Steve Bone

As we're going off at Arsenal tangents, the first game I ever went to at Frampton Park, Pompey against Arsenal.

What was the score?

Pre-season friendly.

well ask me, there's a tale there when you ask me the score which I've recounted in my column in this Sunday's programme because it was the first time I'd ever been to Fratton Park I'd only ever been to Gosport Borough down the local Privet Park before so my dad and my sister regulars at Fratton Park by then tempted me along because we were playing Arsenal and I had a bit of an interest in Arsenal I'd kind of started to follow their results a bit

And so it was a summer's day, August 1981.

Went along, all the great Arsenal team, Pat Jennings, David O'Leary.

O'Leary!

Brian Talbot, Frank Stapleton.

Stapleton!

Some great names.

I know more of that Arsenal team than I do of who's going to turn up on Sunday.

Was it the Radford-Kennedy era?

No, it was a bit after that, so it was...

I can't be sure if these both played on that day, but their regular two up front at that time were Frank Stapleton and Alan Sunderland.

Oh, Alan Sunderland.

Which is not a bad duo, is it?

1-0 to Arsenal, unfortunately.

And I forget now who scored the goal, but for years afterwards...

I was convinced it had finished 1-1.

And it was only about 20 years later I was saying, oh yeah, my first game was a draw, a pre-season friendly draw between Pompey and Arsenal.