Paul Bew, lecturer I politics, Queens University, Belfast
I started going to matches when I started going out with my wife. She was born in the Old Trafford area of Manchester and comes from a United family; her father started following United in 1936. Greta, who is a professor of history at the University of Ulster, remembers listening to European Cup matches on Spanish radio in the late 1960s because in those days they weren't covered by the BBC. Our son, John, is also a strong United supporter. Every Saturday afternoon we listen to the radio, or watch on TV, and weekends are organised around United games - it's regarded as a major social crime in this house if anybody has arranged anything which cuts across the match. There's quite a lot of tension invested in results here, although I have just about reached a stage of adulthood where I've worked out that there's more to life than football, so after a defeat I'll recover reasonably quickly.
The worst thing about being a United fan is the now often-expressed notion that you're only a glory hunter - that if you're a United supporter you've not been through pain. As a couple we had been following that team for 20 years before we saw them win anything at all. The relegation season of 1974-75 was particularly bad. I remember one awful cold Monday night at the old Millwall ground - a most inhospitable occasion - and all through the years we were living in London, I think I must have seen about 20 games but I never actually saw them score a goal. There was a five-nil defeat at Crystal Palace - I mean, can you imagine being beaten five-nil at Crystal Palace? - and three-nils at Arsenal were a totally regular occurrence. So you can see that I'm enraged by the idea that I'm not entitled to my moment in the sun now . . .