Seeing Manchester United at Carrow Rd always reminds me of watching my first match in the middle of the front row of the old South Stand.

Recently relocated to the fine city for work in summer 1993 and keen to see the elite of the new Premier League as an unashamed ‘football tourist’, I invested in a season ticket.

The package included free cup game seats - even the most optimistic staffer of the marketing department can’t have imagined what a great deal that would turn out to be as the Canaries progressed to the third round of the UEFA cup taking Bayern Munich’s scalp along the way.

But City’s first game of that season was a 2-0 loss to Alex Ferguson’s Red Devils.

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And to start with, at that first game on Sunday, August 15, I was simply happy to see Ryan Giggs and Bryan Robson, even though they scored against my new home team. Yet within weeks I was fully fledged as a Yellow, with egg and cress shirt and regulation scarf and bobble hat - along with the equal measures of joy, and torment that come with being an emotionally invested supporter.

So, for the early rematch a few months later in the fourth round of the FA Cup. Far from viewing Eric Cantona as a star I, along with every other member of the Carrow Road faithful saw him for the pantomime villain he was.

First it was an aerial scissor kicking of Gossy, foreshadowing the Selhurst Park karate move he executed on a fan almost exactly a year later.

It still bemuses me that Paul Durkin didn’t see fit to dismiss the vertically collared Frenchman for dangerous play and so it was particularly galling when he scored in the second half, doubling United’s tally from an earlier strike by Roy Keane. Then he evoked maximum crowd antipathy moments later when he upended John Polston and stepped on his head and unbelievably still went unpunished.

Darren England was a little more attentive in refereeing the game last weekend but getting used to the favourtism afforded ‘big’ teams is something I’ve learned is part of life as an NCFC fan, though I still struggle to be philosophical about it. I fear I will always be haunted by the disallowed Cameron Jerome overhead kick and the nano-VAR-measurement that deemed Pukki’s Spur’s goal offside in December 2019.

What was quite evident on Saturday evening was that we have some outstanding ‘minnows’ in our little team. Players who are not remotely household names gave exceptional performances, Jacob Sorensen, Ozan Kabak, Dimitris Giannoulis among others were a delight to watch and it was a player of the match performance from David De Gea that denied them and us a draw.

And other than a well-taken penalty there was little shine to Cristiano Ronaldo; kept quiet by the defence. Back in April 2005, I remember it was his manager who kept him contained, literally, as along with Wayne Rooney and Ruud Van Nistelroy he was initially consigned to the dugout as a sub. But CR7 made little impact when he did appear and meanwhile Dean Ashton and then Leon McKenzie scored in a glorious victory.

What a day that was to be a Norwich City fan!