From ecstasy to agony, our classic archive pictures from across Kent capture the highs and lows of supporting England in major finals.

With the Three Lions vying for Euros glory tonight, reporter Rhys Griffiths looks back over almost three decades of cheering on the national team - and, despite repeated disappointments, still daring to hope…

There have been a handful of times in my life as a football fan when events on the pitch have reduced me to tears. Sometimes of joy, more often of pain, despair, heartbreak and regret for what might have been.

I will never forget the first time. June 26, 1996. I was a 12-year-old in love with the game in that special way reserved for care-free childhood when football still feels like the most important thing in the world.

Like everyone else that summer, I’d been swept along in the excitement of Euro ‘96. And when Germany goalkeeper Andreas Köpke fell – ‘dived’ feels too strong a word – to his right to keep out Gareth Southgate’s tame spot kick, it felt like the world had come crashing down around me.

Tears were shed, and for the first (and certainly not the last) time I felt the searing disappointment of seeing England come up short in a major tournament. Baddiel, Skinner and the Lightning Seeds sang of 30 years of hurt that summer – now, as we await this evening’s final against Spain, 58 years and counting.

It was not long after that heartbreaking June evening that I read for the first time Nick Hornby’s classic meditation on what it means to be a football supporter, Fever Pitch. In the book he muses on the fact that football fans do not measure life in calendar years, but in seasons running August to May. Similarly, the meandering path of life can be plotted by the memories of where you were every other summer when England finally, predictably fell short.

I saw England’s penalty shootout heartbreak against Argentina in 1998 at Hythe cricket club, and remember the pandemonium halfway through extra time when someone accidentally unplugged the television, sparking momentary panic and some choice language thrown in the culprit’s direction.

In 2002, when games were watched in the morning due to the time difference in Japan and Korea, I watched us crash out against Brazil at the Royal Ascot race meeting, where I was working as a steward during the summer break from university. Fair to say no one was particularly in the mood for a day on their feet assisting increasingly inebriated race-goers after witnessing that.

Our archive pictures from that tournament show how Kent’s pubs were filled with fans backing the team.

Then came 2004, another summer and another penalty shootout defeat, this time against Portugal in their home tournament. I watched the game in a pub in Manchester, and my overriding memory is being hoisted aloft by a large northerner who spun me round and round on his shoulders when Sol Campbell’s 90th-minute ‘winning’ goal went in.

It was only when the celebrations subsided, and I was returned to my feet, that we realised the goal had been chalked off. Once again, that despair is on show in our archive pictures from the tournament.

2006, another summer, another penalty shootout defeat, this time against Portugal. Sometimes following England really does feel like being stuck in Groundhog Day. That summer I was in that rather aimless post-university stage of life, signing-on during the tournament, the lack of gainful employment a real boon when it came to being able to spend long, languorous days in front of the TV watching match after match after match.

I watched the quarter-final against the Portuguese on what my memory recalls as an absolutely sweltering day in the beer garden of the William Harvey pub in Willesborough. A friend of mine stripped himself to the waist and used face paint to daub his torso in something resembling an England shirt.

Given the balmy weather, the face paint was soon mingling with sweat and running down his chest not long into the first half. Funny the things you remember, perhaps as a way of blotting out the memory of another penalty shootout defeat.

And so the ultimately unsuccessful Sven-Göran Eriksson era came to a close, the so-called ‘Golden Generation’ having repeatedly failed to turn undeniable talent into trophies.

But in the summer of 2008 England found themselves on the outside looking in after failing to qualify for the European Championship held in Austria and Switzerland. Manager Steve McClaren was branded the ‘wally with a brolly’ by the press after seeing his side’s qualification hopes dashed by a 3-2 defeat to Croatia at a rain-soaked Wembley.

Italian Fabio Capello was the next man charged with ending all those years of hurt, taking his England side to the World Cup in South Africa in 2010. The soundtrack to the summer was the infernal droning of the vuvuzela, and England stumbled unconvincingly through a group containing Slovenia, Algeria and the United States.

It set up a round-of-16 clash with Germany, which I saw in the Master Brewer pub in Folkestone. No penalty shootout horrors this time, as the Germans ran out convincing 4-1 winners, although we’ll always live with the ‘what ifs’ after seeing Frank Lampard’s ‘ghost goal’ unfairly ruled out despite crossing the line. How we’d have loved goal-line technology and VAR that day.

Forgive me if this is all starting to feel a bit repetitive and ultimately soul-sapping. It is merely an accurate reflection of a lifetime investing hopes and dreams in England and seeing them cruelly snatched away. It’s now 2012, we’ve made another quarter-final, and with grim inevitability it once again all came down to kicks from 12 yards.

By this point the agony of penalties had become too much to bear, and I simply refused to witness the shootout against Italy. Instead I took myself into the small courtyard garden of the Frenchman in Folkestone, chain-smoking and just listening to the cheers and groans from inside which confirmed another tournament exit.

There is no abiding memory of 2014 to recount here, England exiting meekly in the group stages of the World Cup in Brazil. And then two years later, at the Euros in France, we reached what surely has to be the nadir. I watched the Iceland debacle in the bar at Folkestone Invicta, the mood growing increasingly funereal as the game slipped away from England after their opponents took a 2-1 lead in the 18th minute. Saddest of all, I don’t think I really felt anything. Too many failures, too many missed opportunities. This is England, this is what we do.

The blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Sam Allardyce era came and went – pint of wine, anyone? – and up stepped the man whose penalty miss in ‘96 had given me my first real taste of England heartbreak. Gareth Southgate was here to build a new England, with a new generation of players he sought to free from the emotional burden of all those disappointments and oh-so-nears. And that first tournament, the 2018 World Cup in Russia, really did feel like a golden summer.

I watched the knockout rounds in what my mind tells me were gloriously sunny days in front of the big screen at Folkestone harbour arm.

When the round-of-16 clash against Colombia went to penalties, I once again averted my eyes. The emotional release when Eric Dier’s winning strike took England through was incredible. Perhaps, despite eventually going out in the semis against Croatia, this could be a new England after all?

Since then Southgate has steered his team to a final in the Covid-delayed European Championship of 2021, and a quarter-final defeat against France in Qatar in the winter World Cup of 2022. His record now stands second only to Sir Alf Ramsey, who guided England to their World Cup triumph in the summer of 1966. Fans may gripe about his game-management, question his tactical conservatism, implore him to make substitutions when contests are there to be won. But he has brought us closer to glory than so many of the men who went before him.

Tonight’s final against Spain in Berlin provides the opportunity for Southgate to bring his story full circle. The villain of the piece in ‘96 has a shot at redemption, a chance to end those long, painful 58 years of hurt, and claim a trophy in England’s first ever final appearance on foreign soil. Just like in ‘96, I’ll be watching the match at home on my sofa. Let’s just hope that if tears are shed once again, then this time they will be tears of joy. Come on England!