Part 1

Here I am at eight in the morning hunched over my PC keyboard writing an article for a new United website. In a couple of hours I'll be leaving to go through to Edinburgh to watch my team – a twenty minute walk to the train station and two train journeys later I'll be at Tynecastle, suitably lubricated on the way of course!

So how did I become a United fan? Why do I spend a fortune every week when our team isn't even in the top half of the SPL? Well madness must come into it somewhere along the line and your average travelling fan certainly has a fair bit of that! One of the regulars on the Glasgow Arabs bus comes down from Fort William to meet us to go to the games – if that doesn't deserve a medal I don't know what does!

Keep your eye on the ball

Those who know me now will probably not realise that I am a relatively late convert to the football business. To be honest as a child my sporting skills were limited to say the least! Now I realise that there was a reason for that – a medical course on body language I attended a few years back involved us all in demonstrating to a colleague how to perform a simple task assuming no knowledge at all on the part of our partner in this exercise.

The guy I was teamed up with decided to show me how to hit a tennis ball with a tennis racket. No big deal you're all thinking, but when he shouted, “STOP!” in the middle of his demo all the eyes in the room (thankfully not a big one) turned in our direction. “What on earth are you doing with your eyes?” he exclaimed.

Well I didn't really understand what he was on about until he pointed out my eyes were following the racket in its backward swing. I still didn't get it and was totally lost at this point. “You should keep your eyes on the ball,” he explained, “You know where the racket is – it's in your hand!”

Penny drops

Well it was one of those amazing moments when many pennies drop all at the same time. You know the kind – when you realise that you didn't really come out of your mother's belly button – that sort of thing!

It had never occurred to me that my inability to perform even as well as badly at ball sports was because I never kept my eye on the ball! They were focussed on whatever part of anatomy or sports equipment was involved at the time whether it was hands, feet, racket, cricket bat (yes I went to a posh school) or hockey stick!

A bit late now of course but I have often wondered why successions of sports teachers had never noticed that the boy who was always in the last 3 to be picked for ANY team didn't watch the ball!

Back to the story

Well a bit of a diversion there but I've always wanted to write about that so there you go. If you're not asleep yet I'll continue. As a young boy I was never really interested in football – or any other sports I suppose. I was more into making model planes and board games – sad but true.

My first visit to Tannadice must have come when I was about 9 or 10 I think - so Jerry Kerr might even have still been the manager! A guy who worked with my father sold programmes in the main stand and had persuaded him that he really should take his sons to Tannadice on a Saturday! So despite my mother's trepidations (she being a long-standing Dundee fan) off we went – and was I bored!

Not being a sporting kid I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about – 22 men running about after a ball on a grass park being supervised by three men in black. And it was freezing! We always sat in the same place – right at the front left corner of the stand – just where the wind came in!

First away game

Anyway intermittent visits followed over the years, including my first visit to an away game at Fir Park (little did I realise I would end up living just up the road many years later!), which came in the middle of a family holiday to Peebles of all places. My younger brother, being the keener fan, persuaded my father that Motherwell really wasn't that far away and that we should go. So off we set, a reluctant Dad (his sense of direction not being what it should be) and his three excited kids (well 2 of us were teenagers by then), and what seemed like hours later we finally arrived in Motherwell.

This was what I had been missing! Being an away game the United fans were much more excited and there was a lot more singing – I think we even won the game though I don't remember for sure.

I was hooked!!

Alternate visits to Dens and Tannadice

By the time I was in sixth year at school I was going to Tannadice regularly with a fairly large group of friends – twenty at some games – and we all stood in the same place in the Shed – we even had our “own” crash barrier!

A group of the Weegie Arabs now sit in the Shed when it's open and it's amazing to think that we've ended up almost exactly where that barrier was!

At that time most of us didn't travel to as many away games as the youngsters of today do and so when United were away from home it was quite common for a group of us to meet up with the BNBs in the class (always a minority when I was at school!) and go to Dens!

To today's fans that may seem strange if not blasphemous but at the time it was quite a normal occurrence – those were the days before segregation and we regularly changed ends at half time! You could even get a transfer into the main stand for nothing if the Steward at the Arklay Street steps was in a good mood!

United success

Well University came next along with United's first trophy around the same time. I have to confess to missing both League Cup triumphs due to illness, but by the time it came to the 1982/3 season I was a Tannadice regular and managed to see every game in that historic season both home and away. The last game at Dens, when the police eventually allowed what must have been well in excess of the quoted 29,000 crowd in through the turnstiles, was of course the highlight of the campaign, but my two visits to Parkhead, the first a 2-0 defeat that had us abandoning all hope of league success and the second barely 10 days later saw a momentus 3-2 win which to me was the single most important game of that season. The free buses to Morton stand out in my memory also!

Being a medical student meant studies became ever more onerous but I still managed to fit in all the cup finals on the way! None of the European away games though – a fact that sits right up there at the top of the list of “things I would change if I could live my life again”!

1985 saw me qualify and at the same time move to Lanarkshire, where I have stayed ever since and this, coupled with junior doctor rotas, meant my attendances at Tannadice became ever less frequent. The arrival of Miss Wishae in 1988 saw domestic chores take over, and when we became a single parent family in 1991 I'm afraid that I entered a phase of very rare attendances indeed.

However things were to change – but that's part two of this long story!