Well, it's like this.
I'm a Londoner, I've never claimed to be a Manc, and it would be ridiculous to do so. Although I reckon I can do a pretty well perfect Manc accent if I put my mind to it (although of course no Manc will ever accept that it sounds at all genuine!). But I do strongly consider Manchester to be my adopted city. As a kid of fourteen, I felt immediately at home, and still do. In those days, all the women shopkeepers called you “Love”. I was really tickled by that. Never, ever heard it down south. I also ate, for the first time, such weird and wonderful things as black pudding, and tripe and onions. Still enjoy the first, not quite so much the second. I also discovered a beer on tap called “mild”. Must have been around in the south, but if so I never saw it.
Like many of my generation, I fell in love with football in 66. Nobody in the family was interested in football (apart from my stepfather), nobody went to football (although my mother and stepfather were at the semi-final and the final of the WC – through business, we had connections with Wembley Stadium, which was of course a private company).
So, frankly, I did it all on my lonesome.
I sniffed around. I was, if anything, a Chelsea fan during the 66-67 season. The first league match of any kind I went to was at White Hart Lane. A fine old stadium at the time. It was Spurs against Liverpool, the darkness of the winter afternoon drew in, the floodlights went on, and it was just, well, magical. The white shirts against the red, the beautiful green pitch flooded with light. Gladiatorial. Goosebumps. I thought, this is me, this sport is mine. After that, I went to Stamford Bridge a good few times. The Shed really was a shed at that time, exactly that. But I really was having to work it out by myself, by trial and error. Remember, no internet in those days. I could find Highbury because it was at a tube stop called Arsenal. That was easy. But I once got off the train at West Hampstead and outside the station asked where the West Ham ground was. I kid you not. I just assumed that West Ham was a shortened form for the local team in West Hampstead. People gawped at me…
In the winter of 67, my stepfather was appointed to a job at Culvers Car Mart in Rusholme (family was generally in the motor trade, my father and grandfather too). So from having grown up in various parts of north-west London, we were going to up and off to the north. It was a foreign country to a fourteen-year-old southerner, I can tell you. There really was a significant cultural difference between the two parts of the country. I remember people in London watching Corrie when it first came out like anthropologists studying another tribe. With fascination, maybe some fear. I distinctly remember our first trip up, British Rail from Watford Junction, taking forever, about four and a half hours.
So like any kid in love with footy, I used to go out into parks and get involved in makeshift matches. Two jumpers on the ground for nets, that sort of thing. Just sort of invite myself into them, the way you did. Happy days. And in London, even then, you'd get talking, you'd ask the inevitable question, “So who do you support, then?”, and over and over, it was “United, United, United”. There've always been millions of cockney reds, or at least since the Busby Babes, I think. So given that I was going to live up there, I'd ask “What's Manchester like, then?” “Dunno, mate”. Every single time. I'd say “What!? You mean you haven't even been there?” "Nope. Sorry” Naive of me, really. And that got me thinking. Great prestige attached to United in those years. Whether we like it or not. We had a fucking good team, nobody here needs telling, but they won the European Cup, they had the sympathy vote because of Munich, they had Charlton, Best, Law. That's just how it was, outside of Manchester.
BUT being somebody who never goes with the herd, ever, in any circumstances, by temperament, I just thought "Well, I'm not supporting that lot, if that's what their so-called supporters are like. What a useless club, to have supporters like that”.
We moved up to Manchester. I can't remember if my stepfather first took me to Maine Road. I doubt it. We must have gone to two or three matches together later on, we also went to Old Trafford once or twice. He never understood why I had to have an allegiance to a club. He said he just loved football. It annoyed him slightly, in fact.
My memory is that the first time I just caught the 92 up the Stockport road from Hazel Grove, walked the long walk down Dickinson Road — then, catching sight of the floodlights in the distance, in through the schoolboys turnstile, up those steps, and then… fuuuuuck!! The Kippax, the Scoreboard end, Helen, that immaculate square of green, and then those beautiful sky blue shirts coming out of the tunnel — Nelly, Colin, Franny, Mick Doyle and the rest. You know them.
I was home. I shouldn't say this, perhaps it's too much information (it certainly is, in fact), but for one reason or another I've never been close to family.
Immediately, I knew that I had family. This was my tribe.
Still is…bellends and all.
