Still on the nostalgia theme and how you can be hopelessly lost for ever to your home town football team, especially if you come from an English industrial town.  This post on the Birmingham City FC forum is more than eight years old now but it sums the whole thing up.  (I’ve left the original typos in for authenticity before you start nit-picking!)

A LETTER TO MY DAD
beachblue @ 04-DEC-02 01:37 PM
Hi Dad, Just thoght I’d let you know that the Blues are in the Premier League now, that’s the old 1st division but with loads more money. They are doing great 11th at the moment when everyone expected them to be rooted at the bottom of the table. It’s a bit different from when you first took me down as an 8 year old with the wooden stool for me to stand on in the Kop. (stools aren’t allowed now)and there’s no way the gate man would let you lift me over the turnstile like they used to. That always bothered me when I saw the attendance figures as I knew I hadn’t been counted along with a lot of other little un’s. But it was great to see D.ick Neal, Trevor Smith, Johnny Watts, Malcolm Beard, Johnny Schofield I could fill this whole letter with names. Of course can’t leave out Trevor Francis he was 5 yards faster than anyone around him or so it seems. Feel sorry for Trev because he came back as manager for 6 years but he wasn’t nearly as good a manager as he was a player but he still gave it his best. I remember all the old players you used to tell me about Joe Bradford, Harry Hibbs, Cyril Trigg etc as though it were yesterday. Sorry I couldn’t take you down the match so often in the end when it was my duty to take you but you were a bit dodgy on the old legs and I was so worried that you would get knocked over in the crowd. By the way it’s all seater now, no standing allowed I bet you would find that hard to handle ? Well I’m telling you all this but I bet you know it all, I can just see you along with a few thousand others sitting on the top of the stands looking down on today’s matches, the old ground looks pretty swish now don’t it ? So sorry you never got to experience today’s team in the fklesh you would be so pleased. Save me a space next to you on the roof of the stand Dad, I’ll join you sooner or later, but not too soon I hope.