Sean Flaherty
ODT online editor
Manchester United
Fan since: 1974.
Favourite player: Bryan Robson.
Greatest moment: Winning first Premiership/any victory over Liverpool.
Been to Old Trafford?: Yes.
My father comes from Warrington, a large town between Liverpool and Manchester, so there wasn't much doubt about which clubs we would support.
My big brother went for Liverpool and my little brother followed his dad and chose Everton, leaving me with a choice between Manchester United, Manchester City and Wigan Athletic.
After carefully weighing all three, I hesitantly opted for the storied European Cup winner, home of Georgie Best, Bobby Charlton and the Busby Babes.
But sporting fate can be cruel.
In fact, for the first 15 years of my football-supporting life it felt like I'd been gypped.
My first memory of United is watching them lose the 1976 FA Cup final to second division Southampton.
Although they redeemed themselves the following year by beating Liverpool in the FA Cup final, perhaps my favourite-ever United line-up - Sammy McIlroy, Martin Buchan, Jimmy Greenhoff - they then lost the 1979 final to Arsenal.
The FA Cup was massive then and, to a 10-year-old, to lose it meant tears and a week of solid mourning.
If the FA Cup swung between torment and triumph, the league was a distant land never to be visited.
While Liverpool won title after relentless title, and Everton even won a couple in the mid-1980s, we never got close to breaking the Merseyside monopoly.
We bought midfield god Bryan Robson but we also bought utter rubbish.
Players like Mike Phelan.
I've always maintained that if I'd been driving and seen Mike Phelan, I'd have accelerated straight at him. (He never would have got away - his pace over the first five yards was abysmal).
The first time I watched United live we lost to Tottenham (Totthenham!) at White Hart Lane as a 23-year-old Paul Gascoigne destroyed us.
I can still picture him standing with one foot on the ball and talking to the crowd as he decided just how he would humiliate United left back Russell Beardsmore.
Soon after that I was at Stamford Bridge chanting for Alex Ferguson to be sacked as Chelsea beat us.
Old Redface rode his luck and started to turn things around but fate was still prepared to make me suffer, and I was lying in a cold flat in London listening to the radio as we were pipped to the title by Leeds on the final day of the 1991-92 season.
It was devastating.
I felt like I was 10 again.
Then the Premier League arrived and with it just the spur a big glamour club like United needed - pots of cash.
Since then United has won 10 titles and two European Cups and fulfilled its destiny as the world's greatest club.
Typically, it's been less planning than fortune, courtesy of the world's luckiest buy (Eric Cantona), luckiest crop of youngsters (Beckham, Giggs, Nevilles, Scholes etc) and luckiest double substitution (the 1999 Champions League final).
So now every kid in the world has Manchester United pyjamas and everyone thinks you started supporting them yesterday.
It kills me to have to start every conversation by trying to explain my pedigree.
But it's a hell of a lot better than not winning.
In the late 1980s every NZer rugby head you met in London supported Liverpool.
And there was only one reason - Liverpool was winning.
No matter what the cost - being owned by Americans, whoring our shirts all over the world, selling Old Trafford package tours to Norwegians to fund multizillion-dollar transfers - I'd never want to return to those dark days again.
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