IT'S A SAD DAY for a Villa fan when the first song you taught your baby metamorphoses from "Ooh, aah, Paul McGrath" to "Ooh, aah, Cantona".

It's a sad day when the customary Man United poster appears on the bedroom wall and he demands the full kit the red shirt please.

"Wouldn't you prefer something in claret and blue?"

"No."

The whole unsavoury affair is teaching me a few lessons.

First, try as you might and despite Jesuitical claims to the contrary you cannot mould your child in your own image.

Of course, I never wanted my child to turn out exactly like me I could never live with myself but I expected one small concession to my maternal sensibilities. If they were going to take an interest in soccer and they were going to take an interest in soccer then they would want to stand in the Holte End and not, not under any circumstances, expect me to frail, cap in hand, to Old Trafford and swell the Devil's coffers by paying in as a home supporter.

I just don't understand it. I did everything the textbooks tell you to. I made a friend trek to Villa Park when my first born was a few weeks old to purchase a rather natty little Crimplene babygro with the immortal words "I'm a little Dribbler for Aston Villa" printed on it.

I spent hours with him teaching him to talk.

"Up the Villa."

"Da, Da."

"Very good, but not quite perfect, look at Mammy up the Villllla."

Now I wish I hadn't bothered teaching him to talk that is. Car journeys have become torture. "Glory, glory, Man United" repeated ad infinitum up the Stillorgan dual carriageway.

Bedtimes have become similarly infected, as my two sons engage in their nightly ritual of standing on the bed looking at their poster and admiring Mr March Ryan Giggs, Mr September Denis Irwin and of course Mr February Eric Cantona.

I've lost the first son and now it looks like I'm in danger of losing the second. In a last ditch attempt at producing a Villa fan I've laid my hands on a Lilliputian "League Cup Champions 1994" away strip. He likes it it matches mine but he's still pre verbal so he couldn't complain anyway.

I'm also having to learn humility a painful process which involves answering the question "Mammy, aren't you up for Man United even a little bit?" about 10 times a day. "I'm up for Villa a little bit, why aren't you up for Man United, Mam?"

"Yeah, why aren't you?" chips in his father petulantly, berating me for my poor parenting technique and tribal adolescent behaviour.

Parenting/football, football/ parenting never the twain shall meet. "Get out from in front of the &%*Oa telly I said get out from in front of the #&%* telly." If you don't get out from in front of the #&%* telly I'll....