Born in the early seventies and raised in Kent I had no reason to support City other than my dad looked for their results at 3 on a Saturday afternoon. All my little mates were hooked on Coppell, Macari, Robson etc. The only Subbuteo style football games we had had either red or blue so I always chose to be blue for City and they were the scum. At this point, the importance of the derby matches we were having was unknown and seemingly irrelevant, or I would have tried harder honest!
When I was 7 a certain cup final took place and I watched in awe as the City coach filmed from the air with the badge on the roof weaved its way to Wembley (memories anyone?). That was stage 1 of the rest of my life, stage 2 was Joe Corrigan being the mystery guest on Question of Sport polishing his M.O.M. trophy and then stage 3, the point of no return, was the devastation felt when Villa got 'that' f*****g goal.
Still living in Kent, only 25 mins away from Selhurst Park and surrounded by Chelsea or Rags I have had plenty of reason to change and believe me I have seen people switch their teams, tossers. Not for me, I used to love the fact that I could go and see Palace or particularly Wimbledon and they would open the whole of the Arthur Wait stand 'cos so many blues would travel down, true fans made it worth while, well almost... my hometown was in the Chelsea boys 'manor' as they say. My teenage years were spent mainly crossing the street to avoid a possible kickin' but I still wore my shirt. In the '90's my nickname 'round town was 'brother'!
I remember on the day we went down desoite that 5 goal haul at Stoke, my mate (Chelsea fan) betting me £5 that we wouldn't make the Premiership before I was 30, well not only did we make it back once but in typical City style we managed to get relegated and back again before I was 30. The b**tard only paid me once though! Well my Chelsea mates have had their turn but they've gone very quiet lately, after all I never gave them any grief about their money as I was happy that someone they were beating the scum!
By the way, living 45 mins from Gillingham, how good was that play off!?!