He doesn't mean it of course because there have been so many funny and joyous moments being an Owl but there have been a whole host of other emotions as well amid the agony and the ecstasy – fear, frustration, anger and bewilderment.

His book, I Hate Football, follows the exploits of a group of mates who have travelled home and away together since the Seventies, involving punch-ups, pranks and bizarre incidents, as well as what's been happening on the field, from Scunthorpe's Old Showground to Spora Luxembourg, taking in Wembley and the Millennium Stadium.

John Firth is 47 and now lives in Wakefield, although he is Sheffield through and through. "I grew up in Gleadless surrounded by Unitedites but our street and the local pub, the New Inn, was a little pocket of Wednesday supporters," he recalls.

He was a sales manager in the cardboard packaging industry and a high flier, not just in his career, as he had a pilot's licence and part-owned a small aircraft.

But he took the decision to step off the corporate ladder when his son Luke, now aged seven, was diagnosed with autism. "My wife and I had a long talk about what to do. It was easier for me to pack in my career and give the care and support Luke needed."

Not that he is the kind of guy to settle into full-time house husbandry. He retrained as a plumber and now runs a successful business installing bathrooms – also managing to find time to write the book.

"Most of it I did from memory," he explains. "There were so many occasions when having a pre-match drink we'd remember funny stories and someone would say, 'We should have written it down'.

"We'd been saying that for years but there came that moment when Luke went to school for a few hours in the morning and I got down to it. Once I started I couldn't stop.

"I referred to old programmes and scrapbooks and things like that and then there's the internet, of course. I never intended to be a writer
but I found I loved it.

"I didn't write it for public consumption but when I started reading it through and found myself laughing, I thought I would show it to a couple of people to see what they thought. The response was that I had got to try and get it published and it snowballed from there."

Unlike most dads, John sadly won't be able to introduce Luke to his passion, at least for a while. "Half the problem is other people's views. Because he looks normal on the outside they don't realise he is different and think he is just a badly-behaved boy," he says.

In any case, although he still has a season ticket for the North Stand and goes to most home games, he admits: "We've got a bit too old for what we used to get up to."

I Hate Football – Memoir of a Football Fan by John Firth (Peakpublish £12.99) is available at local bookshops including The Star Shop on York Street.

John will be doing a book signing at Waterstone's in Orchard Square on Saturday between noon and 2pm and then talking about the book at an event at Hillsborough Library on Wednesday evening.

Next month he will be participating in the Countrybookshop festival at Hassop near Bakewell.


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