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reversible kit – red for home, white away – and he’d have us stretching, running shuttles and doing star jumps. The opposition used to stand on the sidelines taking the piss but, if we dared look over at them, Steve would bark at us to concentrate. We hated it at first because we felt daft but then we found that we would come flying out of the blocks and often have games won before the other kids had got into it.
    There were some good players in that team – Kenny Hampson and Glen Foster at the back, Jason Nash, who is now back at the school as a PE teacher and head of year, and little midfielder Sean Atkinson who could dribble for fun and who Dad loved to watch. I played up front, a Norman Whiteside figure, and had some success. The highlight was probably the day I scored seven in a game on my way to more than 40 in a season.
    I went to watch my first league match when I was about seven. Dad had several season tickets at Manchester United and decided I was now old enough to be introduced to the glory that is Old Trafford. This might come as a big surprise to those sceptics from the blue side of Manchester, but there were and are a lot of Man United fans living in Lancashire. It became a regular routine – play football on Saturday morning, grab a quick shower, dash home for a bite to eat while watching Saint & Greavsie or Bob Wilson on Football Focus and then pile into Dad’s red van with four or five other fans in the back and head off to the match. We’d park near some warehouses, not far from the ground. Dad always tried to get a good spot to make a quick getaway after the game but, as he would never dream of leaving before the final whistle, it was usually pointless and we ended up in a traffic jam. On the short walk to the ground, we’d stop at Vincent’s Italian Ice Cream van to pick up a 99 and then meet up with Dad’s friend Kevin Thomas and his family under the Munich clock.
    Even though these were not the glamour days at the Theatre of Dreams, I was still wide-eyed. Despite having Lou Macari, Gordon McQueen, Bryan Robson, Ray Wilkins and a young Mark Hughes, United were a workmanlike side who enjoyed a few good cup runs. Mostly the old boys around metalked fondly of the Busby Babes, the tragedy of Munich and the golden era of Charlton, Law and Best. Dad would also tell me about the great players he had seen at Burnley in the 1960s and, if I looked away when Ian St John or Jimmy Greaves were on TV, he’d say, ‘Listen to these guys, Ronnie. They were great, great footballers and they know what they are talking about.’ One of the biggest thrills for Dad when I played for Essex was finding out that Jimmy is a big cricket fan, and they often sat together, watching matches at Chelmsford. Greavsie’s son Danny ran the Essex shop for a while, and my wife Lorraine would help him out some days.
    In those days, the average crowd at Old Trafford was around 28,000, so it was always a thrill when you listened to Stuart Hall on Sports Report on the way back from a game and heard him tell of 48,000 being ‘packed into the ground like red-and-white sardines’. Twice a season – against City and Liverpool – the crowd would be a 58,000 sell-out. These were always extra special occasions, particularly when we won.
    As talkSPORT listeners will know, I’m still a Man U fan today, although I like to think that I’m not one-eyed and can appreciate other teams and great players whatever strip they wear. Even though Liverpool were ‘the enemy’, I still loved watching their great teams on Match of the Day and rather wished we had signed players like Kevin Keegan, Ian Rush and Kenny Dalglish. Things started to look up at Old Trafford after Alex Ferguson took over, although I can remember the time when the Stretford Enders were calling for him to be sacked. A good job they didn’t get their way! Dad used to watch the reserves as well and told me about a kid to look out for called Ryan Giggs. I saw Steve Bruce make