by Amy Lawrence
JANET ROCASTLE:
It was really early hours that they came home. A couple of years ago when I was having a clear-out in the garage I found David’s and Mickey Thomas’s jackets from that day and one of their ties. I got them dry cleaned and sent Mickey’s one on to him.
GARY LEWIN:
Once we dropped the lads off in Southgate we went to Colney to drop off a few of the staff and Tony Donnelly and I stayed in the bus to go back to Highbury with the kit. We went down Highbury Hill about 4 o’clock in the morning and there was a street party going on. Once the crowd saw the team bus they went mad. We unloaded the kit, I bought all the newspapers on the way home. It was a long day. I used to take the trophies. Nobody at the club was there to take the trophy so I took it home for safety. I had it at home and brought it back on the Sunday. I’ve got pictures with the kids. I didn’t tell anyone it was there though; I was so nervous about having it.
NIALL QUINN:
When we came out the club it was bright. Paul and Tony stayed with me and then everyone went home. I had to get ready to go to the airport. I went by taxi and collected Dave O’Leary and we were gone by lunchtime.
DAVID O’LEARY:
Looking back, my wife and son had missed the whole thing. It had been his birthday the day we won the league. He was tired, he was young. My wife took him to bed and they both fell asleep. The phone started exploding in the house about half past ten at night. She was thinking, what’s gone on here? People from everywhere were ringing. Have you heard? Have you seen? The next day I went to give my son my medal but he was more interested in his Thomas the Tank Engine. I had to go to Dublin that day to go and join the Irish squad. I got on a plane that morning and everybody started clapping. A person at the ticket desk told me he was an Arsenal fan and said if I wanted to drive the plane I could. I got off the plane in Dublin and Man United fans – they weren’t even Arsenal fans – were patting my back saying, Dave, we’re so delighted for you. There was a few happy people but also there was a couple of very unhappy people in the camp. Seeing Ray Houghton and John Aldridge, I don’t think they were over the shock.
PENNY SMITH:
We got back really late. I was back at work Saturday morning; I left more or less as Alan came in. My friend Martin stayed at our house, and when I got back from work he said, ‘Oh, I’ve been run off my feet!’ Alan was a bit worse for wear and Martin was answering the phone, everyone had been calling and ringing the bell. He was fending people off.
ROY DIXON:
I was so excited to see Lee when he came home but more relieved than anything after all that worry. My wife had been at the golf club watching it on television there and when they won she bought drinks all round and it cost me £500. There you go. That was my experience of Lee winning the league. After all the years going to the park, watching him play as a boy, putting the nets up, taking the nets down, it was wonderful.
ALAN SMITH:
The next day we went to Lee’s with our friends Martin and Clare, who had driven to the game with my wife Penny. Lee had got the old VHS. He’d got the match. We watched the game again. Lee kept stopping on his good bits! Come the evening we decided to have a barbecue at my house and invited all the lads.
PAUL MERSON:
Alan’s face was a picture. Honestly, when he opened the door to see us all there he thought, for God’s sake. He didn’t think we’d come!
PENNY SMITH:
God knows where I got food from because in those days I don’t think supermarkets opened all the time. I did feed everyone but Alan wasn’t feeling very well and he said, ‘Off I go to bed.’ He went off and left me with all these people. Perry Groves went into my bathroom and put bottles of bubble bath down the toilet and flushed the chain and there were bubbles coming out the toilet.
ALAN SMITH:
Grovesy was rearranging things and being annoying like he could. He was obviously drunk but I was also quite ill that night. I’d got a bit of the shakes. Obviously too much alcohol and I went up and lay on my bed and eventually the lads went.
NIGEL WINTERBURN:
I didn’t realise what we had actually achieved until we did the open-top bus on the Sunday and then you start to realise you are league champions. That means something pretty special. The other day my wife said to me, ‘Do you remember the phone calls I got when the game was going on?’ I had completely forgotten. During the game my wife’s sister-in-law called up and said, I’ve had a funny feeling something’s going to happen in this game. Then we get a free-kick. I take the free-kick and Smudger scores. Later on in the evening as the game is still going on she calls again and says, ‘I’ve had that same feeling.’ I mean, people are going to say that’s so made up it’s absolutely ridiculous. It was incredible. I didn’t know that those feelings were going to produce those two goals. Maybe it was fate. I don’t know. I’m going to believe it. I couldn’t care less what anybody else thinks if I’m honest. It’s fantasy stuff, isn’t it? It was our destiny. As time goes by you start to realise what Arsenal Football Club is really all about and by the time you finish and retire it sits in the heart. It’s always there.
ALAN SMITH:
When we came in for the open-top bus ride on the Sunday morning Tony Adams was sat on the steps of the Marble Halls because he’d been out all night. He’d lost track of time. I think he’d got here about 7 in the morning. He just came in from a night out; he was a state.
LYNNE CHANEY:
I was on my way in to Highbury and there was Mickey driving up Drayton Park and he pulled over and said ‘hop in’. He was the last one to arrive. I jumped in and got a lift. Everyone recognised him. I remember as he came in the car park at the Clock End he clipped the gate. I was like, how did you score that goal? Ha ha.
DAVID MILES:
At Highbury we were doing some annual renovation on the front of the stadium and we had the whole front of the East Stand scaffolded. Scaffolding is designed probably to hold half a dozen guys and two pots of paint. On the Sunday morning, the parade left from the stadium to Islington Town Hall and I was on the front steps with the chief of police coordinating which players were going to go on the bus and which players’ wives. Then all of a sudden, the chief of police said to me, we’re going to have to move quickly. I said, why? He said, turn round and have a look on the scaffolding. There were hundreds of people trying to get a vantage point to see the team leave and we looked up and the scaffolding was actually moving and swaying and whipping away from the stand because of the sheer weight of people. The policeman said to me, ‘Go and tell George Graham now. Unless we move in two minutes the buses will go, players or not.’ We got everyone on and luckily everyone came down the scaffolding to follow the buses without any incident.
JO HARNEY:
I was up on someone’s shoulders and I’ve not got a clue who they were. This guy was just walking me round. He had a bulldog on a lead with an Arsenal shirt on. There were people everywhere. Hanging off lamp-posts. Four or five people like sardines sitting on a window ledge.
MICHAEL THOMAS:
I came back to life then. That was the best. I don’t know how many people were there at that parade. It was incredible to see everybody there and us with the league trophy. I had a hat on someone gave me: ‘Mickey did it’. It only took a minute and Mickey went and did it. I’ve still got that little baseball cap. It was crazy.
STEVE BOULD:
They said there were 250,000 people lining the streets. I actually realised that day what a huge club it was.
PERRY GROVES:
I remember someone was hanging off a tree and they jumped on to the top of the bus. Everybody was laughing and joking. Normally you’d go and get him out of there but it was: all right, mate, how are you doing? We said, look, you’d better get off at the next stop and he was having photographs and a laugh with the lads. Things like that really hit home.
LEE DIXON:
That was another big, big high. I’ve never seen as many people around Highbur
y and Islington in my life and I think it was a shock to everybody. I love the scenes in Fever Pitch when the goal goes in on the night, of all the people flooding round Highbury and they filmed that bloke on the taxi. It really hits home to me how much it meant to the people of that area. It was mad. There were people hanging by one arm out of windows. I remember they just kept throwing cans of beer up on to the bus. At the town hall they’d constructed a couple of planks hanging out the window and we were sort of climbing out this window on to some sort of platform. Health and safety would have had a nightmare. We were just leaning over with thousands and thousands of people below us and how anyone didn’t fall off I’ll never know.
PERRY GROVES:
I remember saying to the lads, I’m going to sing a song. I remember the gaffer going, ‘Get him off that balcony.’ He said, ‘Grovesy, you’re tone deaf. You can’t sing.’ I went pfft. Frank Sinatra hasn’t had 250,000 fans. I just had them in the palm of my hand. It was pretty surreal to be honest.
JOHN LUKIC:
As a player you’re almost cocooned in your little world but suddenly you see the pleasure that it gives to so many people around the place. That’s what brings home the enormity of what you’ve actually achieved.
NIALL QUINN:
All those lovely shots of the boys on the bus with the crowds. David O’Leary and I watched them in a hotel in Dublin on the news. I didn’t get a medal because in those days you had to get 14 matches under your belt to qualify. I got a silver tray from the chairman. But I still felt part of it because we had shared all those years together. Besides, the title was decided on goals scored and I got one against Everton that season.
PENNY SMITH:
I’d had shorts on at Anfield because it was a hot day and when we went on the open-top bus my legs were black and blue, because after the goals and after we’d won we were all diving around the plastic seats. After the open-top bus we all went to TGI Friday’s in Covent Garden for something to eat. I was still feeling a bit queasy at this point, not knowing I was pregnant. The next day Alan met up with England, and the England doctor, who was also the Arsenal doctor, had to give him an injection in his bum because I think he’d got a bit of alcoholic poisoning. It was a mad few days.
LEE DIXON:
I had the biggest emotional crash you’ve ever seen. I’d never been that high before as far as football emotion is concerned. It was just a peak. It was incredible. It was overwhelming. So coming down over the next couple of days it was just dreadful. So low. So depressed. I couldn’t understand it because I’d never experienced it before like that. I’ve since spoken to John Lukic about it and he said the same. You learn as you go through your career that when you’re up there there’s only one place to go and it’s just a matter of time before you start to come down to reality. So there was a definite learning curve of how to deal with the ups and downs of sport emotion.
I’ve got the game in its entirety on VHS. When I’m a bit down or I need a bit of a lift for whatever reason I’ll shove it in there and wind it on to 88 minutes and then press play. I sometimes put Fever Pitch on and watch that film because you get a supporter’s viewpoint. As players we’re very privileged to be on the playing side of it but you miss out on some of the supporting side of it, which I think is the most important. Because when I talk to people who went to the game I want to hear their stories.
JOHN LUKIC:
I went off a cliff. You have the build-up and the momentum of trying to achieve something and when you’ve actually achieved it and you’ve got it in your hands you’re sort of going over the edge. And that’s where I found myself. What’s the next thing? I don’t know how to describe that. Now the memories are always there whether you watch it on TV or whether you replay it in your head. I don’t watch my old games – that’s for my children and, God willing, the grandchildren in future if they want to get a few tapes out and have a look at what the old bloke did. To win the ultimate in British football, I’ll take that.
DAVID O’LEARY:
The best team over the whole season wins the league. If you have ever won a cup final that’s the most memorable day. I thought we had a bit of both there. It was a shoot-out for the biggest prize out there. I just don’t think there’s anything to top it so far in football.
PAUL DAVIS:
Even now I’m not sure if Mickey knows how big it is. I don’t think he knows how to deal with it. I’m not sure. It’s almost like he hasn’t come to terms with the whole thing, what’s happened to him. Or to us. It is just the impression I get.
MICHAEL THOMAS:
It is quite strange. I’m a private person. I don’t like the fame side of the football world. It’s even hard talking about it sometimes. But it was a bit weird when you’ve got people looking at you wherever you are in the country. I thought: wow. I don’t think I can get used to this. That was tough. I don’t think I’ve ever got used to it. I wouldn’t say it’s a burden because it’s never a burden to score a winning goal and to see your team win the championship. But fame and me, I don’t think we mix. I just like the quiet life really to be honest. Just as long as I’m appreciated that’s all that matters to me, more than anything.
TONY ADAMS:
You might laugh at this but having won a lot of youth team trophies, winning felt pretty normal. When I started to speak to people like Dave O’Leary he was like, what are you on? This might never happen in your career again. Don’t you realise what you’ve just done? What we’ve just done? I’m going to say it was the best. I happened to be there. I get so many people even to this day who talk about it. It’s iconic. It’s just a moment in time. With Hillsborough you had something else in the equation and it was powerful. I just was enormously grateful that I was there on the day to lift the trophy up after 18 years of hurt.
There’s a certain place that you’ve been to together. I don’t want to get too deep but I’ve been to hell a couple of times in my life already. Other people have been to the same hell that I’ve been to so once you’ve been to the same hell you can identify and you can enjoy and laugh about those kind of things. Only people that were at Anfield that day and in that dressing room can laugh and joke and appreciate the story that we wrote. I’ll always be grateful for that. It was a magical moment in my career and I’m really grateful that I shared it with some great pals and some great winners. Great stuff.
ALAN SMITH:
A lot of us were mid-twenties. We had a long time to go in our careers – those back four lads did especially – but I think we sensed something, which is quite unusual, because at the time you are enveloped by the occasion and by the passion and you’re not able to take a step back. But I think we realised that it can’t possibly get any better than this. How can we trump this moment? And I don’t think anything did. Even for those boys that went on to win the Double under Arsène Wenger, in terms of one-off matches, that was it. The Sergio Agüero goal for Man City against QPR is the most famous in Premier League times. It was an amazing moment for City to clinch the league in the last seconds. But of course what makes ours stand out was it was a standalone game. It was the two teams vying for the title at the end of the league campaign. Everybody else had packed up. Gone home. Gone to the beach. It would never be allowed to happen now but that’s how it panned out so you’ve got a huge audience watching this shootout. With all due respect, the City game can’t compare.
PAUL MERSON:
I was lucky enough on Sky to cover the Man City game when Agüero scored the goal. That’s nothing like it. It was a great finish. But these were the two top teams playing. The season is finished for everyone else. This is the last game. You’ve got to go to the best team in the country for the last how many years and win by two clear goals to win the league. Honestly, if it was a book and I was sitting round the pool on holiday and I read it and that was the end I’d throw it in the pool. Someone would say ‘What are you doing?’ And I’d say ‘I’ve just read the biggest load of shit I’ve ever read.’ It couldn’
t happen again ever. It’s impossible.
PERRY GROVES:
When we do meet each other nowadays there’s a warmth there and a happy feeling because you’ve shared that one huge moment. It is a bit of a zeitgeist – right place, right time. You could have rose-tinted spectacles if you like with nostalgia but I think the fans look back and go, ‘Wow.’ Because we were working-class boys, predominantly English and Irish, just local lads who’d been the best players in their school team, best players in their district team, best players in the county team and then obviously worked their way through different avenues. We came together at that moment in time. You have to be lucky in your career and I feel lucky I was there the same time as George Graham. I don’t care what anybody says, he made our careers. He turned us from players with a little bit of ability and desire into a top-quality group who won titles and won cups for Arsenal Football Club. That era was all down to him without any shadow of a doubt.