or the day, half-way through the year, when the big team comes to town and you beat them – like my team, Barnsley, beat Chelsea last year – or the last few games towards the end of the season when it's sunny and warm again and you're battling to stay in the division or get promotion and your heart is in your mouth from the first whistle to the last, thus making it almost impossible to chew on your pie.

People who aren't football fans are wrong about all this, of course: the best time to be a football fan is now, in mid-July, when no balls have been kicked and no players have been sent off and no referees have made the kinds of decisions that make you put your head in your hands and go Aaaaargh!

Pre-season is just like the time when, as a kid, you walk gingerly downstairs on Christmas morning because you can't quite believe that Father Christmas has really been to your house; it's like the moment you buy a new pair of underpants that looked great in the shop and you haven't tried them on yet and you still believe that they might make you look more like David Beckham than David Bellamy; it's like the moment when you board the ferry and say to yourself, "Well, it's pretty calm in the harbour", even though you can hear the open sea pounding on the harbour wall and you can't help noticing that even the crew are looking nervous.

In other words, pre-season is a time to dream, a time to believe, a time to think that this will be our year and our hands are on the cup and the championship already. All we have to do is turn up.

You go to the drawer and check that the season ticket is still there. You look at the fixture list one more time. You make a date to ring your mate, Mick, to check that he's still okay to give you a lift.

You check through the woolly hats and scarves for the winter months that you know will come.

You check the newspapers and the internet for new signings and rumours of new signings. The rumours are the best, of course, and they're easily started if you're that way inclined.

Just sit in the barber's and mention casually that you saw Ronaldo walking round Barnsley the other day, looking in the windows of one or two estate agents, and before you know it, he's signed up on a four-year deal and he's posing for photographs in front of the East Stand holding a Barnsley scarf and saying that he always had a special spot for Barnsley in his heart.

The question is, and it's easy to ask now, because we're all in dream mode, why do we do it? Why do we place all this emotional and cultural weight on a group of blokes kicking a ball?

I can ask this because I haven't always been a football fan; my dad never took me because he wasn't interested, and the odd times I went as a lad I was taken by my cousin, Ronald, a Chesterfield supporter, who stood impassively until Chesterfield scored and who would then caper about like an uncle dancing at a wedding. An uncle that nobody would admit they knew.

Maybe my first experience of football put me off for a while; I was taken to the school field to watch two pub teams playing sometime in the early 1960s.

I can't remember why, but I do remember that whoever took me made sure I was standing right at the front of the jostling and shouting crowd. I stood there and I must have drifted off into a daydream because I recall vividly somebody shouting, "Watch it, kid!" and then it appeared that a planet the size of Neptune was falling from the heavens at great speed, getting bigger and bigger and faster and faster until I got smacked full in the face by an old-style casey football.

My face felt flat and on fire at the same time and I was taken home
and put on the settee. My dad said that I should have ducked, and I remember thinking that if that was what adults called wisdom, you could keep it.

It didn't put me off completely, though, and when the kids came along I took them to watch Barnsley and I've been a fan ever since, with all the pain and pleasure associated with watching a small-town team. So good luck to all fans of all the teams in the Yorkshire Post circulation area. This is going to be our year!

And wasn't that Wayne Rooney I saw yesterday in the queue at the tripe stall in Barnsley Market?