Just missing out on my little gold badge...

Tomorrow won't be the first time I'll have missed the opening home game of Villa's season, but it'll certainly feel the strangest.


When the Holte End's favourite Scouser Steven Gerrard scored a suspect free-kick to give Liverpool a 2-1 win at Villa Park in 2007, I was on my way back from a two-week stay in Holland with my family.

Slightly more bizarrely, instead of watching Villa and Bolton ultimately decide their game within the first 10 minutes in 2005, I was at a circus in Edinburgh.

On both occasions I was so frustrated about having to miss them. I was a season ticket holder, I had a right to be there. But this August, for the first time in nine years, I don't have that right.

I am no longer a season ticket holder. And it still feels weird saying that aloud.

This season, and for the forseeable future, I won't be looking forward to a trip to Villa Park with my mum and my sister Kath for each coming home game. No more new replica shirts every season to wear every weekend. No more careful planning of lucky underwear, socks, jewellery, mascots, hats or scarves to wear or take with me on matchdays. No more pre-match playlist: Ready To Go, Beautiful Day, Tom Hark, Pigbag, Escape, Ghost Riders in the Sky, amongst others. No more pre- and post-match trips to my nan's house, car journeys with my uncle and cousins, waiting for late trains or riding the Pelsall to Villa bus service. No more getting up at the crack of dawn for Sunderland away or navigating our way through the tube system for a trip to Upton Park.

No more people, either. People who I've seen every week, had a good laugh with and who generally made my days as a season ticket holder so enjoyable. There's Rhona and her sons, who've sat nearby me since the beginning. Barry and his kids, the bloke behind us who, if I remember rightly, was once forced to choose between the Second City derby or the Milan derby. I can't recall what he decided on in the end. The man and his little boy who have sat next to me for the past few seasons, and the boy and his dad in front, the guy that had a small confrontation with Cristiano Ronaldo that time when he walked into the tunnel being a pratt. It's funny how you can sit with the same people every week and chat to them occasionally, they don't know your name and you don't know theirs, but it's perfectly acceptable and comfortable because you're all there for the same reasons - all part of the same community.

And how could I forget waiting by the tunnel after the final whistle, meeting up by the subs bench at half time or standing on the car park steps before the game with Kayleigh and Kath. I've lost count of how many times we embarrassed ourselves, yelling 'hello' at or pouncing on scared-looking footballers for a photo without a trace of dignity.

One of the many times I harassed Stan. True gent.

Those routines, those people were such a big part of my life. Maybe I'm being over-dramatic. Of course I'll get to do all these things and see all these people again. Of course I'll see my Villa again! But it just doesn't feel the same.

Even when I moved to Preston to go to university, I would travel down to every home game with the North West Villains, or roadtrip™ to away games with Andy (the less said about Watford, the better).

It was last season when I first started to prioritise my career - or rather, development of it - over watching the Villa. The first time I went to a Fleetwood Town game while Villa were playing at home was difficult. It felt so strange not being there when I could be. Not even Alex McLeish and his reign of terror made me want to stay away, although he did manage to succeed in making me a little less enthusiastic.

But I knew that my final year of my Sports Journalism degree required a little more attention. So naturally, just when our ginger friend was helping me find it easier to leave it all behind, Paul Lambert had to come along and make everything good and happy and positive again.

I'm glad things seem to have turned around though - obviously, what kind of Villa fan would I be if I wasn't? - and I'm also glad that on the rare occasions I'll get to see my boys in claret and blue, it won't be a generally unpleasant experience. Or so I hope!

We're on the pitch!!!

I have so many memories from my nine years, both on and off the pitch. My favourite was most certainly on the pitch, managing to bundle over the barrier and run, screaming, to join hundreds of other fans who had also made it onto the hallowed turf following our Carling Cup semi-final win over Blackburn Rovers. I also enjoyed meeting two cracking blokes at West Ham away in 2011, one who goes by the name of Thomas Hitzlsperger and just so happens to be my favourite ever footballer, and the other who claimed his cat supported Millwall.

Watching us beat the Blues 5-1, Cahill's scissor-kick against the same lot a few seasons earlier, Gabby's hat-trick against City, those wins against Chelsea, the (unsuccessful) trips to Wembley, seeing Ajax and CSKA Moscow, Martin Laursen and Olof Mellberg, Juan Pablo Angel and Mark Delaney; I could go on all day

Some of them aren't so pleasant, of course; losing to Bolton Wanderers in the cup, sitting under 90 minutes of falling snow to watch Fernando Torres score a last-minute winner for Liverpool, bloody Rapid Vienna, and that Stern John goal right in front of me. In a strange way I treasure some of the bad memories as much as the good; I am a Villa fan, after all.

So, if you're going to be one of several thousand fans who will welcome Lambert as he makes his debut as Villa manager at Villa Park, I envy you. I will be at the Pirelli Stadium hoping to see Fleetwood get their first win of the season. It's not that I don't want to be there; I do, very much so, and I can't wait to report on Town in their historical first season as a Football League side.

But I'll always be a Villain, and I'll always have a great fondness for that little blue seat in the Trinity Road lower, block C8, row 8, three away from the tunnel. If you're lucky enough to be occupying that seat this season, take care of it. Remember to bring some sort of paper towel to wipe it down when it rains before a matchday. And if it gets stuck as you lower it to sit, just give it a shove with your bum - the noise it makes might be a little concerning, but it's fine, trust me.

West Bromwich Albion, not Everton, will be the visitors for my first home game of 2012/13. See you all on September 30th.