I’m a big one for anniversaries. I always celebrate the year markers for personal and family events, and engage with commemoration for important events and for famous people I admire. And today, 17 April 2026, marks a special anniversary for me: it’s the 50th anniversary of the first time I went to watch Brentford FC at Griffin Park. That game – a 5-1 win over Exeter City in the Fourth Division of the Football League (League Two in new money) – hooked me, and I immediately became a supporter of the club. I was 11 then, I’m 61 now, and I’m still hooked.
Why Brentford? That’s probably a less-often asked question now that the team has consolidated itself in the Premier League, but in the Fourth Division days of the 1970s it was often asked, often with a knowing smirk. My family home was in the west London suburb of Chiswick, roughly equidistant between Brentford and Queens Park Rangers (QPR), and not much further from Fulham and Chelsea. I had been interested in football from a very young age – my first sporting memory is of the England v West Germany World Cup quarter final in Mexico in 1970, which watched on TV with my two older brothers, Richard and David. But I hadn’t felt a strong sense of support for any team, bar a brief flirtation with Tottenham in line with some other kids at school. My parents were not football supporters, and my grandfathers had both come from east London and supported West Ham and Millwall respectively, and that all seemed a bit far away. Richard supported Chelsea, and started going to matches as soon as he could, while David balanced enthusiasm for Everton, QPR, and Brentford – as these clubs were never in the same division back then, I guess it worked. Our uncle took us all to some QPR games: the first professional game I saw was a QPR win over Portsmouth at Loftus Road. I certainly enjoyed them in that era of Stan Bowles, Gerry Francis and the rest, but I never developed a sense of support or belonging. That didn’t come until that day in April 1976 when I watched, as one of a crowd of 4,175, Brentford put five past Exeter, the scorers Paul Bence, Andy McCulloch, Roger Cross, and Mickey French with a brace.
It’s hard to write about this match without going all Nick Hornby, but his Fever Pitch has been so influential on anyone writing autobiographically about fandom that we just have to accept that and thank him for opening the door. What was it about that match that drew me in, where bigger crowds and better quality football four miles up the road and two divisions up the League at QPR had failed? I couldn’t have told you any of this at the time, but on reflection I think a few factors came into play.
One was the small crowd in the big ground – I still don’t really think of it as a stadium, which feels too grand a word. Griffin Park in 1976 was still pretty much as it had been in the 1930s, when Brentford had been a First Division club with crowds regularly in the high twenty thousands, and sometimes in the thirty thousands. The 4,175 of us there for the Exeter match positively rattled around, especially on the vast covered Royal Oak terrace. It was normal for some fans to change ends at half-time, and David inducted me into the ritual of walking the length of the ground at the back of the New Road terrace so we were always behind the goal that Brentford were attacking. Any songs and chants echoed around these empty spaces. The ground was very run-down and it felt, to 11-year old me, old and a bit unloved. I didn’t know the phrase ‘trash aesthetic’ at the time, but when I learnt it years later – probably from reading Martin Amis – it all made sense.
Then there was the independence. I’d only been to football with adult supervision before, and being there just with my brother was a big moment. We didn’t misbehave in any way – that came later at away matches! – but there was certainly for me a sense that here was something we could do without our parents or our uncle watching over us.
And then there was the underdog factor, which had appealed to me since Sunderland beat Leeds to win the 1973 FA Cup. I’d learnt at our Baptist Sunday School about David (not by brother, the other one) beating Goliath, and I loved applying this in everyday life, always trying to champion those least likely. This probably also linked to my own very limited footballing skill – I was never the last to be picked for the team at school, but I was usually in the bottom half. At a time when many kids at my school were supporting the successful glamour teams far from our London home – Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester United – along with the hugely successful local QPR side of that period, I loved being contrary and backing these Fourth Division apparent no-hopers. My first match that day was Brentford’s last home game of the season, and they finished 18th out of 24 in the Fourth Division, or 87th out of 92 in the League. QPR, meanwhile, finished that season second to Liverpool in the First Division. It felt good to be the odd-kid out amongst all that nearby glory.
How things have changed over my fifty years of supporting Brentford. They spent most of those years in the third and fourth tiers, excepting a brief foray into the second tier in 1992-93. Then things started to change, with a new ownership model bringing in planning and sustainability which bred success as they won promotion from the fourth tier in 2008-09, then the third tier in 2013-14, and finally made it to the Premier League in 2020-21. As I write, ahead of tomorrow’s home derby against Fulham, they stand seventh, with a real chance of European qualification this season. Griffin Park was altered a lot after my first games, and they finally moved from there to the shiny new Brentford Community Stadium in 2020. The trash aesthetic has been replaced by colourful seats and safe standing, excellent views from everywhere, and decent catering options instead of the doubtful pies and eye-watering Bovril of the Griffin Park days.
Things have changed for me, too. I no longer live in London, but I’m close enough for my season ticket to make sense and I get to as many games as I can. My two children have followed my lead, and it’s been a real pleasure to take them when they were young and now attend with them in their adulthood, and to meet old friends who are now there with their kids, too. Going back to Brentford is an important part of my engagement with my old home, and with my sense of being a Londoner even through I’m no longer there. I love that sense of continuity and community across the decades, and love knowing that it is now a generational legacy in our family. Our expectations may have changed – being one place below Chelsea and being in the division above QPR feels a mighty long way from the bottom six in the League in 1976 – but as we belt out ‘Hey Jude’ in the last moments before kick-off, I still feel a spark of what first drew me in as Bence, McCulloch, Cross, and French scored five on that sunny day, fifty years ago today. Happy anniversary!
With huge thanks to Jonathan Burchill, old school friend, lifelong Brentford fan and author of A Pub on Each Corner, who supplied me with the programme pictures in this piece, and whose book I used for the details of my first game. And thanks to David for taking me!
