Do you remember the first time you fell in love? I don’t remember the exact date, but I remember the score..

Crusaders 4, Portadown 3 in the Northern Irish League Cup. My team, Crusaders, had been down 3-1 at half-time away to Portadown, the dreary town I grew up in. There was something intoxicating about the ferocious, defiant comeback that night in the cold winter air as I fell in love with a semi-professional team from a small, working-class part of Belfast that I had only visited but never lived in, never really belonged to.

• Tags: football, Issue 26, Peter Cowan, Vietnam