I was born in Southampton and my Dad brought me up as a Saints fan from as early as I can remember. The first game he took me to was, believe it or not, at Fratton Park and to make it even funnier, we were in with the Pompey fans on the North Terrace – Mick Channon 89th minute, 1-0, Pompey relegated. All this didn’t mean a thing to me as I was only 7 years old. All I remember was asking exactly what "Channon is a wanker” actually meant.
Two months later we won that FA Cup thing and I assumed that we must therefore win something every year and that we were indeed the greatest team the world had ever seen. I’m still waiting for the next trophy win of course and as for being the greatest.... nah! My 2nd game was the Charity Shield at Wembley and on my 3rd, I finally made it to The Dell.
Since then we’ve had promotion to the 1st Division, League Cup final, FA Cup Semi Finals, 2nd in Div 1, European trips, Kevin Keegan, Alan Ball, Peter Shilton, Matt le Tiss to name but 4 (and we’ve had some shockers as well), 27 years in the top Division despite many relegation battles, a new ground, another FA Cup Final…. And then we fell off a cliff.
The idea of this blog is to go from this point onward. I'm sure I'll delve into the past from time to time but the recent history of the club has been shite (quite frankly) and I want to leave it behind and besides, I don't want to get sued by Rupert Lowe. Talking about about the recent past is akin to talking about former relationships in that no good can ever come of it.
I've been a season ticket holder since 1988 and was a regular attendee at home games before that when Dad's finances allowed. During the late 80s / early 90s I did a lot of away games but as life has moved on I'm almost exclusively home games only and now, due to work, I miss the midweek ones.
So.... here we are, 33 and a bit years from April 1976…. League 1 Minus 10.
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