I’m a true Manchester supporter.

That means I support any Manchester endeavour, unless it’s just plain stupid, or crazy.

As chance would have it Kay had won a pair of tickets to the Manchester City versus Portsmouth game for last Sunday.

She had thought about going herself with our eldest daughter. Luckily sense and a low boredom threshold kicked in and she decided that I might like them.

So I rang Rob Baker who’s a keen City fan and organised for us to go to the match.

Luckily my mother in law lives fairly close to the Stadium so we dropped Rob’s car off there (so it would be relatively secure) and walked off to watch the match.

The weather was fantastic, a lovely clear blue sky and just the right temperature.

The tickets were for B row right at the front but Rob and I decided we’d be better off standing at the back of the stadium as we’d get a better view of the whole ground. And obviously from there we had a fantastic view as City romped away with 6 goals to nil.

I wouldn’t say City had it all their own way but by the time they’d scored 4 they were looking as though they could score a few more. Which of course they did. The football became more open and flowing and they began to rush around the opposing team.

I wont go into a kick by kick description of the game, suffice to say that City’s new owners and new manager must be very pleased with their team.

Rob and I had been standing at the back for 3/4 of the game and then suddenly we were told that we were not to stand there anymore.

Which was strange as there were others standing there. We pointed out that our seats were right at the front and we’d disturb people going to them and in all probability someone was already sat there so we’d have an argument about who should be sitting there.

Obviously we’d eventually have won the argument but we might have missed a goal. Rather like I missed the third goal when I went to the toilet to avoid the need to go down to our seats! Still I saw the replay.

We stayed pretty much until the end when we were moved on from standing at the back again in a different part of the ground. Ah well.

I do like the stadium and I enjoyed the football. The only downside was being told to move on very late in the match. If we’d been told to go at the very beginning, or just before half-time I wouldn’t have had a problem with it. However, being told so late in the match interrupted our enjoyment and if we’d started trying to get to our “correct” seats we’d have disrupted a lot more people.

Anyway, a big thanks to Manchester City for providing the tickets as a prize and thanks to Manchester Leisure for making sure they arrived in time for the game.

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I left Manchester by train from Piccadilly station in the early morning yesterday.

I’d got the tram in from Bowker Vale (on the Bury line) and I’d seen thousands of Rangers supporters in Piccadilly Gardens, with at least one enormous screen, as I passed.

I arrived back at Piccadilly about 9pm to an enormous crowd of Rangers supporters milling around the station. It was great to see that despite losing the singing crowds behaved really well.

I made my way to the Metrolink station beneath the mainline station and noticed the tickets machines all had a label on saying out of order. Anyway, we all hung round waiting for the next tram.

Eventually a Metrolink loudspeaker message informed us we couldn’t use the tram from here. Instead we were told to get the tram from Victoria for Bury or G-Mex for Altrincham. Basically the tram system wasn’t operating over the Piccadilly Gardens no-go area.

Note to Metrolink: It would have been a lot more use if there’d been a notice so we didn’t even go down to the Metro station!

I was carrying a heavy but fragile box containing two wine glasses, a bottle of wine, home-made lemon curd, home-made mincemeat and a few other glass containers with goodies in. So I didn’t relish traipsing across to Victoria. Still it had to be done!

I went out into the warm night and set-off towards Piccadilly Gardens. The litter was amazing, there were bottles, broken bottles and mashed up newspaper, paper and other debris strewn all across the pavements. The bottle fragments crunched under foot as I walked through the vast hordes of Rangers fans to get a tram from Victoria.

I got to the Gardens and was turned away by a line of police with riot shields. They were being less than helpful to people who talked to them. That said, one or two fans were just being stupid and almost daring the police to have a go. As I turned to look back I noticed one Rangers fan who’d been next to me talking to the police get “tapped” on the head with a riot shield – I bet he’s got a headache this morning.

So I had to go the extremely long way round via Waternewton Street, past the old Post Office and then down past “The Band On The Wall” and the CIS building until I eventually walked into the urine drenched place we used to call Victoria station. The station was populated by another heaving, sweating army of Rangers supporters, who were quite noisy but well behaved. Once there I joined a queue of people buying Metrolink tickets who were all having the usual problem of not being able to pay with a note – despite using valid £5 notes, and having the Queen’s head uppermost and last and not being a new note. People kept trying note after note.

Note to Metrolink: Sort out the nightmare of the ticket machine – we should be able to use debit cards!

Finally I got me a ticket and got home. An hour and a half after arriving in Manchester – normally it takes me at the most 20 to 25 minutes.

And even thought the Rangers and Manchester United match was vitally important to both sets of fans the huge majority of fans behaved very well. As I wandered the streets I kept bumping into people with my heavy box and the fans were the first to apologise. Others made way for me and gave me space to stagger down to Victoria. Yet others kept me amused with comments to each other. All in all the majority of Rangers fans were a credit to football and their club.

And by the way, I saw Zenit St. Petersburg fans too and they were absolutely impeccably behaved.

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Creative portal How Do in association with event planners Out There are launching an awards ceremony to celebrate all things football in the region.

The awards dinner will be held on Monday 12th November at the Midland Hotel, Manchester, and will raise money for The New Children’s Hospital Appeal, a charity for which Phil and Julie Neville are patrons.

To find out more go to How Do, which has information about categories although it has missed out the Manchester City award for biggest cock up. But which signing would win?