[Alf]

Collecting Panini football stickers.

I started being a collector of these in the 1984-85 season, that was the season I became an Evertonian.

I remember getting Ian Rush and Kenny Dalglish in my first packet and thinking this was great because at the time they were probably the two biggest names in English football. I didn't realise at the time that you got those two regular and ended up having many swaps of them.

I still have thousands of stickers boxed up that I've never thrown away.

I probably stopped collecting in the early 90s.i know that because I have a sticker of a young Ryan Giggs.

I used to collect the World Cup and European championships ones too. I have stickers from World cups 86 and 90 and Euro 88.

I never filled a book. It was a con, you always had to send off for the ones you didn't have.

I have great knowledge of football players from those days because of this.

While football was always the game I played, In the early 90s I became a Rugby league fan and that took over for me as a spectator sport.

Over the years my love for football has got less and less as the money and fakery has come into it. To the point now that it barely interests me.