football firsts
Darryl Duffy, former Swansea, Bristol Rovers and Cheltenham striker talks us through his football memories
First match? I would have been really young and I would have been taken to watch Rangers at Ibrox – 100 per cent. It’s really hard to remember, though, and I couldn’t tell you who they played or anything like that. I would have maybe been ten years old. The football obsession started at seven or eight years old and I got taken to my first game a few years after that. I was actually with Celtic Boys Club at 13 but then joined Rangers at 14. First hero? Ally McCoist. That’s an easy one. He’s a striker and similar to the way I tried to play myself: just getting in the box and scoring goals really, and not being involved too much of the build-up play. Not being seen for 90 minutes but scoring a goal or two. I moulded myself on him. I grew up as a Rangers fan. I wasn’t a die-hard or anything, but if I had to pick a team, it would be Rangers. First boots? I can remember them well. They were Adidas Predators. They’d just started coming out when I was younger and I can remember they were the very first ones, with the big rubber spikey bits on the top of them. I worshipped the bloody things – I looked after them better than I looked after myself, to be honest. First kit? It was actually a Southampton away strip. I think that was because the colours were the colours that my Boys Club, Williamsburgh, used. It had yellow and blue stripes. We played in a kit that had the four squares on the front, like Bristol Rovers, and I think my mum just thought that I’d love it because it was yellow and blue – and I did! It was nothing to do with the team or anything like that. It was purely down to the colours of the strip. First game? I remember playing on loan for Brechin City but, before that, I made my debut for Rangers against Forfar in the Scottish League Cup at Ibrox, which was great. That was in October 2003. First goal? It was in January 2004 for Brechin and I scored two against Inverness. We lost 4-2, but I can remember it because the Inverness goalkeeper was Mark Brown, who was also on loan from Rangers. So, we were teammates playing against each other – that was really good. First red card? I remember that because it wasn’t that long ago! My first red card was for Cheltenham Town in an FA Cup match against Luton at Kenilworth Road. It was two yellow cards in the space of three minutes. They were both for dangling my leg out. A guy’s gone past me and I’ve left my leg out. The first one was probably a booking, if I’m honest. The second one was a couple of minutes later and it was a similar sort of thing. I pulled out of the tackle this time, but the guy (Aaron O’Connor) has still gone down. It was very harsh, in my opinion.