NICK Hornby wrote in Fever Pitch about years of mediocrity culminating in a moment of miraculous triumph, when Michael Thomas prodded in the last-minute goal that gave Arsenal the league in 1989. My football life is the anti-Fever Pitch.

I became a Pittodrie regular in 1983, a year of remarkable achievements unlikely to be repeated by Aberdeen FC. Only a few years later started a long period of decline, at first steady, then precipitous. By 1999, specious stastics had been uncovered to show that Aberdeen were the worst team in Europe, only 16 years after defeating SV Hamburg in the Super Cup to become the continent's best side.

I shouldn't whinge, of course. Most fans will never see their team launch a spectacular comeback against Bayern Munich or outplay Real Madrid in a European final. I should cherish those memories, I hear you say. But there's a problem: our family moved to Aberdeen in November 1983, and it was only then that my interest in the local football team was sparked. Until then I'd lived in rural Aberdeenshire and enjoyed successive passions for tractors - I knew far more about Massey Fergusons than Alex Ferguson - and Star Wars.

As Aberdeen switched through the gears against Real Madrid on a sodden Gothenburg night in 1983, I sat in the corner farthest from the TV, engrossed in a comic-book telling of Return of the Jedi. My dad, teetering on the edge of the settee, implored me to watch something that he claimed I would never forget. I tried, but couldn't get my head round the arcane adult obsession with two groups of men chasing a ball. Seeing me fidget, he gave up and I re-immersed myself in intergalactic battle. I only looked up in curiosity when I heard the guttural roar that followed John Hewitt's diving header.

This is why, when I witness the current team lurching from one ignominy to another, I draw no consolation from my memories of Gothenburg: they scarcely exist. The miraculous triumph preceded the mediocrity, and I missed it. So excuse me while I wallow.