A new season represents a new start, especially when you’re following a new team. In late July, I’d been to our first two matches away to FC United and Chester. Both were special occasions in their own right, not least due to them both being games against other fan-owned clubs.

However, our friendly at home to Holywell on 27 July was also a big occasion as it represented our first game in Bangor: our team playing in our city. It also had a personal significance as it was the first time I’d taken both my kids to a football match. The six year old had actually been to several matches before his first birthday, including at least one where I commentated on the game whilst carrying him in a sling. For some reason, the same hadn’t happened with his nearly three year old brother.

I’d thought of pitching the idea of going to see Bangor 1876 together as a trip to have a picnic and explore in the botanical gardens at Treborth, and then go to a football match that happened to be taking place there. However, my wife - who was going to be heading off to visit friends while I looked after our kids - had already told them that I was thinking of taking them to a football match.

Thankfully, they didn’t seem too resistant to the idea. The promise of some half-time crisps for the younger one and some half-time chocolate for the older one may have made the difference. Having got the bus to the last stop before the bridge, we discovered that the walk from the entrance to the grounds of Treborth to the football pitches is longer than it looks. Especially when you’re carrying a three year old on your shoulders.

At the clubhouse before kick-off, it was good to catch up with old faces who had done so much to help set up the team in the first place. It didn’t feel all that long since the monumental vote in Penrhyn Hall that led to the club’s creation. Gone was the speculation about which league we would play in, we were going to be in the Gwynedd League and pre-season was underway.

The game against Holywell was played on a grass field just beyond the enclosed artificial pitch that was to become our home that season. This meant that the crowd of well over 300 fans was able to take in the game from a prime vantage point, just up the slope from the side of the pitch adjacent to an American football field. It also meant that my kids spent a lot of the first half running up and down the slope, as well as occasionally watching the action.

I’d not been sure how many people were going to attend the match. It was a significant occasion although it was also a friendly rather than a competitive game. The presence of so many fans showed what our months-old club already meant to many people. The crowd that day exceeded those of four of the six matches in the opening round of fixtures in the newly-renamed Cymru Premier - Welsh football’s top division - three weeks later.

Bangor 1876’s first home goal arrived inside the first twenty minutes when Dion Jones scored from close range with a rebound following a corner. Technically it wasn’t our first goal in Wales as Les Davies had scored in a 2-1 defeat away to Chester, whose pitch is entirely in Wales as the England-Wales border runs through the stadium car park and the offices behind the main stand.

With the grass pitch at Treborth being a bit over a hundred yards from the changing rooms, the teams both stayed on the pitch at half-time. The whiteboard was out as the Bangor 1876 coaches mapped out tactical plans for the second period. I’ve always thought that the picture of this that features in the match report on our website shows the thoroughness of their approach at the same time as looking a bit like an outdoor game of Pictionary.

The plans for the second-half that had been mapped out on the whiteboard seemed to have been better understood by the players than quite a few attempts to depict places, animals and objects that I recall from playing the popular charades-based game with friends and family. Within the first ten minutes of the second half, Bangor 1876 scored twice through Jamie Petrie and took a 3-0 lead.

I had a good view of both goals, in part due to my kids having decided it was time to start playing in and around some trees behind the end at which they were scored. Holywell pulled a goal back just over ten minutes from the end of the match, but it certainly didn’t detract from the afternoon from my perspective or that of the vast majority of the assembled fans. It didn’t have an impact on my kids’ enjoyment of the afternoon, mainly because they weren’t even looking at the pitch at the time.

It may have only been a friendly but it certainly wasn’t just another match. To have beaten a side that had only just been relegated from the second tier of Welsh football was an impressive result for a new team about to embark on life in the fifth tier. In our next three friendlies, we also managed to win against teams competing at a higher level before commencing life in the Gwynedd League.