Pompey memories revisited

Farmery picked out his Pompey debut as fan in the 1970-71 season, his maiden FA Cup game a couple of months later and the visit of AC Milan in 2008.

He said: ‘I’m slightly too young to remember the 1960s, but my first recollection of Fratton Park is as a seven-year-old attending my first match with my aunty Jen and uncle Roger.

‘It was a League Cup game with Walsall and I can still recall looking up at the floodlights in the north west corner, before sitting in the North Stand G Section.

‘I might have even fallen asleep, but the greenness of the grass against the artificial light remains clear in my mind. Pompey won the game 1-0.

‘A couple of months later I attended my first FA Cup game, against Sheffield United, standing in the south enclosure and clonking my uncle on the nose with the rattle I’d been given for Christmas.

‘That was also the day I learned you don’t get points for Cup matches, having told my uncle walking out down Frogmore Road that we’d picked up two more points after a 2-0 win.

‘My favourite Fratton Park memory, though, remains the AC Milan game in 2008.

‘I sat on the north side as I did in my first game and I remember looking up at the same floodlight pylon that night as I did 30-odd years before and thinking of my aunty, who sadly died in the 1990s.

‘What a night that was.

‘It just goes to show, despite the years, the thrill remains the same!’

For details of the Pompey memories day, click here.