“Football is colour,” my Dad said. I know what he means.
For me, as far back as I can go with my off and on relationship with the game, I have these recorded moments in my memory, so many in sharp focus of the ballet in action, through a prism of rich colour.
The glorious gold of the 1970 model Brazil...the burnt orange swirl that Cruyff would brush through numerous defenders turned statues, and of course the glorious scarlet shirted Bobby sitting atop the world, and his mate's shoulders.
The colours in the depth of my memory are the Newport amber against the baize green of Rodney Parade, but not before a brief flight with the Bluebirds.
My first memory of football was my Dad taking me to Ninian Park, winding up through the rickety wooden stand to a point where the bright emerald green pitch rolled out in front of me.
I still see it. I was speechless. I was but a boy, finally seeing what men see, feeling something bigger than my small world. If I close my eyes I can see it brighter than it ever actually was. Cardiff City v Middlesbrough. 1971. Blue versus red. “Football is colour,” my Dad said.
My colour became Amber, for the County. Not the shiny nylon yellow or the crisp packet orange that some focus group in the world of marketing determines, that fills the club shop and half baked sport shop on the drab high street. Amber.
That's the colour of my County. Gifted to the Welsh industrial valleys by Wolverhampton steel makers, kitting all those who thundered across the rutted Rodney Parade long before I, even my Dad, discovered that football is colour.