IN my youth we learned our football skills playing either three and in, if you don’t know the rules you didn’t live through the 1980s, or the more traditional 15-aside which could resemble a reinactment of Culloden.

This was a working class primary school in the south side of Glasgow. I’m not saying it was hard but some kids were dropped off at the gate by parents who had been in prison as recently as that morning.

Some of the pupils were tough, fearless and ready to scrap at the slightest excuse. The boys could be just as bad, let me tell you.

We were lucky in that in the grounds there was a full sized grass football pitch where lawless and seemingly never-ending games took place. If memory serves I was always the best.

We are talking 30 years ago now and it was around this time when kids started to wear replica kits. The red home and yellow away of Liverpool were the favourites. Kenny Dalglish was king and everyone wanted to dress like him.

The cool Scotland strip of 1982 was popular, lest said about those hooped shorts of a few years later the better, and while both Rangers and Celtic were represented, another Scottish team was by far the bigger favourite of my peers.

This was in an era when Aberdeen could claim with some justification to be the best team in Europe. Ten-year-old boys who wouldn’t have been able to point to the Granite City on a map claimed North East ancestry and therefore could run about in that red top pretending to be Eric Black.

I hated Aberdeen. I couldn’t stand Alex Ferguson. As far as the New Firm were concerned, I was a Dundee United man. I worshipped Paul Sturrock and even wore my socks at my ankles in tribute to the great man.

For all that Aberdeen were brilliant, and they certainly were, something which is often overlooked was how dirty and cynical they were, which of course came from a manager whose win at all costs tactic, in fairness, did rather take him places.

Willie Miller, at least to the young me, seemed to spend his entire time passing the ball back to Jim Leighton and trying to get Frank McGarvey sent off.

However, they kept winning, at home and abroad, and for my generation they became the team of choice for those whose parents weren’t into football.

Then came 1983 and that Cup-Winners’ Cup Final against Real Madrid when this cynic leapt to his feet and cheered when John Hewitt threw himself at the ball to win a European trophy for a Scottish club for the first and probably only time during my days on the planet.

I hated myself for this and pretended the next day I hadn’t even watched the match.

This is a long, long time ago now. Aberdeen have won a few trophies since the 1984/85 season when they last won the title. Any supporter who then had turned 18 and therefore could toast his team’s third championship in five years with a legitimate beer will turn 60 this year.

There have been some tough times since then. Losing 4-0 to Rangers in a cup final, Celtic regularly skelping them, there was a 9-0 a few seasons back, losing semi-finals to lower league teams for a while because a tradition. They were almost relegated once.

And then came Derek McInnes who four years ago this week replaced Craig Brown in the manager’s office of Aberdeen. They weren’t contributing enough back then and yet look where he has taken them.

McInnes is the best manager Aberdeen have had since Ferguson, with apologies to Alex Smith who won two cups in the same season and should have won the league, and yet he doesn’t get the credit his work warrants.

A problem for him is that he can be prickly with the press and while that might not seem important, he is the face of the club and telling the odd half-truth and giving off the impression the slightest criticism affects helps with the view he is a bit think skinned.

There might be a bit in that; however, to me he is simply protecting his club and players, a bit like a certain someone who used to have his job.

There aren’t too many Aberdeen strips to be seen in Glasgow these days but at least those who live in the city can take pride from their football club once again after years of nothingness.

McInnes is a real talent. He has always been smart, a deep thinker about the game and despite a rather gruff exterior a good guy.

Rangers didn’t move for him and he perhaps dodged a bullet there but there could be a job going at the SFA if Scotland slip up on Sunday against Slovenia. Even 30 years on I still want bad things to happen to that club. Will I ever grow up?