Carshalton met Hampton in New Malden on Saturday and there were two Brent Cross Women's Sunday League fixtures to savour before QPR entertained Celtic in a prestige friendly at Loftus Road.

Carshalton Athletic’s opening pre-season match saw them take on Hampton & Richmond Borough, last season’s Isthmian Premier Champions, at the London School of Economics Sports Ground.

I hadn’t been there before and it turned out to be a short walk from Berrylands Station. There were two cricket matches going on when I arrived at 2.15.

The football was played on the far side of a massive ground and 80 or so fans ringed the pitch as they kicked-off.

The Robins had a good 15 minutes or so before the Conference South new boys clicked into gear. Their No.9 scored two opportunist goals inside three minutes and they won a very energetic friendly 2-1.

The Hampton contingent had included Head Coach Alan Devonshire, the former West Ham star capped eight times for England, and I believe I also saw Alan Simpson, the Club President famous for being half of the Galton and Simpson writing team responsible for comedy classics like "Steptoe and Son" and "Hancock’s Half Hour".

I went to a couple of Hampton matches in the ‘60s. One was an FA Amateur Cup tie against Wembley, which finished 1-1 and had three penalties – all missed by Hampton.

From memory one went wide, one hit the bar and one was saved by the ‘keeper diving to his left. The other was a Spartan League fixture against Wood Green, my last club match before the ’66 World Cup started.

The two women’s matches in Hendon on Sunday morning featured Hampstead v Katabella and Norfolk v KPMG. I also saw part of a men’s friendly involving "Inter-Sleeze" before heading back to Brent Cross tube.

An hour or so later I was inside Loftus Road with nearly 14,000 others to see a "Battle of the Hoops" between blue-and-white QPR and green-and-white Celtic. The Scottish Champions missed a ninth-minute penalty but won 5-1.

Both were celebrating the 40th anniversary of a memorable cup success.

Rangers won the first Football League Cup Final at Wembley as a Third Division side, edging home 3-2 against WBA after being two goals down, and Celtic’s "Lisbon Lions" beat Inter-Milan 2-1 to become the first British club to lift the European Cup.

Up to 13 matches for the season and 5,345 all told, "The Barber" is now off to Bournemouth for a few days.