First published by Ace Magazine on-line. May 2014.

It was all about England having qualified for the World Cup for the first time since I had started following football with passion in 1976 that led me to watching nearly every match in the 1982 tournament with a grin and in equal measure, painful despair, etched all over my face.

I remember fragments of the World Cup in Argentina, however by and large the 1978 World Cup was something that by-passed me in much the same way as every other lad in my year at school developing a love of cars and engines, I knew it existed, but I had other past-times to pre-occupy me.