Introduction

I don't know how or when I got into football. I just did.

I spent a couple of years living in north London which I guess is where I started following the Arsenal. Again I have no idea when I started supporting them. I recall no defining moment, no epiphany when a blinding light told me to cast my lot with the Gunners.

There wasn't really a whole lot of football in my family though my oldest brother did support West Ham United though again I have no idea.

After that spell at the far end of the Northern Line I moved to Belgium and it is from this time I can recall football taking a grip of me. My old man wrote to the Arsenal and I was pleased as punch to get an autographed team sheet along with a rosette, pennant and silk scarf. Wish I'd kept them!

Certain games stick in my mind. I remember playing cowboys and Indians in the garden with half an ear on the radio listening to the 1972 FA Cup Final.

But it was 1972/73 when I finally got to see football on TV. The first live game I can remember was when England played Poland in that famous World Cup qualifier at Wembley. We drew 1-1, I remember when Allan Clarke scored from the spot banging on the  bathroom door telling my mum we had equalised. I remember playing on the carpet listening to the commentary from Anfield as we beat Liverpool 2-0. A few weeks later I was again on the carpet as I suffered my first shared giantkilling; this was against Sunderland in the FA Cup semi final which we lost 2-1.

I managed to acquire a red shirt with white sleeves. We had got an Arsenal patch from the club one time and my mum sewed that to the Unwin shirt I had. At school a few days later I was told to stop boasting by one of the bigger kids; apparently I had been talking about my treasured shirt non stop and the kids were getting fed up with me.

School of course was where my interest in football really took off. I was encouraged by my favourite teacher, the bespectacled Mr Bennett, who was a Leeds United fan. He used to whack me because I was shit at Maths then he would draw the Leeds badge on the blackboard asking the kids what it was and I was the only one who answered.

He also gave me heaps after our last game of the season when Leeds beat us 6-1. I had revenge though; Jim Montgomery and Ian Porterfield anyone?

We'd play football at break time, at weekends. Every free moment like all kids from that era we played football. Or climbed trees. The idea of staying in was abhorrent  If I had to I would pore over my slowly growing collection of Shoot and Goal magazines. In fact I still remember my first ever Shoot magazine; it had a focus on Alan Stevenson, the Burnley keeper at the time. God, how do I recall this stuff?!

It was 1973 when I moved back to England that I started actually going to games and now, 39 years later, I haven't stopped. There have been moments when I turned my back on the game. Usual reasons; music, women, drink in no particular order, but football was to be a recurring feature of my life even after I left England.

I moved on on 1987. I planned for 12 months down under doing the working holiday visa thing in Australia before returning to middle class hell in surburbia with the joy of mortgages to come but at least with football at the weekends to look forward to..

We are now on the cusp of 2013 and I am still overseas. I have had spells back in England by since '87 I have called Sydney, Brisbane, Cologne, Garmisch Partenkirchen, Bangkok, Dhaka, Jakarta and Surabaya home among others.

I attended National Soccer League games in Australia, Bundesliga in Germany and all sorts of things in Indonesia. I have seen the Arsenal in Australia, Thailand and Malaysia, I have seen England in Australia and Poland. And even now, with my own half century approaching, a get a boyish buzz from attending games, especially at new stadiums.

The last few weeks have been pretty quiet football wise so I have devoted what little free time I have to collating and recording details of as many games I have attended as I can recall. Something approaching 800 games and counting.

As I recorded the games I noted dates of course recurring and I started thinking it would be interesting to see what games I have seen on particular dates. As most games carry a story or a memory I thought it would be a good idea to come up with a diary type blog that lists the games day by day as, um, diary entries.

Some dates have been harder to track down than others. NSL games in Australia are hard to pin down to certain dates as are Swiss League games from the mid 1980s I saw when Inter Railing round Europe. I no longer have the tickets nor programmes from the games I saw, a regret on a par with not seeing the Clash in London back in the day, but where I do I will add various scans and images etc etc.

The first football match I attended in the flesh was Brighton & Hove Albion v Plymouth Argyle on 29 December 1973 and so in the manner of no great diaries that is where this here tome will begin.