My first attendance at a City match was a game against Wolverhampton Wanderers just before Christmas 1955.
With two of my friends we caught an ‘85′ from Chorlton to Lloyd Street South and followed the crowd to Maine Road.

Once through the turnstiles at the scoreboard end we made our way down to the front and stood just to the right of the goal.
The real life colours of the ground were in stark contrast to the black and white images of the time.The pitch was vivid green with carefully sanded goalmouths, the goals themselves were amazingly white and bedecked with perfect nets and all was contained and marked with lines of perfect white.

A mild commotion opposite the players tunnel erupted into spontaneous applause as the teams ran out onto the pitch,even those amongst us with their strange accents and black and gold scarves cheered as eagerly as every one else.

Soon the game was on, the players in their brilliant attire striving with might and main to take advantage of their opponents, all of them using their sublime skills to try and force an opening while all around the crowd roared them on with surging enthusiasm.
Suddenly Jackie Dyson was through and lashed the ball into the net to a tremendous roar of acclamation.Moments later Joe Hayes darted in and cracked in goal number two.

Boy was this good! What a game! What a place!
What a day!

Eventually the final whistle sent us all flooding from the stadium and the three of us made our way back to Chorlton.
As we went along we talked about the power and speed of it all,about City’s dashing cavalier performance and about the two fantastic goals by our heroes Dyson and Hayes.
No one ever mentioned the iron men of Wolverhampton or the performance of the referee or even the two lucky goals that trickled in at the other end for we had already become do or die supporters of the greatest football club on earth.