Rashad Sharaf has been watching Ahly for 81 years

As Egypt's most prestigious club prepares to mark its centennial, a vigorous 98-year-old "Uncle Rashad" still clearly remembers his first day at the historic club.

"I'll never forget the first day I walked through the gates of Ahly," said Rashad Sharaf, doyen of the club's many members and called "Amm" (uncle) as a sign of respect for his years.

"It was Wednesday, May 19, 1926 at 2:45 pm," he recalled with the kind of exactness that has earned him the title of "Ahly's memory."

"I wasn't yet 17 years old, and the love affair has since lasted for 81 years," he said laughing and showing gaps for teeth.

Despite his age, Rashad is remarkably quick on his feet and his gaze remains steady behind a pair of glasses attached by a string to a head crowned by a shock of white hair.

"In the garden back then, there were only these two palms," he said, pointing at two trees that are now surrounded by buildings and numerous plants on the club grounds on Cairo's leafy Gezira island in the middle of the Nile.

The club will celebrate its centennial on Tuesday with a match against Barcelona.

Ahly, meaning the "national" club, was founded April 24, 1907 by Egyptian nationalists looking to end the British occupiers' monopoly on sports, as symbolised by the nearby Gezira Club, a bastion of the English upper class.

"The club became a kind of nationalist base that Egyptians rallied around during the struggle for independence," said veteran sports commentator Alaa Sadeq, whose three volume history of the club comes out in August.

"Then there was its local, regional and African success with 99 championships in 100 years that just increased its popularity."

In 2000, the African football confederation (CAF) named Ahly the "African club of the century."

In December, the team came third in a global competition of football clubs held in Japan.

Annual club membership in Rashad's day was two Egyptian pounds -- "a small fortune in those days" or equivalent to half the monthly salary of a civil servant -- but as an athlete Rashad paid only 60 piasters a year.

Rashad played for two years in Ahly's reserve team at a time when Egyptian football legend Mokhtar al-Tetch -- "the greatest player of all time" -- dominated the club.

Rashad went on to work as a civil servant in the defence ministry, but at the same time held many positions at the club itself up until the present when he now, appropriately, supervises the library.

Married with three girls, and a boy and numerous grandchildren, Rashad has raised a tribe of Ahly supporters.

"All members of my family are part of the club, I would not have allowed in sons-in-laws backing rival clubs," he joked.

"With the exception of sickness and trips abroad, I have been coming here at 7 am every morning and left with the setting of the sun," he said about his typical day.

"I have so many wonderful memories of this place, but my best one dates all the way back to the 1940s, when I met King Faruq of Egypt, in the flesh, and assisted him into the club for a recital by Egyptian diva Umm Kalthum.

"Umm Kalthum was singing, and Faruq pulls up in a sports car -- no guards, no followers -- and I met him at the door," he recalled about a rare meeting with the country's then monarch who would be overthrown in 1952.

"Ahly's defeats and setbacks, I just don't remember, I automatically erase them and only keep the good memories," he said.

Not far away, some of the youngest members of the club play football wearing the distinctive red T-shirts of the team.

Though separated from them in age by some eight decades, Rashad shares their passion for the current team darling Mohammed Abu Treikah, the "smiling assassin".

Just on Saturday, Abu Treikah chipped in a sublime goal to cement a 2-0 victory over the Mamelodi Sundowns of South Africa and keep the team on track for a Champions League title.