higher Some time in the mid sixties. Reading 0 Man City 7 FA Cup replay.I was about 7 or 8 and sat on the wall behind the town end wall at Elm Park thinking we were great and the other lot were just being annoying with all this tedious goal scoring malarky!
Its been pretty much uphill ever since ish.
If any statto has any dates,details and ideally pics from that game it would make an old git chuffeder than a chuffedy thing.
The date was 31st Jan 1968.You and I and a few others were in a crowd of 25,659 and I was near the front at the left end of the South Bank.
On the previous Saturday I went with 3 mates by special train (pre-hooligan days when special trains were put on for football fans) to Manchester and saw us get a 0-0 with Coleman missing a penalty for City in the second half.
In the build up to the return fixture we were confident (looking back I don't know why) that back home we could do the business-little did we know that this was a special City side in the making that were to go on and win the FA Cup,The 1st Division (now Premier League of course) and the European Cup-winners Cup.
We went to the ground straight from work to get there early and to get a decent view and it is the only game (other than on my brother's wedding day) that I have ever worn a suit to a match.
Straight from the kick-off they were yards faster than us and hit the bar (possibly twice) early on before steamrolling us-they just couldn't have been up for that first game.
I think they may have worn their change strip like Milan's but I couldn't be sure.
Colin Bell and Doyle controlled the midfield and up front Summerbee and Lee switched between central striking and playing out wide to create havoc and poor old Dick Spiers and Ron Bayliss didn't know what hit them.
IMHO this was the best performance I have ever seen from a side against Reading,better than Arsenal's 4-0 a couple of years ago and few of us there would surely believe that one day nearly 40 years later we would go to City's sparkling new stadium and deservedly beat them not in an FA Cup fixture but for a League game.
Higher, today you could say that for your first fixture at Elm Park you saw a side that would one day be from the richest club in the world.