My first game was City v Leeds United, Sept. 5th 1956. It was an early evening K.O. and I went with a pal from school, we were 9 years old at the time. We caught the 53 from Longsight to Claremont Road and walked the rest of the way.

THE most abiding memory is of the crowd. I’d never experienced anything like it before, the noise deafened me. The repartee struck me straight away. I didn’t realise that there were so many “club footed sken eyed” footballers. It took more visits to cotton on to the fact that if you scored or played a great pass you were a genius, on the otherhand a blatant miss put you in the afore mentioned category. I was drawn to the crowd so much I let parts of the match pass me by. There was one particular thing that struck me and that was the men who walked amongst the crowd selling cigarettes (singles), chewing gum and I think, soft drinks. One of these men walked by me shouting what I heard as “Gitchy Gum, penny a stick” Never having seen or tasted “Gitchy Gum” I coughed up a penny and to my utter disappointment was given a piece of good old Wrigley’s. It was only quite some time later that I realised that he was actually saying “Get your gum”. He probably had a Saturday night job selling the Empire News. The seller on our corner used to bellow “Empiyaaa !” They were probably brothers. The match ended with a 1-0 win for City (Billy McAdams) and we went home happy. One remaining question remains unanswered. Why did Leeds give up the great Blue and Gold strip and end up looking like a poor man’s Real Madrid ?