Premier League football today is fast, exciting, skilful and exhilarating to watch. In fact, it bears almost no resemblance to the football I started watching in the late 1960’s. Why is it then that I seem to think that I preferred the old style football to that of today? Is it because my memory is playing tricks? Is it because the old football was better? Is it because I felt so much more a part of it then than I do now? I believe it is a mixture of those three things and I hope I can explain why.

My local team was Watford and I started going to the games in 1968 with my older brother. My dad had used to go, but he had got ‘fed up with modern football’. So as you see, nothing much changes from generation to generation. After five minutes at my first game I fell in love with watching live football, and with Watford Football Club in particular.

In those days Watford were in the old Third Division, although they were promoted to Division Two in my first season of going. In modern parlance they got promoted from league one to the championship. What exactly was wrong with having four divisions all numbered consecutively?

The crowds were small and there was plenty of space to stand on the terraces. Even then I had to take a small box to stand on in case someone big got in my way. I loved it. The atmosphere was electric and the games were full bloodied and colourful.

This is where the first of my suggestions comes into play. My memory is definitely playing tricks. The atmosphere, I would suggest, was probably a very long way from being electric. The terraces were crumbling and dangerous, the refreshment facilities were non existent, and the toilets...well the less said about the toilets the better! I seem to remember going to one game with a female and they found that there weren’t actually any ladies toilets in the ground!

The matches themselves were played in good spirit with both teams going at it trying to win the game. The great players I can remember at Watford, Stewart Scullion, Keith Eddy, Johnny Williams, and Duncan Welbourne. This is where the second of my suggestions is relevant. Was the football actually better than it is today? The answer is that of course it wasn’t. It was slower and less skilful. In many ways however, that is why I think I preferred it. It was real football. The players were doing what you believed you could do in the local park. They passed the ball, tackled, dribbled and shot. They played the same game that I did with my mates. The football that’s played in the Premier League tod

ay is totally different to anything mere mortals can try to achieve. They do things with the ball that look to be a physical impossibility to any normal fan.

I was a member of the junior Hornets supporters club, and that meant I got to meet the players a few times. They were ordinary blokes, and although they were my heroes, they were just like my dad, and the bloke who lived next door. I felt so much a part of the club. I could walk around the ground to say well done to the players when they left the field. They always acknowledged the fans, especially the kids. That is my third suggestion. How can kids today feel part of any club in the Premier League? With exorbitant prices meaning that it is difficult to even get to the games, to having to sit in a seat for the whole game, security measures meaning you can’t get near the players, and the knowledge that the players earn as much in a week as it would take your dad to earn in six years, how is it possible to feel like you belong?

In the late 1960s the country was still basking in the glory of the world cup win in 1966. English football was the best in the world and the football at Watford was almost certainly the best in England! I thought so anyway.

The whole experience of going to games back then was wonderful. Standing in the pouring rain, although my memory tells me it was always sunny, can’t have been much fun, but I know that I loved it. The noise, the sights, the smells, the banter in the crowd, and the excitement of the game all added up to an experience that I treasured then and treasure to this day.

Soon after I started attending games, football took a massive down turn. Crowd violence took over and led to many of the changes I have discussed here. I don’t think the on set of crowd violence was directly related to the fact that I was going to games!

I’m not knocking modern day football and I still enjoy the game, but I just don’t think it is the same as it was then. Sky Sports mean that you can see every goal from around the world, every day, if you want to. Back then, it was one or two games on Match of the Day, and one or two games on The Big Match. If you were lucky, there might be an international game on Sportsnight on a Wednesday evening. It all seemed so much more magical because you just couldn’t wait for Saturday to come.

I get my football fix now by going to watch my local team Salisbury City who play in the Blue Square Premier League. I can get in for a reasonable price, my young son gets in free, and I can stand up on the terraces. I can even get wet if I want to and stand in the open air. The football is good, but it is far more like real football than the Premier League stuff. In fact, it tends to take me back thirty-nine years.