it as similar to being a grandparent; you of course love all your grandchildren, but deep down you probably like the one who has the best job more.

No, what I'm refering to is chopping and changing your team.

At school, I knew someone who loved Manchester United. Nauseatingly so. He had all the shirts and even spent hours every morning making sure his hair looked exactly like David Beckham. Cut him and he would have bled, er, red.

Now he's an Arsenal fan. A Man-United-hating Arsenal fan and a very vocal one at that.

This makes me very uneasy. I can't imagine the kind of event that would make you change allegiance so seismically, with the exception of the sort of thing that happens to Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story 3 when he starts talking in Spanish.

Logically of course, it shouldn't make any difference. After all we're constantly being told that football is now a business, and we are mere customers. Why should choosing Anfield over White Hart Lane be any more of a problem than plumping for Lidl over Aldi?

You wouldn't insist on wearing He-Man pants for the rest of your life, just because you made that decision at five years of age - things change, and so should your underwear, so why not your team?

But matter it does. A team is like a brother or a sister - you get landed with them young and then you're stuck with them. If I can just stop supporting Saints, suddenly all the miserable days mean nothing.

Spankings, relegations, absolute howlers from goalkeepers and centre halves - at least by belonging you can pretned to yourself that you've not just wasted your time and depressed yourself for no good reason.

What you've actually done - as far as your own mind is concerned - is faced down adversity, stood side-by-side with your brethren and come out stronger on the other side. And possibly had a bit of a jolly with your mates, too.

Does it make sense? No. Is it worth it? Yep.

And unlike the United-cum-Arsenal fan, I can enjoy rewatching JPT final DVD whenever I want.