Football Teams I Have Supported

I have always envied those people (like my wife) who in their whole life have supported just one football team. My experience is totally different. As a boy, living in Dore, I supported Sheffield United (my father's team). But the first club I went to watch was Rotherham United (when they played Charlton Athletic), my mother's home town and where I was born. But that was a one off.

When we lived in London, and when I was about ten years old, my friend Robert invited me to join him and his father to go to watch Fulham. Many a time we took the long walk from home to the stadium at Craven Cottage. They had great team in those days: Johnny Haynes, Jimmy Hill etc.In my middle teens, we lived in Braintree in Essex. I used to cycle to the local ground to watch Crittall Athletic, now Braintree Town.

Back in London in 1963, I started going to watch Chelsea every week. This was an exciting time for the club, especially the breakthrough of the young Peter Osgood. I was a regular there for the three seasons I lived in London. At the same time, I used to go and watch Brighton and Hove Albion for the first three or four years I was at college there. Their promotion season of 1965 when they were champions of the old Division 4 was very exciting. I still have a huge collection of match programmes from those days.

Then in 1966 I moved to Leeds and watched almost every game United played at home that season. A few years later I joined two colleagues from work to go to watch them in the European Cup Final in Paris. That was the end of my regular football watching days. On occasions I would go with my father (and sometimes one of my brothers) to watch his local team Coventry City. He used to live next door to their Assistant Manager he might have been given the odd ticket.

It was only when I met Alison that I started to go to games again. She had supported Manchester City since she was a girl and I guess it was in the late eighties we started to go to some of their away games when they were nearby, as well as the odd visit to their home ground of Maine Road. When they were relegated to the second and third tiers of English football, we visited some strange grounds. We stood behind the goal with all the uncouth City supporters at Oxford United's old London Road ground and saw them go two goals behind at half time. Only to come back to win in the second.

So there we are. Many teams over many years. And who would have thought I would end up married to a City fan and end up supporting a Lancashire club. And me a Yorkshire-man.