From the depths of despair to that winning feeling

I TOOK my kids to their first Toon game on Saturday. It had been a long time coming.

Years of Ashley’s neglect prompted a sort of family boycott – we would not set foot on the occupied Toon territory until the Cockney carbuncle had packed up his vulgar signs that hawked his tawdry tack and tat, and returned to his lair in the smoke.

I always imagined his HQ to be a cross between the 1920s London warehouse den of the character Tom Hardy plays in Peaky Blinders, Del Boy’s Peckham lock-up, stuffed full of knocked off tracksuits and the interior of a volcano so beloved of Bond villains.

Yes – it was beautifully crazy. Something approaching 90,000 fans over two days for a pair of preseason friendlies. The number of youngsters there, for what was clearly their first visit to St James’, was uplifting.

I took me 84-year-old dad along too, and he confessed he didn’t think he’d ever get to a match again after the madness of the past few years. A few of us felt the same.

I remember the first match he took me to in 1969 – it was the year we won the old Fairs Cup. I vaguely remember watching Wynn ‘the leap’ Davies, although Supermac was the bloke my generation all pretended to be when kicking a ball round the yard.

Indeed, you can generally tell a fan’s age by who their childhood Toon striker idol was.

It’s a bit like your preferred Dr Who marking which decade you hid behind the settee and watched horrified through your fingers .

I feel sorriest for the kids in the late 70s/early 80s wilderness years the most.

They probably watched the match through their fingers with more fear and terror than the cybermen or the Daleks ever evoked!

This has obviously changed – but is all change good?

We have gone from skip-divers to lottery-winning high-rollers in a matter of months, which will have the psychological impact of such whiplash-fast changes in fortune .

I tell my lads that they are of a gilded generation of Toon supporters and warn them of the bittersweet fate of folk who’ve found sudden riches. To them the Ashley years will be but a distant smudge on a day-glo Technicolor horizon – the cautionary tales of

Viv ‘spend, spend, spend’ Nicholson or

‘lotto lout’ Mikey Carroll will be trotted out by those of us who’ve suffered.

Aye, older fans like myself will sound like miserable old grandads recalling sweet rationing, getting the cane and when the telly only had two channels that stopped at half 10. In decades to come, when we are signing world-class galacticos, there will be a perverse badge of pride in remembering the time we wouldn’t stump up a million pound loan fee for a Leicester reject striker!

I can see my lad’s generation sounding like City fans in a decade or so’s time, it’s already starting now with people pulling faces at prospective signings we’d have only heard mentioned by Bruce or Ashley if they’d been swapping Match Attack cards.

Never mind. It’s something we only dreamed about this time last year – and who knows who the bairns will be pretending to be in five or 10 years time? In terms of the good Doctors – let’s hope it’s a John Pertwee rather than a Sylvester McCoy!

We have gone from skip-divers to lottery-winning high-rollers in a matter of months Mike Milligan