Not only is Alan a gentleman, but he was a fantastic and skilful player. Unfortunately, I never saw him play live, but I have seen footage, and he would have graced any Swans team in any era. Alan was a player of immense flair, and that is the philosophy of the Swans today.

Alan is a great ambassador for the club and a great example to every young player, showing them what is needed when they represent Swansea City, because he distinguished himself with all four of his league teams and his country. I remember the time Alan demonstrated his profound love for the Swans in the 2002–03 season when we almost dropped out of the Football League. We were away to Rochdale in the penultimate game of the season, and I could see by Alan’s face and mood how much it meant to him that the Swans kept our league status. In that game and the last game against Hull, his motivational words made the players aware of what the club means to the people of Swansea and their families.

Alan, I believe, should be with the club for the rest of his life. He has a genuine love for the Swans, and because of the man he is he could fill many roles. He can represent the players, staff and fans in equal measure, such is his love for Swansea City Football Club. In the future, I just hope the Swans can make Alan proud. What they go on to achieve will be a testimony both to him and to the fans. Enjoy the book – Alan has a great story to tell.

As the clock began to run down, I picked up the ball on the right-hand touchline halfway inside the Leeds half in front of an already delirious North Bank, and as I looked up I saw that I was being marshalled inside by Trevor Cherry, an England full-back and teammate at Leeds the previous season. As I moved towards the opposition area, Cherry tried to use his experience to push me inside, where the defensive cover awaited to crowd me out. However, on the edge of the Leeds box, I shimmied as if to go inside my marker, cut back outside him and, as three defenders converged on me, let fly. The ball hit the left-hand corner of John Lukic’s net.

The vast majority of footballers will tell you how special it is to score against your old team, especially when your spell at that club was perceived by some pundits as being less than successful. The combination of factors that came together on that memorable August day would not be out of place in a Boy’s Own story. Not only had we won our first-ever First Division home game 5–1, but our opponents had been my previous club Leeds, and I had scored the last goal.

The 1981–82 season proved to be an amazing one for the Swans, as we finished sixth in the league. Even today, I am constantly reminded by Swansea fans of their memories of that season and that goal especially. Although it is perhaps the most documented goal of my playing career, it is just one of hundreds of happy memories I have of my 40-year love affair with the game of football and the city of Swansea in particular.

Despite my close association with Swansea, ‘home’ will always be the place whose name is synonymous with the industrial history and culture of Wales: the Rhondda Valley. Dylan Thomas famously described Swansea as a ‘lovely, ugly town’. I wonder what he would have made of Pentre, the village where I was born and bred. The Welsh word pentref usually means village or homestead, but in the case of Pentre it refers to an old farmstead that was situated in the area. This farm was quite substantial in size and was known as Y Pentref long before an actual village grew up in the area with the advent of the mining industry. It was a typical small valleys community, and the geographical features of the area were dominated by the scars of decades of coal mining and its associated industries. It was in one of the rows and rows of two-up, two-down terraced houses, familiar to any South Wales valleys town, that I, Alan Thomas Curtis, entered the world on Good Friday, 16 April 1954, at 17 Madeline Street. I was the second son of Tydfil and Albert, my brother Phillip having been born three years earlier.

In the decades after the Second World War, there was little choice for women like my mother regarding birthing options. There was no agonising decision to make as to whether the prospective mother should opt for a water pool or a Caesarean, or which hospital to choose. It was usually the case that wherever the mother was when labour started, the baby was delivered nearby, nearly always at home. This was no exception for my mother. After she felt her contractions begin, she called for the neighbours, and I was delivered in our front room. My father, however, was unaware of all this commotion at number 17, as he was playing football down the local park. Not for the last time, then, that football would play a part in the Curtis household. He was informed of my imminent arrival by some local boys and got home just as I was being born.

My father loved his football and was an excellent local league player who turned down the chance to play professionally with Leicester City because he was a family man. My mother and his sons meant the world to him, so he didn’t want to risk disrupting his young family. Signing professional forms would have meant moving ‘abroad’ to England, an alien land many miles away from the loving support of his family and friends. Besides, it would not have been a very good career move financially, as footballers at that time were more or less chattels of the club or the chairman, invariably a powerful local businessman, and bound to the chains of the maximum wage. My father, like many men of the Rhondda Valley, decided to take his chances at home mining the ‘black gold’, the quality coal that was exported worldwide.

At the time my mother and father decided to start a family, the nature of employment in the Valleys was only just beginning to undergo some sort of transformation. The government had attempted to develop a regional policy, part of which was to encourage new factories into the Rhondda to replace those jobs lost by the increasing closure of the pits. I will always remember, however, my father saying that mining was in his family’s blood, as was the case on my mother’s side of the family.

Like the majority of other families in Pentre and its surrounding area, we could hardly have been described as well off. However, we didn’t know any different, so we never moaned, and there didn’t seem to be the pressure of the materialism that exists in today’s society. Everything families did back then was community based. Women would buy all that was needed at the local shop, passing the time of day with the other mothers and grandmothers. Routines were so predictable that the majority of families never needed a watch – the women’s daily and weekly routines were the same: cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing. Perhaps this might seem a tedious lifestyle when looked at today, but at that time it was an expected and integral part of the life of any working-class housewife.

Mam, who married my father when she was 18, however, was not a stereotypical Welsh mother. She could only be described as what I would call a character. She had a fantastic sense of humour and would certainly speak her mind. My father respected her wishes, and it came as no surprise that she carried on working when we grew up. The extra money often found its way towards us in the form of new clothes or the occasional treat. She worked in Polikoffs clothing factory, which later became Burberry’s, a major employer until recently when they controversially closed the factory and moved production abroad.

My father and his mates worked long hours in dangerous conditions to provide for their families. Any leisure pursuits they undertook were therefore enjoyed to the maximum. Despite the secularisation of the Valleys in the years after the Second World War, it was still predominantly through churches that organised team games took place. Pentre boasts what is known locally as the ‘Cathedral of the Rhondda’, St Peters Church, which was consecrated in 1890 and whose impressive tower dominates the local landscape. The ‘chapel’ was at the top of the social hierarchy – literally, as it was at the top of the street, whilst the Legion club was at the bottom!

It wasn’t just the men whose social lives were influenced by the church. For the rest of the family, and particularly the children, the chapels were a vital source of leisure activities, especially the organisation of the annual Sunday school trips to the seaside resorts of Barry Island and Porthcawl. My father played sport, but many of his contemporaries opted for other pastimes that were on offer, those that never involved going outside. They instead chose the hobbies that were offered in the pubs, clubs and billiard halls, such as snooker, darts and cards. The added advantage, of course, of these indoor activities was that they allowed many working-class men to indulge their favourite leisure activity of all, that of partaking in a glass or two of beer. In fact, our village was well known locally for its beer, the Pentre Breweries opening in 1875 and supplying beer to the rest of the Rhondda until it closed in the years following the Second World War.

I first experienced this culture when I was about 16 and my father occasionally sneaked me into the Legion to watch Wales rugby internationals. Well, perhaps more to experience the atmosphere, as you couldn’t really see the black-and-white telly for the dense smoke coming from the roll-ups and Woodbines! It was great fun as an impressionable youngster to watch the men have a gamble on the horses and play cards for a few bob. But my father was more of an advocate of the great outdoors, and he would take Phillip and me on walks and encourage us to have a kickaround with him and his mates in the park that was situated in the middle of Pentre. When I was small, the park seemed like a huge stadium, with terraced houses on either side acting like great banks of football terracing. Going back there today, it’s hard not to smile at my naivety. I later found out that these amphitheatres, as we thought of them, were man-made as a result of some of the first reclamation schemes in the UK.

If my father was vital in creating my early interest in football, it was another family member who reinforced my growing obsession with the game. My uncle was the Wales international Roy Paul, who captained Manchester City in both the 1955 and 1956 FA Cup finals. Such a notable success story made a big impact in such a close-knit community and was celebrated by everyone. My mother’s brother, or Uncle Roy as we called him, had started his career with Swansea Town but had moved on to the bigger stage of the First Division in 1950. He captained the Maine Road side in their 3–1 defeat by Newcastle United in his first cup final, but City exacted revenge the following season, triumphing over Birmingham City by exactly the same scoreline.

I was too young to fully share in this success, but Phillip went on a tour of the local schools with Roy and the rest of the family. It seemed as though every child in the valley had their photo taken with the world’s most prestigious knockout trophy and the winning Man City skipper. These days, though, the nearest a child will get to an FA Cup-winning captain is seeing them on Match of the Day!

Although it was nearly the case that nobody got to see the cup back in 1956 either. After losing the 1955 final, Uncle Roy had promised that the following year he would lead City to victory and bring the cup back to the Rhondda. After the Wembley victory, he was as good as his word. On the way home, he decided to catch up with a few old mates in the local, and they were of course keen to congratulate him and toast the return of one of the Rhondda’s favourite sons. Naturally, everyone was eager to have a few words with the winning cup-final captain and buy him a pint. Roy was a character and happily chatted with the increasing number of locals who packed the pub as news of his return filtered through the village. One or two drinks turned into several more.

The next morning, as Roy woke up and began to recall the night before, an increasing feeling of dread washed over him as he realised he couldn’t remember what he had done with the cup. As he trudged back up the hill to the pub where he had left his car, he could probably visualise the terrible newspaper headlines, along the lines of ‘Welshman loses the English FA Cup’. When he got to his car, he must have had a double take, as there in the back seat, shining in the early morning sun, was the cup. And what’s more, Uncle Roy had even left the car window open!

Even though I was only two when my uncle achieved his greatest success, I would listen in awe over the following years to his many football stories. Like many of his contemporaries, he started his working life down the mine after his initial foray into competitive football was met with rejection. Even though he became a full international, Roy would say that his biggest disappointment was not being selected by Bronllwyn Primary after three schoolyard trials. He insisted that this was an even bigger disappointment than losing the 1955 FA Cup final!

He got over his initial rejection to sign professionally for Swansea Town in 1940 and remained there for nearly a decade. In 1950, he moved to Manchester City, although it was not a straightforward transfer. In fact, his controversial move would not have been out of place in the modern game, with all the accusations today of bungs to agents and alleged under-the-counter payments to players.

The Swans had originally agreed a fee with a club in Bogotá, Columbia, which was almost unheard of at the time, as there was minimum player movement to European clubs let alone ones in South America. The football authorities got wind of the transfer just as Roy landed in Columbia and would not permit him to sign his contract. The West Wales club had lost out on their fee, so it is rumoured they offered Roy a ‘sweetener’ to speed up his move to the Blues for £19,500, top money in those days. Whatever the truth, City certainly got value for money, as my uncle went on to play over 300 games, scoring 23 goals and helping to bring silverware to the club.

Many people have told me that Roy was a leader of men, a defensive midfielder in the mould of Dave Mackay, Billy Bremner or Roy Keane, although perhaps not as physical as those players. Roy was a charismatic, natural leader, although there are also tales of his more mischievous side, guiding players into bars on foreign trips when they should have been relaxing! My favourite stories as a youngster were when Uncle Roy would tell me about the players he felt it was a privilege to play with. When I started playing professionally myself and was lucky enough to meet them, it was those very same players who told me the privilege was theirs – legends of the game such as the former German prisoner-of-war Bert Trautmann, the keeper who so famously helped City win the cup by playing through the pain barrier with a broken neck, and Don Revie, who would go on to manage at the very highest level with Leeds United and England.

Even though he had been worshipped by the City followers, after leaving top-flight football Roy decided, like so many of his generation, to use his experience to give something back to the game at a lower level. With this in mind, he decided to step down to non-league football with Worcester City in the old Southern League in 1957, only one year after lifting the Cup at Wembley. He stayed with the Midlands club for three years, including a stint at the end as player-manager. However, he did not give up his romance with the FA Cup, as he was man of the match against both Liverpool and Millwall as Worcester went on a giant-killing run in 1959. After this, Roy played local football with Brecon and Garw in the Welsh League before hanging up his boots when he was well into his 40s. As in the case of his Wales international colleague John Charles, Roy was willing to continue in the lower leagues for as long as his body would physically allow him. Both players had graced the world stage yet were prepared to slog it out on local parks with players half their age just because of their sheer love and respect for the game.

It is no wonder that the sport of football was beginning to make such an impression on me. Not many families could boast (not that we would have, of course) an FA Cup-winning captain as one of their own, but to find one in South Wales, a traditionally rugby-oriented region, was indeed a rarity. Talk of my uncle’s cup exploits made the competition all the more appealing, and I could not wait for it to begin each year. I would wait anxiously for the draw to see who the South Wales clubs – Cardiff, Swansea, Newport and sometimes, if they got through the qualifying rounds, my nearest ‘big’ club, Merthyr Tydfil – would be paired with. And, unbelievably, my village club Ton Pentre from the Welsh League would sometimes make it to the first round when Welsh non-league clubs were able to compete in the qualifying rounds of the tournament.

My father’s relatively well-paid job meant that the Curtis household had access to a television set, and my interest in football was consolidated by watching the spectacle of the FA Cup final every May. The first final I vividly remember was in 1960 between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Blackburn Rovers, two of the top teams at that time. When the ‘Old Gold’ (not that we could tell that with our old black-and-white set) of Wolves triumphed, I was an instant fan, perhaps because at that time they were also one of the real glamour clubs. European fixtures were few and far between, with only the league champions entering European competition. In the mid 1950s, Wolves, under their forward-thinking manager Stan Cullis, had arranged friendly fixtures against some of Europe’s finest and were able to boast of victories over teams such as Spartak Moscow, Honved and Dynamo Moscow.

I was hooked, and it was great to support such a successful team. The only problem for me was that Wolves were knocked out of the following year’s competition in the third round by Huddersfield Town. So, what was a young, impressionable and football-loving kid supposed to do? Well, perhaps do what other young boys have done before and since: find another successful team, and who better to support than the glorious Tottenham Hotspur side that won back-to-back FA Cup finals in 1961 and 1962?

Spurs were a great team, and, even better for me, they had three famous Welsh internationals, two of whom were Swansea-born wingers: Cliffy Jones, flying down the left wing, using his pace and bravery to great effect, and Terry Medwin on the right wing – Terry was later to play an important part in my own professional development. They were very different players, but each was highly effective in his own way. For a wide player, Cliff would get his fair share of goals, whilst Terry was more of a play-maker or, as Jimmy Greaves once described him, ‘like a piano player in the orchestra’.

Another reason for my early affinity with the White Hart Lane club, and the third Welsh player on their books, was a local Rhondda lad called Mel Hopkins, who was born in Ystrad, less than two miles from Pentre. Mel was a classy left-back who played 34 times for Wales and starred in the 1958 World Cup finals, where in the quarter-final against Brazil he prevented the world-class winger Garrincha from imposing his usual influence on the game.

This great Spurs team must have made a huge impression on me at that early age, as I still look out for their results – just after those of all the Welsh clubs, of course!

A few years later, my love affair with the cup was consolidated when the Swans went on their famous run in 1964 and reached the semi-final. I remember reading the reports of how they beat higher-division opposition Stoke City and Sheffield United in replays at the Vetch Field. In the run up to the quarter-final, there was some divided opinion in the schoolyard. The majority of the Rhondda were followers of Cardiff City and didn’t give the Swans much of a chance, as they were away to high-flying Liverpool. Even back then, I liked good football and didn’t have an allegiance to any particular Welsh club. I just remember the Swans playing attractive football. I think, like most people, I was stunned when the Swans triumphed at Anfield, but it all ended in tears as Preston won the semi, ultimately losing to West Ham in the final. Swansea keeper Noel Dwyer was hailed as a hero for his performance at Anfield, only to concede a fluke goal from the halfway line against Preston. I made a promise to myself then that I would never, ever play in goal!

By the time I first attended Pentre Junior School, a few hundred yards from our house, I was well and truly mesmerised by the game. However, I sometimes wish I could be seven today, in the age of Premier League football, a sort of reverse of the BBC series Life on Mars – instead of being transported back in time, I wish I could have moved forward 30-odd years. Not that my childhood was anything other than wonderful. It is just that I wish I could have had the pick of the plethora of football shirts on offer to the children of today. In my day, you had the choice of a red or a royal-blue shirt, but that didn’t stop me from imagining that I was wearing the colours of Manchester United or Everton – or any other famous club that wore those colours. Unfortunately, there were no white tops available in the colour of my beloved Spurs.

A group of youngsters, including me and Phillip, would hone our skills kicking a ball at every opportunity we could: in school breaks, every evening and, apart from an hour or so on a Sunday when we were at chapel, all weekend. I still remember the names of our soccer gang, which included Phillip and Andrew Owen, David Morgan, Peter Williams, Stevie Williams, Alan Harvey and Paul Pumford, all of whom were good players who went on to play successfully for many years in the local leagues. We would all run down to the park straight from school, playing until stopped by darkness or the call from one or more of our mothers to come home for bed. We would start off with three- or four-a-side, but within an hour there could be anything up to eighteen-a-side.

We didn’t just play in the park, either, as on winter nights we would have massive games in the street. These were seldom interrupted, as very few people owned a car in Pentre in those days. I always laugh at the Carling Black Label advert on the telly, with those blokes with huge beer bellies playing on the street. It reminds me of our street games as a kid, as all the players were within about two yards of the ball. In all those games, it was my brother Phillip who really stood out – not because he was older, but because he had a sweet left foot. ‘Beckenbauer’ we used to call him!

Phillip and I were, I suppose, typical brothers. We loved each other to bits and would defend each other to the hilt, but there were three years between us, which meant we also had our own sets of friends. I would say that Phillip helped to toughen me up and gave me a competitive edge – most kids want to put one over on their older sibling.

Close, did I say? Well, we had to be, as we shared the same bed until Phillip left to join the RAF when he was 21. And you have to remember that we did not have central heating in those days. And those Rhondda winters were cold, to say the least!

Although I was becoming increasingly obsessed by football, I was not allowed to neglect my education, as my parents, like most of the Valleys’ traditionally working-class families, knew and valued its importance. This could be said of all mining communities, who placed a great emphasis on the social opportunities provided by education. Miners’ libraries could be found in all mining areas, with hundreds of books bought by the workers’ own contributions and donated to the villages so that everybody, especially the children, could benefit.

My parents encouraged Phillip and me to lead healthy, outdoor lifestyles, but that did not stop us progressing in our studies. Phillip followed my father into Pentre Secondary School, whilst a few years later I passed the eleven-plus and went to the local grammar school, Porth County. My father was a great role model, not only football-wise, but with education. He started his working life as a baker before going to college to gain an apprenticeship to be a fitter underground at Parc and Dare Collieries. When he had a family, he decided to better himself and went to night school at Llwynypia College, where he gained the qualifications to become a lecturer in mechanical engineering.

Communities in Pentre and the wider Rhondda Valley were close-knit, and all the kids had the same hobbies, playing cricket in the summer, with a short break for tennis during Wimbledon fortnight, and football all year round. One particularly notable event occurred every April around Grand National time when we had the Porth’s equivalent to Aintree’s big race! We would borrow dustbins, make Becher’s Brook out of twigs and pinch barrels of beer from Pentre Legion (empty, of course!) to make the rest of the fences. Dozens of kids would then pick the name of a horse and see who would win the ‘National’. All the parents would gather and shout encouragement. The old adage ‘it is the taking part, not the winning that counts’ was borne out at these times.

It was definitely all for one and one for all in the way we spent our spare time, at least until we were 11 years of age. Then came the moment that every kid dreaded: the eleven-plus examination. This could often prove to be very divisive, as boys and girls whom you had grown up with suddenly became categorised as those who were academic and those who were not. Grammar schools have perhaps rightly been attacked for fuelling class divisions and reinforcing the middle classes’ position in society. In the Rhondda, though, they could also be argued to have given many youngsters like myself the chance to achieve academic qualifications, offering us the opportunity to secure different types of jobs than those of our fathers and theirs before them.

The problem for me personally was that grammar schools were rugby playing. If you showed any sporting ability, you were made to play rugby for the school in the week and again on Saturday mornings. I was a budding outside-half, like Cliff Morgan and Barry John, and was picked in that position to represent Rhondda Schools. I was also invited to participate in the Welsh Schools trials. As much as I enjoyed my rugby, the round-ball game was always my real passion – perhaps not unexpected when I had an uncle who had been a successful professional footballer and a dad who could have become one as well.

By then, I had joined Treorchy Boys Club, and playing rugby on Saturday morning and football in the afternoon was taking its toll. One had to go, so at 14 rugby was kicked into touch! There were some good players at grammar school: Dai Edwards, Terry Broome, Neil Roberts and Keith ‘Tassie’ Evans. Again, like my mates in junior school, they never progressed to the professional game, but they did enter white-collar professions: Dai Davies became an optician and Dickie Tudball still has an estate agents in Treorchy.

One of the other great things I remember about growing up was the more than healthy competition that existed between the Rhondda Valleys villages, whether it was in the field of sport or singing. Nearly every village had an excellent choir, such as the Treorchy Male Voice, who were renowned and won many competitions, travelling the length of the country. In fact, my father and his brother Hedley were both members of the Treorchy choir.

The other great memory I have of childhood is the annual pilgrimage to the seaside that the majority of Valleys families made in the last week of July and the first week of August every summer. Can you imagine? We would live side by side, sometimes in each other’s houses, for fifty weeks of the year, then for two weeks in the summer would head for Trecco Bay in Porthcawl for the miners’ ‘stop fortnight’, only to spend time next to each other in rows of caravans rather than terraced houses. My mother was one of fourteen children, which meant I had a vast array of cousins who along with our friends all participated in the mass exodus to the coast. Every year, Pentre became like a ghost town for that fortnight, but not much changed for the children. Instead of playing on grass, we played on sand. For the boys, it was like playing on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, usually minus both the glorious sunshine and the subtle skill levels of Brazilian football.

The start of my rewarding journey in the game began at the age of 11 in Treorchy, a village very similar to the one I was brought up in, only a mile away. Here, as in Pentre, everyone looked out for each other. It was this spirit that made us such a good side. Like most successful teams at any level of the game, we were encouraged to develop an ‘us and them’ mentality. I spent six happy years at the club and am eternally grateful for the excellent coaching and grounding in the game that I was given.

Like any other junior club up and down the country, parental involvement was vital. My father was no exception to this rule, especially given his earlier successes playing the game. An added bonus was that my dad owned one of the few cars in the village at the time, a Morris Minor. Every Saturday, he would cram us all into his car and chauffeur us back and forth to the game. It’s a good job that there was only one substitute allowed per team at that time! Dad had never thought about getting a car before I started playing football, as work at the mine was only a hundred or so yards from our terraced house. The fact that in his mid-30s he bought one demonstrated to me even at a young age how committed he was to my succeeding in the game, and this only made me more determined never to let him down.

The club I played for was in essence a youth club, a place where boys and girls would meet up for a chat or a game of table tennis. Football, although important, was just another part of the facility. The person who oversaw the club and dedicated his life to it was Albie Nicholas. He did everything from organising fixtures, marking the pitches and washing the kit to making the half-time tea. Politicians today are constantly calling for ordinary people who dedicate their lives to others to be rewarded with either an OBE or MBE. Albie was certainly someone who fell into this category, and he deservedly received a British Empire Medal, presented to him by the late Bill Owen of Last of the Summer Wine fame. Sadly, Albie is no longer with us, but he lived well into his 90s. When he passed away, generations of people from the Valleys turned up in their hundreds to pay their respects to his positive contributions to their lives.

I look back with fondness at my time with Treorchy, but perhaps also a little through rose-tinted glasses. I remember us being a great team, but we never actually won a trophy! My excuse is that we only included boys from the surrounding villages in our team, whilst teams such as Ystrad Rhondda would head hunt the cream of talented youngsters, the Rhondda Valley’s equivalent of a modern-day Chelsea! They would bring in boys from further afield, luring the better players from other teams. Towards the end of my time at school, the rules stopping grammar-school pupils from playing football were relaxed, which meant I was able to represent Rhondda Schools in competitive matches throughout South Wales. I even had the privilege of captaining the team on several occasions.

My coaches made me aware that my performances were attracting the attention of some Football League clubs, such as Bristol Rovers and Leicester City, who had unsuccessfully courted my father years before, although Swansea City were the most persistent. They sent Geoff Ford, one of their main scouts, to watch us play against West Glamorgan, and afterwards Swansea offered me a trial.

Although Swansea’s interest was very exciting, it also created a bit of a dilemma for me, as I was doing fairly well academically. I was really unsure as to whether I should focus on becoming a professional footballer, with all the uncertainties that were involved, or concentrate fully on my studies, which would hopefully provide me with the education to get a white-collar job rather than tread the well-worn path to the local colliery. The advice of my family, particularly my father, proved invaluable. Whilst a good education didn’t necessarily guarantee a good job, he told me, it was a lot less risky than a career in football, which was an extremely precarious profession. Yes, there were success stories such as Uncle Roy, but for every Roy Paul, Cliff Jones or Terry Medwin there were thousands of other boys who had been discarded at 17 or 18 with no qualifications and had no choice but to return home to a life underground or working on factory conveyor belts. My father was not being derogatory; he knew of the dangers and drudgery of these jobs, as he had made that difficult choice himself. In the end, we reached a compromise, because in all honesty my mind was still set on becoming a footballer.

A trainee footballer’s wage in the early 1970s was much the same as what I could have expected for working underground, so a contract did not mean a life of luxury. There were no six-figure sums on offer as incentives to parents to get their sons to sign on the dotted lines – not that my parents would have been so easily won over by such incentives anyway. So, it was decided that I would continue at the grammar school for another two years and study for my A levels, with the added bonus that as a sixth-former I would be able to opt to play either rugby or football.

It was in sixth form that I came under the tutelage of my history teacher Mr Thomas, or ‘Dai Chips’ after the teacher in the film Goodbye, Mr Chips. Dai was a massive football fan, so he gave up hours of his time, as teachers did then, in order to run the school team on evenings and weekends.

Life couldn’t have been better. I was doing well at school, and I was also playing football at a good level, having already had a few games in the Welsh League with Ferndale. As a slender 16 year old, this was a great grounding for what was to come as a professional. The league was littered with ex-pros who did not take kindly to some upstart trying to go round them. There was many a time I would end up on my backside, up in the air or up against the perimeter fence. Not once did I retaliate – not that I did not want to, but some of them seemed as big as the mountains I’d climbed a few years before! It was, in part, this experience that led to me winning an Under-18 international cap for Wales.

After a close season of playing cricket and the annual two weeks to Porthcawl, I returned to school for the second year of my A levels. The Swans seemed as determined as ever to sign me, often coming to watch me play for the school or in the Welsh League, but I was happy to go along with the family’s wish of getting my qualifications first. For the next year, I worked hard at my school work and football, and I eventually gained A-level passes in history and economics and was accepted into teacher training college.

The Swans were putting pressure on me to attend trials, and the buzz I got on the pitch far outweighed what I felt with my head in a text book, so a crisis meeting was called in the Curtis household. A decision had to be made: college or football? There was no guarantee that I would make it as a professional footballer, but becoming a fully qualified teacher was not a certainty either. So, with the blessing of my parents, I decided that it was football for me, although I did feel a tinge of guilt at my decision.

The same year, Phillip left home to join the RAF, so within months my mother and father had ‘lost’ two sons. The Curtis household rapidly changed from one with two bustling teenagers to one of relative quiet. All that was left was to pack my bags and accept the offer of a trial with Swansea City, then in the depths of the old Third Division. Surely things could only get better for the club, and I was determined that I was going to do my utmost to realise my own ambition of playing in the First Division and to help raise the Swans from the doldrums. In reality, it could never be done . . . could it?

Over the years, the Swans had developed a reputation for playing a good brand of pass-and-move football and for producing talented individuals, many of whom excelled at international level. However, when I joined them, they were struggling at the wrong end of the Third Division.

Swansea might have only been down the road, but it felt like the other side of the world to me! Today, the journey takes about an hour, but in 1972 it was very different, as the M4 network had yet to be completed. This meant it took more than an hour to get to Port Talbot and sometimes just as long again to get through the old town, with its famous steelworks, and on to Swansea. By rail took just as long, as you had to change trains three times!

It was a Saturday morning when I packed my bags for the journey west, and I still remember it vividly, as the Curtis house was full of well-wishers, friends and family, all ready to offer me their own snippets of advice. There were only about 20 houses in our street, but it seemed as though the whole village had turned up to bid me farewell. Our next-door neighbours, Mrs Hendy, Mrs Williams, Mrs Harvey, and Cyril and Joan Davies, were all there. Even today when I return to Pentre I think of that day, as there are reminders everywhere of how much some things haven’t changed. Mrs Hendy’s daughters Karen and Janice still live next to their parents’ home, Mrs Harvey’s daughters Lisa and Alison have moved into their mother’s, Peter Williams lives in his family’s home, and Cyril and Joan still live in the same house.