I attended my first football match in November 1960, an FA Cup tie at Selhurst Park. By that time I had already seen a few live matches on black and white TV. I remember England internationals against Spain and Hungary, a classic European Cup Final that Real Madrid won 7-3 and of course The FA Cup Final between Wolves and Blackburn.

But the one that particularly stood out was the Amateur Cup Final, Hendon v Kingstonian, played at Wembley in April when I was still only eight years old. I think the whole match was shown live but it may just have been the second half. Either way it had a breathless ending that certainly got that little boy excited: Kingstonian looked to have The Cup in their grasp, leading 1-0 with three minutes to go, but Hendon equalised and then scored the winner almost immediately.

The K’s still had time to hit the post before the final whistle went. The commentator almost lost his voice.

I mention this because the scorer of Hendon’s equaliser, Laurie Topp, was one of the guests at Saturday’s commemorative match. He had also played in the 1955 Final, which Hendon lost 2-0 to Bishops. I smiled at this white-haired old chap with a stick and he smiled back. Thank you very much, Mr Topp. You helped to get me started on a long road that I hope will soon take me to my 5,000th match.

Fifty years on Hendon got their revenge, winning 3-0. The Amateur Cup trophy was on display and both teams were photographed with it. The crowd was slightly less than 100,000. (It was 140.)

Last week’s other games were Hanwell Town v Chelsea XI (1-7), Alba v Morley Fund Management (0-2), Burgess Hill Town v Yeovil Town (0-4) and TNT Magazine v Monsoon (0-2). So that’s 18 for this season and 4,910 all told. Thursday's game at Paddington Rec was played in such hot conditions, even at six in the evening, that you could probably have fried an egg on the pitch. The action started 21 minutes late, with Alba struggling to find enough players for a team. They kicked off with nine.

Inevitably, it was raining hard when I arrived for Monsoon’s London League Summer Plate semi-final yesterday. It wasn’t exactly "raining goals" but they did manage two in the first eight minutes of the second half to take them through to next Monday’s Final.

Real Madrid’s European Cup winning team in 1960 featured legends like Alfredo di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas. I once had a call from a lady living in Surrey who had decided to call her cat "Puskas" and wanted contact details for the great man to let him know.