Growing up, my entire life revolved around football. My stepdad used to play for Torquay United and England schoolboys in his youth, and my grandad used to take me with him every Saturday when he volunteered at our local non-league side as a physio (a big shout-out must go to his trusty “magic” sponge and smelling salts for being the real unsung hero. Not so much his patchy knowledge of human anatomy), so it was inevitable, really. I got the bug pretty early on and was playing for a Sunday team from the age of six. And, aside from kicking a ball about all day, every day, the other thing that grew from my love of the game was my obsession with the kits.
I used to collect any and all kits I could get my grubby little paws on, from rare, unseen (in south Devon, at least) Sevilla kits by Bukta to random Chesterfield tops found in the bargain bin of a local sports store while on family holidays up North. I collected everything I could.
My love for the game and, in turn, the myriad kits, meant that I didn’t really have much of an allegiance as such to one club or another. I found it hard to settle. Everyone was choosing their clubs on the playground, mostly Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, but I just loved the game and wanted to drink up everything about it. I liked the kits but hadn’t found the team for me yet.
Then, by the time I was about nine or ten, I’d started following Newcastle United a little more closely. They had just come up from the second division and were banging in goals left, right, and centre playing entertaining football. For my birthday, I’d asked for a Newcastle shirt and, lovingly, my parents obliged. I’d managed to get those grubby paws on their wonderful green and blue Asics shirt from the 93/94 season, and from that, I started to really flirt with the idea of going steady with them and supporting them full-time.
They had a cracking season that year, finishing in third place with Andy Cole knocking goals in for fun. Then came the big moment. A pivotal moment in my fledgling life and the moment I knew I was ready to take it to the next level and commit full time to just one club.
One afternoon (while waiting for my grandad and his magic sponge to take me down to the Rec to watch Newton Abbot Spurs on a dreary Saturday afternoon), I opened my copy of Shoot! and was struck by the most wonderful of team photos and from that moment it was official. My love for them was signed, sealed and delivered right there and then. Toward the centre of the anaemically-paged magazine was a picture of the squad in all their splendour. Rob Lee, Keith Gillespie, and Phillipe Albert on the back row in the maroon and blue, Paul Kitson, John Beresford and Steve Howey in the front in the black and white, and a resplendent Pavel Srníček in what I know now to be an Acid-House-Comedown of a Goalie top, which I fucking loved as well.
Ten-year-old me was head over heels in love, and there was no turning back.
