Thornton Heath country Dreams Parke and Thornton Heath

My six decades as a football fan – and how the beautiful game has changed

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telegraph.co.uk

Crystal Palace in south London. According to family legend, he was there on the night it burned down in 1936. I have sometimes wondered if he was responsible for the faulty electrical circuit that likely caused its destruction.When I was born, we lived for a short while with my grandmother in her flat, less than a mile from where that extraordinary glass edifice had stood.

Even before I was old enough to know the history of that great building, even before I discovered football, the name was part of me, an evocation of something magical, other-worldly.

From my grandfather, to my father, to me, there was no other football team I could possibly follow.The football club was named after the building, of course; initially founded by workers there in 1861, playing in the Crystal Palace grounds.

The club in its present form was established in 1905, and in 1924 it moved to its current ground, Selhurst Park, two miles away near the unlovely south London neighbourhood of Thornton Heath – a place I would come to love.It’s the question all football fans ask each other: when was your first game?

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