My first game - 55 years ago, the memory still burns brightly
29.07.26, 17:44 Updated 04.08.26, 22:37 4 Minute Read
Mike Walters
You never forget your first game as a football fan.
The clackety-clack of the turnstile, the first sighting of the green savannah, celebrating your first goal and jumping so high out of your seat that you land in another postcode.
Somewhere in a box, I found the gold-and-black bar scarf I wore for the occasion - with the name tag my mum stitched in one corner still attached.
Reading at home in the FA Cup third round in 1971 was Watford’s first outing in the competition since their defeat by Chelsea in the semi-finals on a beach called White Hart Lane nine months earlier.
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Mike Walters spent 40 years on Fleet Street as a top sports writer and a regular in the Press box at Vicarage Road. His first game as a wide-eyed Watford fan was a 5-0 FA Cup win against Reading 55 years ago and, coupled with his national newspaper experience, few supporters are better-equipped to cover English football's original family club.