Ian Williams
Retired
Leyton Orient
Fan since: I was 16 - and I'm now 70.
Favourite player: Phil White.
Greatest moment: Getting into the first division in 1962.
Been to Brisbane Road?: Yes.
I actually thought for a long time I was the only Leyton Orient fan in New Zealand.
Not many people support such a small club. Then one day I got talking to a guy in Wellington who worked in the same advertising agency as me.
He reckoned he was an Orient supporter, too. I'm also a bit of a Manchester United fan, because I grew up at the same time as the Busby Babes.
My Mum comes from Leyton. That's how I became an Orient fan. I used to live in Harrow, in northwest London. There was a team called Wealdstone that played in the Athenian league.
It was amateur but was really good football, at least equivalent to what was known as the third division in those days.
Anyway, Wealdstone had this great winger called Phil White who was sort of a Stanley Matthews type. I really liked to see him play. He signed for Orient and spent the rest of his career there.
Mum used to go over to Leyton to see relatives on a regular basis. I used to go with her.
Orient, at that time, in the late 1950s were a good side. They played some really good football.
And it was old-style stuff, with a tricky winger popping the ball into the centre, where they had a guy called Tommy Johnston, who was an old-style centre forward who could bang them in with his head or his foot.
I played a lot myself so I didn't go to watch Orient as often as I would have liked. Maybe I got to half the games.
I came to New Zealand in 1959 and I played in Wellington, mainly second-team or third-team stuff.
I played for Seatoun, then Diamond, and had a couple of really enjoyable years. I played my last game when I was 47.
Years ago, Orient used to be called Clapton Orient. They were in the first division for a while.
We're not doing particularly well this year.
We got promoted about three years ago and did well last year, but we're in the the bottom four this season.
Orient are only getting about 5000 people to games. Years ago, they'd get 20,000 to 25,000 for big games. Andrew Lloyd Webber is probably the most famous Orient supporter.
- As told to Hayden Meikle.
