TRUE BLUE STORIES

Paul Rawling

It all began in the early forties when a young boy was evacuated to Ashton-Under-Lyne to escape the German air raids which were currently ravaging the London area. He was sent to stay with members of his family, family which his parents were forced to leave some years earlier due to work commitments.

Although he had not met them before as he was born down South, he was instantly made to feel welcome and well looked after as all good familes do for each other.

He was just at that age when he was becoming interested in football and as all his cousins were Rag supporters they took him to watch a few games with them. But he had just started to play in goal and his favorite player at that time was Frank Swift and he was keen to see him in action, so they took him to MAINE ROAD and he was instantly bitten by the Blue Bug and a whole family of Red could not change his mind.

You could say he was a bit unlucky when it came to acts of fate, especially when we all know what was in store for him over the years ahead. The family always maintain that until he went to stay with them no bombs ever fell on the area. The first one landed just after he got there!!

This also seems to be a feature of MANCHESTER CITY FOOTBALL CLUB, you only have to go to MAINE ROAD once and that's it, you're hooked, you can't give it up no matter how bad things get or how hard you try, you just can't get it out of your system. Once you get a taste of it you immediately subject yourself to the agonizing roller coaster that is MANCHESTER CITY and there's nothing you can do about it.

That young boy was (and still is) my Father, and we all now live on the East Coast of Norfolk, where I was born, and just like when the child of a heroine addict is born with the drug flowing around his poor little veins, I came into the world with a ready made addiction to depressing performances, even more depressing results, the strange fear which comes over me whenever we are drawn against lower division teams in cup competitions, eternal unfulfilled optimism and never knowing why I keep spending #40 on a flimsy shirt and then wear it!!

As is the case with all hard drugs there are exhilarating highs, none more so than sitting at Wembley watching them lift the League Cup in 1976. But as every drug addict knows, the highs are always followed by long periods of devastating lows, and as I sit here writing this I am already dreading the "come-down" which is almost inevitable after the Nottingham Forest result.

I am now 33 years of age with children of my own, and their bedrooms are adorned with images of Kinkladze, Rosler and Wiekens much the same as I used to wake up with Bell, Summerbee and Lee looking down at me and wondering how they got there, and so the process starts again with two more sad statistics added to the list of incurable Blues. It won't be long before they will be old enough to take to a match where I can do a proper job on them, and as we all know, it doesn't take much.

I often wonder what would have happened if that young lad at the start of this piece had followed his family and stayed with the Rags, I could be currently basking in the "glory" provided by Fergie and his "Fledglings", but we all know that "supporting" United means nothing, and that being Blue is everything, and that's the way it will always be.

Don't ever let me off this roller coaster!!