PETER CARNEY
Football Activist
www.soccerinthecity.co.uk

The first banner I ever made, I was 14 and I went to the semi-final against Leicester at Old Trafford.  The day Red Rum won the National. And they finished nil-nil, and they played a replay on the Wednesday at Aston Villa, but I never went. We sat out the back of our house and had this bed sheet, and I painted a banner, the letters LFC in straight lines, right.  The C was a square with one side missing, honest to god. That's the way it was.  The L was another square with two sides missing.

(laughs)

It's what you do, innit? And the F was a square with two sides missing and one of the sides put in the middle.

(laughs)

That's true, that. Honest to god. I painted it once and got two banners out of it. One on the cloth and one on the pavement below it.

(laughs)

Honestly. Didn't put no paper under or nothing like that. Pulled the banner off the thing-- (laughs) It's true. The first banner I ever made, that, yeah. And then I made another one for erm.. I took a Union Jack to Bruges '76 but it was massive.

Took it to Wolves. Took it to Wolves. It got us in at Wolves. Played Wolves '76, it was chocka. And there was a school behind, in an alleyway between the school and the wall, they wouldn't let no one in the ground.  I didn't see it, but they ended up with the gates, they buckled the hinge on the gates, honest to god. Dirty, great big fifteen foot gates, I'm telling you, they buckled the hinge with the pressure that they put on the gates, honest to god. They couldn't knock it down cos it's that strong, but the bottom hinge buckled and all kinds got in. That wasn't my game. We were round the back and we had this great big Union Jack and one of the lads in the grounds