In each edition of Red Passion we will ask one lucky/unlucky person to reflect on their first-ever visit to watch a Wrexham home match...

Hats off to 'this little robin character'

Racecourse Virgins No.1

Colin McCaig

Colin McCaig comes from Luton but lives in West Yorkshire. His virginity, Racecourse-wise, was lost on 6 February 1998 when he watched his beloved Hatters go down 2-1...

My first (and only) visit to the Racecourse Ground was in February 1998. It was weird, a stadium in the middle of a college car park, instead of surrounded by decrepit terraced houses and narrow streets. A bit like the town itself, too neat and well planned for our English minds. Mind you, the last ground I was at that had that much open space around it was Cambridge United's, and I can't even remember the name of that.Inside, bizarre three-sided ground, all neat and very '70s Ashton Gate, but with a strange echo of the 1930s with the old main stand - this bit really does look like a racecourse, but it also looks as if they must have moved the pitch at some time, for the old stand must have been up to 50 metres from the pitch-side. Looks like you could win the Welsh Cup and then do a lap of honour round the paddock without upsetting the groundsman.

I am afraid I didn't do one of those 'Mens Magazine' groovy surveys of all the catering delights, so I could not check out the famous Wrexham pies.

I was taken to the ground by a Wrexham fan. He showed me round the town beforehand and got me dinner at his aunt's

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house, so it was a pleasurable experience apart from the performance of Luton, which was as low as it has got in our history, but you have to be objective - Wrexham were crap too!

If we had won 5-0, I might have had time to note more of the idiosyncrasies of the situation. One bizarre thing that I had been told about before the game was this little robin character who gets all agitated during the games. He didn't have much to do this day, but I suppose it has to be good to have someone who is so daft or committed that he looks like he is not there on sufferance. So many of these things seem perfunctory, but at least at Wrexham you have

this nice, restrained regionalist pride we just can't recreate in England, not in the Second Division anyway - even the north-south divide doesn't excite much 'unemployed and you know you are' type stuff.

In my experience, most inter-team rivalries are completely irrational hatreds - at least at the Racecourse you get a nice sense that the other team can't be expected to be much good, being English like. It must be nice, effortless superiority at every home game.

I would love to come back and see a Welsh derby one day, or better-yet a top-of-the-table clash with Luton; as I say, the context of the game colours your impressions of the day.