How did you get into football?

[redarmyfaction]

Born and reared to it, first game, in fact first memory of Sligo was the Showgrounds when I was 3 or 4, we lived in NW London then and I retain a residual interest in Watford from that period, when we moved to Sligo everybody I knew from our street and nearby streets went to the Showgies, we all had English teams too. My father was and is a fanatic since the 1940's when a number of Rovers players of the period lodged in my Grandmothers house. My father tells me when he moved to London in the 1950's that it was impossible to have a conversation with a fellow Irishman about football unless they came Belfast or Derry, though this changed in the late 60's when a number took an interest around the time of the 1966 world cup.

[stann]

I was a Liverpool fan from a very young age, and still am to a lesser extent (though I've only been to Anfield once and that was a surprise present). My earliest memory of football on TV was the '74 Cup final, so it must have been that that triggered it. Certainly I was an avid fan by the '77 Euro Cup.
I don't know whether to still be annoyed or not by the fact that my folks ran a pub which was often frequented by members of the '60s/'70s Blues side out from town, and from aged around 5 to 8, until they moved to the States, meself and the sister were great pals with Peter Bryan's son and daughter who lived just across the road, but not one of those so-call responsible adults thought to tell me anything about Waterford FC even existing!
I started off at LoI matches going to Turner's Cross in the late '80s, when I stayed weekends down in Cork, initially to watch Waterford when they were playing, but soon to any City game that was on. I didn't start going to Blues home games until shortly after that, when I'd started working, which coincided with the last couple of years of the Kilcohan era. A loose group of 4/5 friends used to go (I think I was roped in as the only one driving at the time), all of whom have now dropped away through emigration, marriage or what not.