Aberdeen was my home city and that is where my life-long love affair was first kindled.

The first game I ever attended is still vivid in my mind all these years on. My Dad and I were playing pitch and putt down by the beach. Aberdeen were playing Dundee United that day and we could hear the roar come from the stadium.

I was only five years old at the time. My Dad then decided to take me in for the last 20 minutes. I remember just walking into the stadium and everything seemed in multi-dimensions. I’d only ever seen football on a black and white television up to that point. All of a sudden it’s right in front of you, it was so vivid.

Going to Pittodrie became a regular ritual for me and was huge part of my life. I may be showing my age but you didn’t just go to the first-team games but you watched the reserves, too. That was my Saturday, if the first team were at home I’d go to Pittodrie, if not it was off to the reserves as a fledgling football fan.

My Saturday would begin with a paper round in the morning. That usually paid for my football! Then back home, lunch while watching Football Focus and On The Ball, then off to Pittodrie with my radio. That sequence would be repeated for years to come.

Eventually I progressed on to travelling to away games and then my interest wandered to other teams. I eventually spread my wings and jumped on buses to Brechin, Montrose and different Highland League grounds.

Broadcasting and football have always been a major part of my life and the radio was something I embraced at a young age. I’d always have it on at a game through an ear piece.

My hero was Drew Jarvie. He was a real old-fashioned footballer. If you think what players look like now, Drew was just a normal bloke and that endeared him to me. Let’s say he was follicly challenged, almost like Bobby Charlton, he was desperate to hold on to what he had.

But he was a very gifted footballer. Lacked a bit of pace, if he had that he would have been a Scotland player I’m sure. There was just something about him that embodied Aberdeen at the time.

As for me? Well like many kids I realised very early on that I was never going to be good enough to play at any level. I played while at school and in the playground, but I knew if I had anything to say for myself on a football front it was going to have to be in another capacity, and that’s what launched my interest in commentary.

I started making my own tapes when I was seven years of age during the 1974 World Cup. I Probably shouldn’t admit this but I used to commentate on matches in the school playground. That’s how I started and I still have my seven-year-old efforts in a box in Aberdeen somewhere.

It’s something I was always obsessed with and my Saturdays were always built around football one way or another. I’d then finish the day off watching Sportscene at night, Saturday was a full day and was the highlight to my week. It was football day.

In my role as a commentator, Saturday now can be a number of different things for me. Usually it’s a travel day for me as we normally have a game in Scotland on a Friday. Quite often I am on my way to Germany to cover a Bundesliga match for the league itself. Normally it means getting up at 4am in the morning to get to the airport.

But it’s still football, and it always has been.

The romance of this life-long love affair has never left me and I don’t think it ever will. No matter where I’ve covered football in the world, and I’ve been lucky enough to do it in Scotland, the USA, England and Germany, there is still something special about walking into a football ground. Especially for the first time.

I don’t care if it’s an 80,000 arena or a tiny ground that can only hold a couple of thousand, I am always magnetically attracted to a stadium. In fact, if I’m driving around Scotland in the summer and I pass one of the small grounds I stop, just to walk in and back out again having had a look.

The buzz is still there and it just intensifies on a match day or match night. It doesn’t matter where I am in the world, when I hear the roar of the crowd I’m immediately transformed into that five-year-old boy at Pittodrie, captivated by it all.