'The minute I left school, I got a season ticket'

Of course, the only people who have longer relationships with a football club are its supporters. That connection often stretches from cradle to grave, and the Manchester United ‘thread’ within certain families and communities goes back to even the Newton Heath days.

 

Danny Moore, of our Middleton supporters' branch, is just 33. But that connection with the past is something he already feels intimately, due to the fans he has got to know during years of match-going.

“I’m sat on the bus with people in their fifties and sixties,” he tells our matchday programme, United Review. 

 

“I like the fact I’m sat there and one of my good mates is 30 years older than me, but we go everywhere together. Then I’ve got a lad next to me who’s 10 years younger, but we go everywhere.

“Age doesn’t matter. Everyone’s got the same objective: you’re out for United. You might be on the way home, you might have lost, but then the stories and old songs come out. It makes it feel like a family.”

Moore hails from Paul Scholes country. North Manchester. He first started going to Old Trafford thanks to his PE teacher at Cardinal Langley (where Scholesy was also a pupil) who had regular access to tickets.

 

“I remember kicking off because I’d go to every single game, and then he got five tickets for Liverpool and the whole school wanted one,” he laughs. “He said: ‘We’re going to have to do a name-in-the-hat job...’ I was going mad! Luckily, my name was first out... I think that was on purpose, because he knew I’d done every single one, like Burton Albion at home...

 

“The minute I got a job, when I left school at 16, I got a season ticket. That was my main thing, because obviously Mum and Dad couldn’t afford to do that when I was a kid. That was it then; I’ve not stopped going since. It was a good year to get the bug, because that ’06/07 season was when we got the league back. That ‘Mourinho, are you listening?’ song was going around.”

‘The bug’ quickly became what Danny describes as “a way of life”. He started going to aways too, first on Baldy Bob’s coach from Failsworth, and then on the well-known Mostonian, which runs to this day. At 18 or 19, Euro aways were lively, to put it diplomatically. Some stories will forever remain unprintable.

 

“Bucharest was one of the better ones,” he reminisces. “It was so cheap, so welcoming... I remember me and my mate walking round a corner – he had a conifer in a plant pot and I’ve got a bottle of JD. These armed police stop us, take my bottle of JD, and then all take a swig and give it us back!

“Then we go to a bar... they wouldn’t let us in with the conifer, but were fine with the JD. When we left four hours later, the staff were chasing us up the street. ‘What have we done?’ we asked, and they were just shouting: ‘You forgot your conifer!’”

But since taking over the Middleton branch, Moore believes he has mellowed. 

 

“They’ve had the supporters’ club since ’92,” he explains. “But when my mate, Kallum, took over the pub where it runs from, The Crown Inn, I took over the secretary bit.”

 

Every matchday, a coach runs 40 or 50 to Old Trafford, and the branch has raised over £5,000 for local charities during recent years. Last year, 10 of the lads walked up Snowdon and raised £10,000 for boxing clubs.

“When all the gas and electric went through the roof, I thought: right, we need to help the boxing clubs, because they don’t get anything. They couldn’t thank us enough. It’s not just about going to the match and boozing.”

Moore is still as dedicated as ever, but the perspective has shifted a bit. 

 

“You become one of the older lads,” he reflects. “My friends group now, I probably only went to school with two of them. The rest are all people I’ve met at United. I’m godfather to one of my mate’s sons. He’s from Timperley; I only ever met him through United. Now we’ve been best mates for 10 years.

 

“You go to United for the social club, mainly. Obviously, you love United and everything, but really it’s the people you meet.”