Got, need, got..

I got a World Cup sticker album at the weekend - it was free with one of the Sunday narrow-sheets. I was tempted to start collecting the stickers, just for a laugh, but decided against it. After all, I'm a 31 year old Civil Servant with a mortgage and life insurance. And I don't hang around in playgrounds anymore, you'll be happy to hear.

However, imagine my surprise when I got to work on Monday to be confronted by two colleagues (whose ages are sufficiently post-teenage to warrant a "how old are you?" look) bragging about their sticker albums.

So totally against my will, I am now in a "swapsy" club. I got Rooney, Shevchenko and Zidane in the first batch. It seems a bit pointless to give away the best players at the beginning, as you know that from now on there will be lots of Costa Rican's and Togoans/Togese/Togi players who you've never heard of. And you know they're rubbish when they print two players in the space of one. Clearly, Panini were trying to save space for the more fancied nations.

It reminded me of my first summer of sticker albums. I had the Flash Gordon sticker album in 1981, but nobody else was collecting so I had no-one to swap with. So the 1984-85 football season was my league debut in the world of swapsies.

As a 9 year old, I had recently made the momentous realisation that blue was my favourite colour. With this in mind, I chose my football team very carefully. Brian Kilcline's "perm and moustache" combo put me off Coventry, whilst Chelsea were ruled out immediately by the inclusion of John Bumstead on the teamsheet. The sheer humiliation of having the word "bum" in your name meant that it wasn't worth the playground teasing.

But Everton had just won the FA Cup and pretty soon the ugly mugs of Peter Reid, Andy Gray and Neville Southall became golddust in my home. You could accuse me of being a glory-hunter at the time, but I think I've served enough penance in the last 20 years to make up for that. The 1985-86 sticker album will always be a collectors item because it was "the Gary Lineker season", and it was for that year alone that the team wore the blue and white halved kit. By the way, how short were the shorts in the 1980's??

But the daddy of them all, the numero uno, the big cheese, the all-time best ever sticker album was "Mexico 86". Not only did it have pictures of players I'd never heard of, or stadiums I couldn't pronounce (Zbigniew Boniek playing in Guadalajara, for example) but it had the most valuable sticker ever - the tournament mascot, Pique. Also, it was one of the few times that Everton had more players in the England squad than the combined selection from Man Utd and Liverpool.

I don't know whether "the kids of today" are actually collecting these stickers anymore. It may just be my colleagues and I, keeping Panini in business. But for the next 12 weeks, we're happy to oblige.