That's me at Wembley in 1988, on the terracing at the Sherpa Van Trophy final — a fourth-division club in front of 80,841 people, a year after nearly going out of the league altogether.

I'm three, and I'm crying because the police wouldn't let me sit on the crush barrier, so I couldn't see. It's my first memory.

I remember because of the picture, truth be told. My dad took the photo, and it's the only reason I can prove I was there.

I've been going ever since. I grew up in the shadow of Turf Moor, I'm in the ground every week, and I've spent the last thirty-odd years following Burnley further than was ever sensible — Tottenham to Turkey, Accrington to Aberdeen, and most places in between.

Burnley came first. Then Italian football on TV, then travel, then photography. Now they're the same thing. Podgorica to Preston, Barcelona and Belgrade, the San Siro, Gladbach, Warsaw, or Wrexham on a wet Tuesday. I've shot it all.

The photography properly took off in lockdown. Matches were being played behind closed doors ten minutes from my front door and I couldn't get in, so I walked round the outside with a camera instead: shut turnstiles, floodlights on, road closed, nobody there. Shooting everything but the match. One of those is still my favourite picture I've made.

What I shoot is the day, not the game. The walk down, the queue for a pie, the pub before, the singing. The stuff around the game is where the affection lives, and it's the bit nobody photographs because everybody's watching the pitch.

I tend to end up in someone else's end. That isn't an accident — it's where you meet people.

Work published with Lower Block, Profilo Basso Fanzine, and The Royal Dyche.

James McDonough — Burnley. Shooting as paradoxlens