Last week’s matches were Hayes 2 Tooting 1 (FA Trophy replay), Gosport 3 BAT 3 (Wessex League) and QPR 4 Enfield Town 1 (FA Women’s Cup). Two other matches I would’ve gone to were postponed in mysterious circumstances.

I got my dream job at The FA as a teenager in September 1970, a few weeks after that brilliant World Cup in Mexico. This is how it came about.

I wrote a brief letter to FA Secretary Denis Follows, asking if there were any vacancies for a young football fan who had just passed his A-levels. When we met, it was for a chat rather than an interview, because there actually weren’t any vacancies at that time.

Mr Follows was quite schoolmasterly but we got on very well and found that we had one strange thing in common. We had both spent the night at Frankfurt railway station after watching a football match!

To my surprise I was working for The FA within a week. Another lad of my age, who was an assistant in the International Department, had decided to go back to college and Mr Follows thought I would be an appropriate replacement. Two of my A-levels had been languages (French and German) and that had probably helped my case.

When I began at The FA, the organisation had started to move from No.22 to No.16 in Lancaster Gate, a quiet street in west London where most of the buildings were smart hotels. It was a process that took several months and my first "office" was a partitioned area on the right side of the Council Chamber at No.22.

My colleagues in the International Department, who all sat within a few feet of me, were Alan Odell, his secretary Margaret Bruce…and the legendary Sir Alf Ramsey. In fact, more or less the whole staff of The FA was packed into that Council Chamber. All except those who had already made the move to the basement area at No.16.

I remember No.22 as being like a big old hotel with several floors and wide staircases with hefty banisters. It seemed to be full of people and it was at least a couple of weeks before I discovered that most of them worked for The Association of British Launderers and Cleaners, the organisation that was moving in the opposite direction from No.16 to No.22!

There was a narrow hallway from the street entrance at No.22 to a small reception desk manned by an elderly chap in a commissionaire’s uniform called "Sergeant Payne". The sort of people he would greet and direct upstairs were FA Council Members, County FA representatives or Club officials delivering player contracts and the like.

I would never have expected to see a journalist or a member of the public. The FA’s telephone number was actually ex-directory in those days. Our Customer Relations Department, which now deals with hundreds of calls every day, will confirm that this is no longer the case!

So who worked for The FA in 1970? Well, we only had about 30 staff altogether. There were departments for Accounts, Administration (Council Meetings etc), Coaching, Competitions/Referees, Discipline, International Teams, Publications and Registrations. Broadly speaking each had a head of department, one or two assistants and a secretary.

There were no departments for marketing, press, customer relations, international strategy, facilities or personnel. And we would certainly have never heard of "IT". We all used rickety old typewriters then and kept our information in dusty old files.

The heads of department tended to be very experienced and worldly-wise middle-aged men. The assistants, of which I was one, were keen football fans who would kick a small ball around the corridors during office hours. (We would often get into trouble for that.) How many female staff worked for The FA? About six, I think!

It was all very different then…