Inspired by my son Matthew giving his recollections, I thought I would add mine.
In September 1955, my mate’s dad took us both to see City. I was nine years old and had never seen a match until then. We lived in West Gorton, and we took the 53 bus up to Rusholme. Walking into Maine Road was amazing, with an enormous crowd jostling and pushing up against the simple steel barriers set at different levels on the stepped terraces. I was lifted up and balanced on a barrier to see better.
We were playing Blackpool, who were top of the League at that time. No problem, City beat them 2-0, even with Stanley Matthews playing for them. He was famous – I had cigarette cards with his picture on – this was brilliant! Instant conversion, City fan for life.
……. and then we won the FA Cup at the end of the season …..

My first match City match was the derby at OT in September 1956. We were cup winners, and they were League champions. Not a good day City got beat 2-0. I remember the great Bert Trautmann was still recovering from his cup final broken neck injury, and John Savage was in goal. In fact on the day we did not miss Bert since Savage had a stormer and was my man of the match.

I think I was about 7 or 8 and taken by two uncles to an evening midweek game? We caught the football special bus from Belle Vue to Maine Road. City beat Utd 3-2. The first team I can recall was – Trautmann, Meadows, Little; Barnes, Ewing, Paul; Fagan, Hayes,Revie, Johnstone, Clarke. I think my all time favorite player was Bobby Johnstone – a roly-poly magician at inside left ( in old money )signed from Hibs, and worth the admission on his own. I went to a lot of home games on my own from the age of about 10 onwards until I started playing at weekends. Happy Days!

Can you please help me? I remember my first game well and want to tell you about it. We beat P.N.E. 5-1 at Deepdale, but I can’t remember the date. I was about 10 or 11 so its a long time ago.

I could have been a Stockport County fan. Aged nine, a classmate had given me a ticket for a charity game, County versus ‘The Rest of the World XI’. I must have been naughty because my dad tore up my ticket. In the event County won 7-3, just imagine what effect that would have had on a nine year-old kid!
Fast forward to a few years later, 1954. My cricket match is cancelled and the old man asks me if I’d like to accompany him to Maine Road. It was the home debut of ‘The Revie Plan’. City, with Revie, Joe Hayes, Ken Barnes and Bert Trautmann thrash Sheffield United 5-2. I was hooked.
We stormed up the table, heading it in September. We beat United 3-2 in the League and 2-0 in the 4th round of the FA Cup. Next May,I was at Wembley with my parents. I was in tears after the game; then three nice Geordies came up to me and said “We’ll swap ye onny three o’ oor players for yer keepah” and it helped me recover. No matter, because we were back there again next year and we won, beating Birmingham 3-1.
Don Revie had a lookalike – the mananager of the Mac supermarket on Oxford Road where my mum used to shop. I used to tell all my friends that ‘The Don’ said “Hello” to my every morning on my way to school. It was ages before I twigged it wasn’t him.
Since then the memories – triumphs and disasters, mostly the latter, have come thick and fast but my support has never wavered. Now Alex, my grandson, is a Blue too.

My first game at City was in the mid fifties. My dad took me to see a reserve game v Barnsley. Up to this time, I had been a United supporter like all my mates, but after this game, I was a true Blue though and through. The game remains vivid, as it was a game in which Jack Dyson was making a comback after his broken leg, when right in front of me, a heard an enormous crack, and his leg was broken again. Fond memories but very sad ones also.

My first City game was against Portsmouth at Maine Road, when City won 4-1. Players like Roy Clarke Roy Paul and of course Bert Trautman played that day, but one litle fellow stuck in my mind from that game was a liitle winger called Harry Anders, he played a blinder,but then semed to vanish. But the person that became my hero along with thousands of other City fans from that era, was obviosly Bert Trautman Years later in fact 1974 after many ups and downs with I was lucky enough to marry somebody who is not only loved by me,but hundreds of City fans, Janice who nows works in the City musuem.At our wedding Roy Clarke’s daughter was Bridesmaid and in the evening Roy brought a friend of his along to the reception and who should it be but Bert Trautman. What a Day !!!!! Getting Married and my greatest Hero there . You can undrstand why I really am CITY FOR LIFE!!!

April 1953, my first visit to Maine Road. I was taken by my honoury uncle, a keen supporter himself, who chose this particular match against Preston so that I could see Tom Finney play. My most enduring memory is my first view of the pitch as we emerged at the the back of the main stand. First a surprise – the pitch was a huge piece of brown earth, not the green grass I had imagined. Then the excitement of seeing the biggest pitch, the biggest stadium and the biggest crowd I had ever seen in my life. The Kippax opposite, without a roof in those days, was packed. I can still see that picture in my minds eye and remember the buzz of excitement and anticipation around the ground, plus the sound of the Beswick Prize Band who played at every match in those days – to this day the sound of a brass band still makes me think of that day. The game? I remember nothing clearly,the sheer excitement of being there and seeing the players in the flesh probably overwhelmed me……and City lost 2-0, perhaps an appropriate start for one who was to become City fan for life.

I was about 5 or 6 years old, so that may have been the 1957-58 season, my two elder brothers took me and being so small they sat me on the wall behind the goal in the “Scoreboard End”, in the first few minutes a shot went whistling past my ear, being a complete wimp I started to cry for fear of getting hit. A complete stranger walks forward and put me on his shoulders (great view now), at half time he bought me a drink and crisps and then back on the shoulders again for the second half. I think the match ended 0-0 and big Bert (Trautman) had a great match, not much chance of getting hit while he was in goal. The atmosphere was terrific and a great day all round, but I will never forget the “blue Stranger”, I dedicate my 35 years as a season ticket holder to him.

The above was the first game I ever attended.
The first game I remember SEEING was on (black and white) TV, the last half-hour of the 1953 (Matthews) Cup Final Bolton v Blackpool. I saw it on my return from the Saturday afternoon matinee at the Kingsway cinema. After Roy Rogers, Flash Gordon and Batman I went home and saw Stanley Matthews weave his magic. Our living room was full of people I didn’t know, as we were among the first people in our street in Fallowfield to have a TV set (bought in preparation to view the Queen’s coronation a few weeks later).
The following (?) season at the tender age of six I was taken by my Grandad onto the Kippax to see City play Chelsea at Maine Road. City have been a part of my life ever since and I still remember so many things about that day. It must have been in the early months of 54 or 55 (wish I’d kept the programme) because I remember writing to my cousin in Sheffield all about it, filling many pages of a writing pad (with elves on it!) that I had been given for Christmas. After receiving my l-o-n-g epistle describing the game in great detail, he wrote back after some months, saying, “Well I’m not very interested in football” (well he WAS from Sheffield).

We lived in Fallowfield, and Grandad and I walked through Platt Fields to get to the game, round the lake with the pleasure boat stabled for the winter, past the bandstand and out onto Platt Lane, and through the maze of little streets surrounding Maine Road. I recall it was dark after the game (were there any floodlights then at Maine Road I’m sure there weren’t, I think I remember them being put in many seasons later) and we missed the park closing so we had to walk home a real long way round down Hart Road and Wilbraham Road and Moseley Road ( I think this was necessary after most games). In the years after this, when I got a bit older, visiting Maine Road for 1st and 2nd team games (we used to get about 20,000 for the reserves—and it seems like about 30,000 for City Res v Rags Reserves?), I came by bike, at first through Platt Fields, and then later from East Didsbury when we moved house. My Dad and I stabled our bikes in any one of the backyards (though we had our favourites) where you could leave your bike –was it for 6pence (2p in today’s money) or 3 pence? I don’t think you locked your bike in those days when leaving it there?

For my first game I had a skyblue-and-white hooped bobblehat that my Mum had knitted for me ( my Mum had seen City’s Cup-winning run of 1934 and could name most of the players from that team) and a skyblue rosette, also handmade by her for the occasion. I remember the problems she had making the bobble around a piece of cardboard.
I went with my Grandad, who must have been a City fan since the early 1900’s because he never tired of telling me he had seen Billy Meredith flying down the wing at Hyde Road and you could touch him as he flew past. Grandad had of course also been in the 84,569 record crowd at Maine Road in 1934. At the Chelsea game he tried to get me on the white wall beside the pitch on the Kippax at the Platt Lane end of the ground, opposite the penalty area, but although it was long before kickoff all the spaces on the wall were already occupied by other kids, so little me stood about 3 rows back, seeing probably only half the game. I best remember the hoots of derision when Chelsea appeared in cherry red shirts and what looked to be silk ivory-coloured “knickers” (as they were called in the programmes of those days). I guess it seemed to prove for all to see that what Northerners had always liked to think about southern football teams, and especially London ones, was true.
From our standing position, just as football matches look now from such a low elevation, the game looked all legs and bodies flying in everywhere, very physical, not the beautiful game at all. I can remember all the above, and lots of the team members on that day, but I can’t remember the score! (and I don’t actually remember any goals!). I think it was a draw?? Perhaps there is a City archive somewhere so I can find out, I’d love to know.

I think my Grandad decided it was too crowded at a first team game for a 6 year old because for a while after that we went absolutely regularly to the Reserves games (the “stiffs” as lots of people, including Grandad, used to call them). I don’t remember my NEXT first team game but I do remember meeting the City players in the 1955 Cup Final team (v Newcastle), they all signed my souvenir brochure in a mass signing session (we queued for HOURS) in Lewis’s department store in Market Street. And when I DID get to start going to first team games (about 1956 I think), always sitting legs-astraddle on the white sloping walls of the same one (toward Platt Lane end) of the (3?) tunnels leading through and onto the Kippax.
I was an absolute regular, and later as a teenager (still long pre-Bell and Lee and Summerbee), a regular home and away. Mrs (Don) Revie was my cousin’s teacher in my primary school and I remember also seeing Roy Warhust watching the movies with his wife at the Essoldo cinema in Chorlton and getting his autograph on the inside of my Dad’s cig packet (what year would that have been?).
Finally I’d like to dedicate this little report to my dear Grandad who took me to my first City game, so creating now well over A HUNDRED YEARS supporting City in our family since he went to HIS first City game.