Like so many, I was taken as a child by my father.
But I'll tell a little story I have done before about the coda to it.
My father went constantly from his boyhood to the mid seventies until the family moved south when I was little. So I didn't get quite the same experience, it was going to visit family that I would be taken to games ("I've put up with it for 40 years, I don't see why he should get away with it"), so throughout the eighties I would go to occasional games. It was always a wonderful treat.
Into my adulthood I'd still make the trek north to see City. Not often, maybe a couple of games a season, and more usually to City away matches in the south in those days when you could get tickets for them.
My father as he got older stopped going more or less. He had grown out of the habit of it, though would watch on TV and still was very much a blue.
Come 2011 and City reached the cup final. A friend of mine was a member of the Sussex FA and they got tickets to such things, and knowing me as a City fan asked if I wanted them. Obviously I did.
So I rang my father and said that it was 30 years since he first took me to a game, the FA Cup 3rd round v Crystal Palace (January 3rd, 1981). He didn't remember. I then said that year City had reached the cup final, and we watched it at home. Wouldn't it be nice, all those years later to watch it together again?
"Oh yes it would. That would be nice. Do you want to come down and watch it with us?"
"I could dad. Or you could come with me to Wembley".
I will treasure that long silence for the rest of my life. And what a day we had. The turning of the circle - son taking his father to football.
I love my Dad for introducing me to City. And though I don't go remotely as often as many on here, I do go. I'm there on Saturday, I'm up for the Spurs league match. All because he took a little boy to Maine Road, wide eyed in the North Stand, wondering who this lady with a bell was, watching Joe Corrigan patrol his six yard box and do shuttle runs across it.
