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AMY LAWRENCE:
We had something sounding like psychedelic Greek music on the coach home, which added to the surreal nature of it all. I remember getting off back at Highbury and being calf deep in the detritus of a party – cans, bottles, you name it. Then a lift back to Anna’s house to pick up the video to watch immediately and finding her mum had decorated the front door: ‘Arsenal Champions 1989’. Seeing it written out was like another big emotional wave. Jesus, this really happened.
ALAN PICKRELL:
We drove back to Burger King, Leicester Square, as in those days there wasn’t many places open at 4–5 a.m.
MARK BRINDLE:
In the car adrenaline pumping. We were all singing until suddenly I realised it had gone a bit quiet. It might have had something to do with the fact I was driving at 120mph and the car was about to shake apart. The party lasted all weekend until I finally ran out of adrenaline and was woken lying in the sun on London Bridge station by a concerned British Rail man who packed me on a train to Woolwich. I have no recollection of how I got there.
MARK SCHMID:
Journey home flew by and when we pulled up outside Highbury the crowd cheered us as returning heroes – we hadn’t even kicked a ball! Handshakes and hugs all round as we got off the coach. On to Trafalgar Square, dancing in the fountains with new-found Gooner friends.
SIMON POSNER:
When we got home at around 3 a.m., our father was sitting on the roof of his car, drinking champagne.
PETER NORTON:
I had an Arsenal bedspread with the crest on it. Hadn’t used it for a while (I was 20) and my folks had found it. When I got home after watching the game it was hanging from the front of our house and specifically my bedroom window. It stayed there all weekend.
JAMES CORBETT:
We headed back to London in a daze. Stopping at the services we saw several familiar away day supporters and everyone was so happy, hugging; the petrol station was like being at a party. Onwards we went and then we found ourselves behind the team coach and the objective was to follow it to see where it was heading. Into Southgate it went and then I got caught at traffic lights, we lost it and the decision was to head to Highbury, where we found no coach but still a lot of supporters. The coach had headed to the Winners club. We were gutted as we knew Niall Quinn (he was dating a good friend of our family) and felt confident we would have got in.
SIMON CUTNER:
I lived in Southgate at that time and heading in – not a car or person in sight at that early hour – I noticed a coach approaching us. On closer inspection it was the Arsenal team coach. And it had just stopped outside a local nightclub. So, naturally, I span the car around and greeted our Division One champions off the coach. Us dressed in our full Arsenal colours. The players hugged us and cheered with us. We tried our best to enter the club but that was not permitted.
DAN PILER:
The guy who organised the coach I travelled up on had welcomed us earlier that day by stating, ‘If we win tonight all the players are coming back to my club, and you’re all welcome to join us.’ As we had never met him we were slightly sceptical that this would actually happen (the players at the club, and the bit about us winning). As the coach pulled away from Anfield he pulled a crate of bubbly out and we happily toasted our way back down the motorway.
TONY PARASCHOU:
I had organised the coach to Anfield. There were 19 of us, and I invited everyone back to the club. My brother and I ran Winners, a private members’ club – a luxury bar with 24 snooker tables and a gym underneath. A lot of the Arsenal boys would come and relax in the afternoon with a few drinks and play a little bit of snooker and stuff like that and they were left alone. I wouldn’t say they were fixtures of the club but they were there a lot and one day we were just having a chat and I said to the boys, ‘It’s here if you want it.’ We would lay on food, platters of steaks. Quinny turned round and said, whatever happens we’ll come – not that we believed they would. When we got off the coach one of the staff came running up to me. He’s like, ‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’ And I said, ‘Who’s coming?’ ‘The boys are on their way. We’ve just had a phone call. The team coach is coming down. They’re about an hour behind you.’
NICK CALLOW:
One of my schoolfriends, Theo, knew Tony and that was how we ended up on his coach and then suddenly part of the group invited to the salubrious, exclusive membership bar Winners, which on the outside didn’t look as good as it did on the inside. They had to clear out the people in there and we had to all go down the side toilet and hide in this little gym. We were hiding under tables all going, ‘Shhh! Shhh! Shhh! The police are coming. Someone’s coming.’ I was thinking, why are we going through all this just to have a drink? We could have a drink anywhere. The players aren’t going to come. Then all of a sudden they started coming in. One by one. Paul Merson, Alan Smith, Rocky, Michael Thomas. Brian Marwood was mental. The trophy.
TIM BATES:
They did a guard of honour for David O’Leary. He walked in through the crowd of players with everyone clapping him.
DAN PILER:
It’s difficult to recount just how monumentally mental that night was. The sight of the newly crowned English Football League champions trooping in with their Aquascutum blazers suggests some formality, but their ties at half mast hinted at the party that had already been in full swing on the team coach. Our jaws hit the floor with each player that appeared through the doorway but we eventually regained our composure and settled in for the night.
We were just one of the boys for the rest of the night, playing pool, singing songs and drinking long into the early hours. I’ve lost count of how many times I stepped back, looked at where I was, who I was with and what had happened with these football gods just a few hours earlier … and said to myself, ‘Fuuuuuuuuuck!’ I didn’t want the night to end and we finally staggered out into the bright May sunshine in the morning. I had Perry Groves’ tie, my match ticket and programme signed by the two goal-scorers and a head full of memories like no others.
SAUL LERHFREUND:
The players wanted to play pool and we challenged them to the odd game. We thought it would be fun if we played for clothes. I don’t think we had much to give them though. Smudger beat me and he just gave me his tie after. There you go.
NICK CALLOW:
Believe it or not I actually beat Gus Caesar at pool that night. He said, ‘I suppose you want my tie or something.’ I said, ‘No, you’re all right.’ We all thought he was a Tottenham fan. Someone nicked Tony Adams’ blazer. This lovely navy blazer with the yellow cannon on the crest. It was enormous on him. We ganged up on him and made him take the blazer back to Highbury. Even we were scared of George Graham as fans.
TONY PARASCHOU:
Tony Adams locked up the club with me. It was daylight. The last three people out of there were myself, my wife and Tony Adams.
THEO DEMETRIOU:
At one point I remember looking around and thinking, just four hours ago I was watching these boys score the most unbelievable goal in the history of our club and now we’re sitting here. It was what we were living for. We were living for that day to win the league for Arsenal. We’d gone to every single game that season because we thought there was something special about this team. I left with Mickey Thomas and we picked up the first delivery of newspapers. We walked around the corner from the club. There was a sweet shop as you used to call them in those days. It was about 6.30 in the morning. The papers were piled outside in their bundles. He went and picked the bundles up. I helped him. Then we sat there on the floor reading the newspapers. We were splattered all over them obviously. Just amazing.
PART IV: MEANWHILE BACK IN LIVERPOOL
MICHAEL DIGBY:
In the pub in Liverpool before the game we’d bumped into a random bloke with his girlfriend and got chatting. He gave us his number and we thought nothing of it. Anyway after the game we called this bloke and he invited us round to his flat. We go
t there and there was wall-to-wall photos of him and his brothers with celebs – turns out it was the brother of the boxer John Conteh. We stayed up all night drinking.
BARRY HUGHES:
I remember leaving the stadium and wanting to go on the buses back to London, but I walked back to the city centre and went to my regular indie club night at JD’s on Hanover Street, which I went to being a student in Liverpool that year. The next morning I got up and bought all the papers from a shop on Penny Lane. Unfortunately a lot of them were northern editions and had headlines like ‘Robbed’. I still have them.
SI TALBOT:
I was in my final year of teacher training at Chester College in 1989. A good friend of mine was a big Liverpool fan whose uncle was chief scout. I stood on the Kop with him. After the game my mate took me back to his dad’s working men’s club where I was bought drinks all night.
MARK DAVIES:
I am a Middlesbrough supporter so was one of the few people there that night that was neutral. I was editor of the student magazine at Liverpool Poly and we’d gone down to Anfield on the Monday after the tragedy to leave flowers on the pitch. The atmosphere on the Kop at the game was buoyant, a sense of expectation of a Double which might ease the pain a little. So the sense of disbelief, anger even, was palpable when Thomas scored and the league title disappeared into the scrum of yellow at the other end of the pitch. I stayed on to congratulate the Arsenal players on an emptying Kop. The game continued to play a role in my life. On 13 April 1997 I went to see Fever Pitch for a first date with the woman who is now my wife of 18 years.
CHRIS WIGGINS:
We had parked in the street a few minutes’ walk from the ground before the game and as we got out of the car the person whose house we parked outside said he would keep an eye on the car for us. After the game, when we got back to the car there was some shouting from up the road. He opened the door and asked us if we wanted to come in till the shouting was over. In conversation with him and his wife it turned out they were Everton fans, but their son was a Liverpool fan who had died at Hillsborough. They made us sandwiches and poured beers. Their hospitality was amazing, especially as football had taken their son from them a few weeks previously. Of course, for us it was ‘one of those nights’ but for them it was something different entirely.
PART V: I WASN’T THERE
JASON WOODS:
As a Spurs supporter, I was working as an 18-year-old behind the bar at The Compasses in Abbots Langley, Watford on the night of this match. The only TV in the pub was a tiny set perched on a ledge very high behind the bar above the optics. The landlord, Ron Vodden, was an Arsenal fan and most of the pub had Gooners obviously drinking in it that night. As a Spurs fan, I had to watch and serve all these people all night. When Mickey Thomas went on that run and scored the whole pub erupted! The final whistle blew and Ron went down to the cellar to get two crates of champagne and then ordered a lock-in. He asked me if I could serve on for a bit and he would make it worth my while. The party got started with all these Gooners standing on chairs singing their hearts out. After 1.30 a.m. with everyone eventually gone Ron thanked me and gave me an extra 20 quid. I said thanks, Ron, and can I say something? Yes, he replied. I said, you can stick your job right up your effing Arsenal, and then left.
JANET ROCASTLE:
I was at my mum’s house on the border of Brixton and Clapham in what was my childhood bedroom because David was away and, with a new baby, it was nice to be around my family. I had just had Melissa in February. I had just fed her, she was lying on my lap, I was patting her to sleep when the second goal went in. I nearly leaped up and dropped her. But I didn’t. I managed to remember I had a baby on my lap.
JAMES LUKIC:
It is all so vivid. When Arsenal scored early in the second half I can remember that my mum was cleaning the downstairs toilet and obviously heard the commentary. She came running through with her rubber gloves on and said ‘Who’s scored? Who’s scored?’ The move for the second goal still feels like it was yesterday as it started with my uncle John in goal. My dad recorded the match on VHS and I remember for weeks afterwards watching it back on video and rewinding the second goal and watching it over and over again. The final thing I remember was the camera showing the Arsenal fans celebrating after the final whistle and just thinking of my dad and grandparents being in the away end. It looked absolutely joyous.
NICK HORNBY:
After Alan Smith’s goal I remember thinking, oh, there’s no point scoring again now because they’re only going to go and let one in. So don’t do it yet. That would be a disaster. Winning 2–0 now would be a disaster. When Michael Thomas missed that chance I remember the thought going through my head that we’d be talking about this for years, when Michael Thomas could have won us the league … and then we entered this parallel universe where my team who I’d been watching for all those years could win the league and there was an ecstatic pile of bodies on the floor in this living room in Highbury. And then everyone got up and went ‘How long’s left? How long’s left?’ Those last two minutes were terrifying.
Then it was just shouting and hugging. I ran to the corner shop and bought a bottle of champagne. It was a make of champagne I’d never heard of before. I don’t know what the bloke said to me. ‘That’s £30 please’ or something like that – in 1989 – and I was like ‘Oh whatever’ and went back in and drank this bottle of champagne. People just started pouring out and then arriving and so we went back out having drunk the champagne and I stayed there for quite a while. It felt like you were living in Greece or somewhere. It was really extraordinary. People in their cars hooting their horns. It wasn’t like English behaviour in fact. I mean, perhaps it is. Perhaps people do that in Liverpool every year, it’s just that we never got to see. But it was very exotic and carnival-like.
ALAN DAVIES:
We love Mickey. We used to go ‘Oh Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey …’ Mickey was one of ours. Mickey played left-back in the youth team. He was a monster. He was so fast. So fit. So strong. So fearless. Quiet. Never spoke. Just patrolled the field, winning the ball, giving it to good players. But he had a lung-busting fitness. He could get forward and he got in the box at the end and he took his moment. He didn’t snatch it, like he had the first chance. He had a look at Bruce Grobbelaar. One of the best goalkeepers in the world. He had a look at the net. He took his time and we’re like, HIT IT! We just want him to lamp it. Just blast it through his face into the net. Why is he waiting?! Then pandemonium. That’s the only word to describe it. Pandemonium. Just all over each other. Tom swears he took my virginity in that moment. Cigarette down the back of the sofa. Damian’s dad trying to stop the sofa burning, which was a big fear in the 70s and 80s – the smouldering flame.
We were very excitable. We watched the post-match interviews such as they were. The whole thing was being steered by Brian Moore in the most exemplary way, and we can all recite his commentary. We went down to the Neptune pub, which was on the beach in Whitstable, and there were loads of students in there who didn’t like football. We found one other Arsenal fan who was going around Whitstable looking for Arsenal fans to be with and then someone had a house party. They played quite a lot of Motown songs and Damian and I turned the lyrics of every song into some song about Arsenal to the point people were pouring drinks on us to shut us up. It was one of the greatest days of our lives.
DAVID MILES:
A few of us staff were watching it together inside Highbury on a rented TV. The way the goal built up it was like suspended animation. Everyone was just rising from their seats as they do at the games. The son of our current chairman Sir Chips Keswick, Toby, was actually working in the box office and was one of the guests on the night. When Mickey started his run he stood up and he started walking towards the TV, and it was as though it was sucking him in, saying: this is it. We were shouting: ‘Get out the way!’
; When Mickey scored the goal the whole thing went to mayhem and then a few minutes later we were aware of people in the street and we opened the windows. We were about three floors up and looked down and there were people congregating – 50 turned to a hundred and in the end it was like that scene out of Fever Pitch with over a thousand people. That went on for quite a few hours.
IAIN COOK:
They were renovating the front of the East Stand and it looked like a scene out of one of those old movies where everyone’s hanging from the rigging. Everyone was out there celebrating. When we went to go the only way out was out the back of the West Stand and at the time the pitch was having the under-soil heating done so it was like a ploughed field.
LYNNE CHANEY:
I remember leaving at 7.30 in the morning and walking across the pitch in the mud.
DERMOT O’LEARY:
I’m in this quiet village called Great Horkesley just outside Colchester and it’s killing me. I was on the floor. I remember looking up and seeing my legs kicking. I was so elated and excited and all I wanted to do was to go to Highbury so I could just celebrate with other people. The only person I could celebrate with is my buddy who doesn’t really know anything about football and is just round my house for band practice. Nothing compares to watching that on the television and the effect it had on me at the time.