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This wasn't my first trip to Manchester and it most certainly won't be my last. As a person who has followed Manchester United football club since I was a young child it has always been a great place to spend a weekend. The first trip that I made was about 8 years ago with my two oldest friends that involved a trip, a match, and a lot of alcohol. Good times.
This time was slightly different to the past few ones. It was a little bit more special. Before I grew up and started making these trips by myself, my father was always watching the matches by my side. My love for United came from watching the matches on my fathers lap while the likes of Keane, Scholes, Beckham lit up the premier league and then Europe.
Far removed from what we have now but they were unreal at the time. Dad had always said he would bring me to a match in the theater of dreams at some stage as I sat on the couch beside him. It was something that was always there through my childhood but never came to pass for various reasons and bad timing.
This year was my father's 60th birthday so as myself and my sister were trying to think of what we could do for the man who had given us so much, i though back to how he had always wanted to bring me to one of these games and said why don't I bring him instead?
We kept it a surprise until his birthday and gave him a lovely shock when we broke out the match and plane tickets as well as an official Manchester United club membership. He was delighted as he had thought that the time was long gone for us to head to England and get in that long awaited match.
Now in all honesty we didn't go directly to the match and had to sample some of the pre-game atmosphere before hand after travelling all the way from Ireland but were lucky enough to head into The Bishop's Blaze located just beside the ground which was full of people getting up for the game. From there we headed into the game which was v's Wolves in a European place battle.
We had some good seats, center of the stadium and not too far into the stands. A great view to watch the game from. Unfortunately the match ended in a 0-0 draw which wasn't great for either team of the spectators but at least it wasn't a loss. We didn't get up to too much after the game but had a few nice pints of Guinness and the post match analysis about where it all went wrong. Not a bad relationship to have with your father.
Day 3 of the trip was back to the stadium but in this case we did the full tour of the club. I had been to plenty matches before this but had never gone behind the scenes like this. It was a great experience and I would recommend to anybody with the time that the do the museum tour as well as a game. We had a great tour guide that had been there since the days of the busby babes and brought us into the dressing rooms, stands, pitch, tunnel and all the other main parts in the build up to a game.
It was a great three day trip and one we will have forever. We went into the city center a couple of times as well for food and a few souvenirs but at the end of the day it was all about the match and the stadium. I know that I will be back again but this was a once in a life time trip for my dad who was so delighted that we finally made it over to a game that it will be one of the good memories that we share. I have always been close to him so it was brilliant that we got to do something so special together.
I will probably be at a Newcastle United game in the next few weeks but that is with the lads and will be a totally different trip. No photo's i'm guessing. Enjoy.
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