I went to my first Manchester City match in 1971 aged 15. It is hard to explain to unbelievers, particularly in our drab, sanitised, po-faced age, how thrilling a football terrace was to a teenage boy.

It had everything: fierce tribal loyalty signified by visible emblems (scarves in those days, not shirts), it’s own anthems, histories and myths. There was chest beating and regular shots of adrenaline. Even the occasional violence was thrilling and, despite the pearl clutching, fairly harmless involving only those who wanted to be there and rarely anything worse than a black eye.

I cheerfully chanted “we are the IRA” at George Best, after he received death threats from them, along with various, highly imaginative, songs about the Munich Air Disaster. Allowing yourself to be appalling, sometimes, should be a recognised human right. It’s cathartic.

I could afford to fund my 120 mile round trips to the home games, entry, a programme, and a few pints, on a paper round.

I blame the prawn sandwich eaters across the road for starting to move the game from a genuine working class community bonding phenomenon, to a slick part of the entertainment industry.

I know what the game is now, and don’t particularly like it, but that hook is so deeply buried, like Giles, it would just not be possible to support a different team.

An anecdote for ladies who find this hard to understand. In around 2005 a dinner party host asked the table “without thinking about it what, instinctively, is your life’s greatest moment?” My wife and I answered, simultaneously and without conferring, “Dickov’s goal at Wembley” (an injury time equaliser in the 1999 League 1 play off final.)

Those moments when your tribe triumphs, in the most straightforward uncomplicated way, are like no other.

The problem with loyalty is a philosophical one. What exactly are you being loyal to? As the late, great, Brian Walden pointed out to the late, perhaps not so great, Roy Hattersley, what exactly is this Sheffield Wednesday that you so passionately support? If the players, manager, owners, kit, ground, all change, then what’s left? What if the owner changes the name?
Personally I support Norwich (yes, I know). But if they turned into something like, I dunno, Burnley (in its present incarnation) then I suspect my loyalty would slowly evaporate.

Blind loyalty is the root of all wars.

At least the author has the insight to recognise how his band of brothers is looked upon by others. Sad that he doesn’t have the capability to break the thread. It all sounds like a desperate attempt to identify with a mythologised and sentimentalised past. Ye olde Merrie Chelsea that never existed and never will.