Bristol Rovers home, Easter Monday 13th April

Won 2 - 1

I missed the build up to the first goal because I was reading the words on the flags the Rovers fans had brought with them (like "we all hate city"). I suddenly realised that everyone was getting excited and looked back just in time to see Gerba score. Apparently he'd just robbed a defender and done it all himself. Actually this is not an uncommon experience for me. I usually need my sons to tell me what has happened in the run-up when there's been a goal or some other event.

Reading the flags had set me remembering what I think was the first competitive top-flight football match I went to see, back in 1977 or sometime around then. It was in Bristol and involved Everton. From memory I'd thought it was against Rovers, but Rovers weren't in the top division, so it must have been City. Prior to that, the only professional match I'd seen was a friendly between Liverpool and Hertha BSC (as they were described in those days) in the Berlin Olympic Stadium. My main memory of that match was the pickled-gerkin sellers who extracted the gerkins from a bucket using wooden tongs.