"Football Focus" drabbles by Steve McBrevity

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One for Radford

Football Focus #2

I’ll not forget my first game at Highbury against Manchester City, settled by a John Radford goal at 1-0, jostling with thousands of red scarves on the underground with ‘Charlie’, interspersed with patches of light blue; quite a change for a country boy and girl.
Our Cypriot season ticket holder friends from Stoke Newington had great pitch side seats hemmed in by what seemed like half the London Greek community. The mood was effervescent Greek, the banter impenetrably Greek, punctuated by occasional English words thrown in such as "fucking ref", "bloody goalie" or shouts of "send the bugger off!"

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It’s Down to Charlie.

Football Focus #1

Coming from a non-footballing part of the country, rather like Norfolk, I had no interest in the game until I turned up in north London in the early 70’s. Invited by Greek season ticketholders to Highbury I was consumed by the mounting excitement of a prospective double - my young wife was nicknamed ‘Charlie’ at work as her maiden name was George. And so it was ultimately Charlie George’s legendary goal in the Cup Final against Liverpool that sealed my subsequent support of Arsenal. This set off a trail of events that have led colour to my life ever since...