A wonderful start: Thoughts of a 66-year-old first time season ticket holder

Well, Saturday 21st August 2021 finally arrived. Thousands of us had waited for this day and we all prepared in different ways. Making sure we had our Photo ID plus our Covid vaccination certificates at the ready and a well charged mobile for the season ticket access.

I must say the My Albion 2020 gift we were sent last year of the portable battery phone charger worked a treat. Reading the posts online before I set off to Brighton to watch the Watford game, I think some of us were very sceptical of how the club would cope and deal with all the extra checks required on entry.

The email that was sent out on Friday evening headed ‘Pre-Match News’ was excellent and the checklist it contained should have helped anyone who was not sure, fully understand their responsibilities. Get used to the new matchday procedure folks – I think it is here to stay for the foreseeable future!

Those working at the turnstiles were very helpful and also quite casual about the actual entry side of the process. However, what did worry me was the huge number of people who had a total disregard for others by not wearing a mask in the public concourses in the stadium and also in the men’s toilet areas. An area, of course, we do not want to dwell upon.

Access to the toilets in the East Stand was also a complete shambles. Men were all piling in on top of one another with no order or idea of how many blokes were let in at once. The process should be looked at to protect everyone’s health and well-being for future games.

The female toilets all looked very orderly and far more organised – from the outside anyway! That is my moan over and so onto the main point of this week’s column… what an afternoon!

Firstly, thank you to Mr Bloom for our flags to wave. An incredible atmosphere, truly one for the history books that we can all look back on and say I was there.

I saw some incredible football played, and once again the determination and the will to win and play great stuff showed through as it had at Burnley. There was a superb ‘squad spirit’ from the guys.

Like everything in this world, change is a part of our lives that we have to accept and with the advancement of technology these days, we have to be prepared to adapt.

Not many of us know that technology advances extremely quickly. Every calendar year of our lives for example sees technology advance four years in the same time period.

Maybe the fans of the future will have some sort of implant in their arm, showing they are allowed to enter the stadium and there will be no need then for phones then. However, probably not in my lifetime. Let us adapt and be ready for the changes and keep up with tech if we can, it will make our lives much easier as we grow older.

So, working out where my new seat was and what the view would be like was very much part of the early fun, even before the game started.

I had a great view of the pitch and the only real disappointment of the day was that the Albion’s sweetshops had sold out of Wine Gums. I joked and said you have had 18 months to stock up, let us hope they are back in stock for next Saturday!

Being a Neil Diamond fan, it brought the voices into play especially from the North, when the tune rang out around the ground. The feelings of excitement grew, I glanced over to the wall in the North Stand and tried to cast my mind back 55 years and remember.

I felt just as excited at 66 years of age as I did when I was 11 years old at the Goldstone Ground standing by the concrete wall cheering on the team of the day.

The only difference was I was waving an Albion flag on Saturday and not a football rattle, as I did back all those years ago.

When the lads came out of the tunnel onto the pitch, I had goose bumps. It was so good to be back about to watch them play. It felt positive and my god what an amazing start with opportunities within the first thirty seconds.

To see Shane Duffy score as he did was tremendous for the crowd and also for him, I am sure! Once again, he and Yves Bissouma’s in my view should both have been men-of-the-match. Bissouma’s assist for Neal Maupay in particular was tremendous.

Some readers may well recall a previous goal scorer for the Albion back in the 1960s, Roy Jennings. When Duffy scored with his aerial presence against Watford, the days of gaols from Roy Jennings came flooding back!

I remember Roy Jennings as I went to Hangleton School with his son Richard Jennings. We both played in the school football team and won the school league, which earned us all a medal – the only football trophy I ever won!

Such a wonderful start for the first home game of the season. Roll on another treat of a home game against Everton.