My first proper exposure to football was the 1990 World Cup and the following season was where the interest exploded.
My father Jim began to buy Shoot! for me every Thursday and I devoured it, while we began to attend Cork City games together, the club falling just short of a first-ever league title. Most Irish football fans tend to have a ‘foreign’ team too and, in this regard, I followed my father in becoming an Arsenal supporter.
The first game I saw Arsenal play live was the 1-0 win away to Manchester United in October 1990, featuring the infamous brawl that saw both clubs docked points – at the time, the Irish state broadcaster RTÉ was able to show a Saturday 3pm game and watching those only fed the obsession further.
Arsenal ended up playing United again just over a month later in the Rumbelows Cup at Highbury. The game finished 6-2 to United, with Lee Sharpe scoring a hat-trick, but as it was a midweek game and didn’t affect the league title challenge, it thankfully didn’t traumatise me. Instead, that match holds greater personal significance for providing my first piece of Arsenal memorabilia.
A friend of my father’s attended the match and brought back a programme – and a 1991 official club calendar. The cover image, featuring captain Tony Adams and manager George Graham at the training ground, probably seems quaint by the standards of today’s offerings but the sight of an adidas Etrusco Unico ball will always leave me week. It’s probably worth mentioning too that, by the time the calendar became current, Adams was serving time at Her Majesty’s pleasure.
The pictures inside were a mix of action images and headshots – presumably reserve forward Craig McKernon was missing for the day of the photocall, hence the fact that he’s in the previous home shirt, while even back then, I wondered if the white t-shirts under the jackets of Stewart Houston and Gary Lewin were special emergency third jerseys.
Sadly, four of those featured – reserve team manager George Armstrong and players Kevin Campbell, Alan Miller and David Rocastle – have since passed on. But when I look at this calendar, I’m six again and they’re all in their prime.
