Nearly Reach the Sky

by Brian Williams

  The West Ham fans in the Arsenal end surged forward – there were thousands of them. At our end, the isolated groups of ecstatic Hammers celebrated, too – none more so than our merry band, conducted by Claire. The Gooners surrounding us looked as thunderous as the sky above.

  The pitch really was disgraceful – there were pools of water everywhere. It had the appearance of a paddy field (perhaps that’s why Rice liked playing there – sorry, I’ll get my coat). A back pass from Billy Bonds came up short in the quagmire and Radford nipped in thinking he would score, before West Ham keeper Mervyn Day took him out in spectacular style. Everyone knew it was a penalty … except the referee! Had Arsène Wenger been there he would have spontaneously combusted with rage.

  Despite the conditions, Brooking was imperious. He seemed to float across the sodden ground. Every time he got the ball I felt we could score again. Eventually, following a cheeky nutmeg, he played the killer pass that put Taylor in for his second goal and secured the victory that nobody – except perhaps Claire – had predicted. And during this exceptional display it just came to me: ‘Trevor Brooking walks on water, tra-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la!’ No sooner had it left my mouth I realised what an idiot I must have sounded. My singing voice is so bad I was asked to mime in assembly at school, and there were 1,500 kids at my comprehensive. But that wasn’t what worried me most: when you sing at a football match you have to do it as a collective; there’s no room for solo artists. I expected withering looks from the lads who had gathered in our part of the stand. Instead they took up the song and belted out another stanza of ‘Trevor Brooking walks on water, tra-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la!’ Perhaps the fact that Claire was unaware of the social conventions that surround these things and joined in with such gusto helped. Whatever the cause, we soon had up to thirty happy Hammers singing as one. Embarrassed? I was as proud as Punch!

  I hoped other groups of West Ham supporters nearby would follow our lead, but I don’t remember it catching on that day. In fact, it wasn’t a song you heard all that often at subsequent games, if I’m going to be totally honest, but it did get wheeled out from time to time – more often at away fixtures where the travelling supporters always have a greater repertoire than at home. And whenever I heard it (I was never brave enough to try to instigate the singing again) my heart swelled with pride.

  I have always been intrigued by the singing and chanting at a football match. In church it is led by a priest. In a soccer stadium it is far less clear-cut who calls the tune.

  At West Ham we have some songs that are unique to us. How were they composed in the first place?

  Take a particular favourite, still sung in praise of a goalkeeper who last turned out for us in 1998:

  My name is Ludek Miklosko

  I come from near Moscow

  I play in goal for West Ham

  And when I walk down the street

  Everyone that I meet

  Says: ‘Hey – big boy

  What’s your name?’

  My name is Ludek Miklosko…

  Leaving aside for one moment the small geographical error that Miklosko was actually born in Prostějov in the Czech Republic (which is about 1,000 miles from the Russian capital), this is an absolute West Ham classic and, unlike my effort, it could not have happened spontaneously. Who wrote it? And how did they get the people around them to start singing it? They don’t hand out hymn sheets at Upton Park. (But if they did, perhaps they could include the correct words to ‘Bubbles’. It’s ‘They fly so high, nearly reach the sky’ not ‘They fly so high, they reach the sky’ – please can we all try to get this right in future, everyone?)

  Anyway, back to the best game I never saw. From what I’ve witnessed since on video highlights, the night Eintracht Frankfurt came over for the second leg of our Cup Winners’ Cup encounter, Upton Park was almost as big a mudbath as Highbury had been. But that didn’t stop Brooking producing another jaw-dropping display.

  I wasn’t there to see it because, on the way to east London, I got cleaned up by an articulated lorry on the North Circular. Such was the mess that truck made of my beloved Ford Escort (red; the four-door 1300; good runner but some mild corrosion – near offers accepted) that I didn’t get home in time to see The Mid-Week Match either.

  And ITV was not like Sky – it didn’t show the same footage over and over again in a television Groundhog Day that lasted all week. You watched the highlights on the night or not at all. So for years I had to use my imagination about what went on under the Boleyn lights as we attempted to overturn a 2–1 deficit from the first leg. I had the newspaper reports of course, and for weeks afterwards I would pester those around me at League fixtures to tell me what they recalled of that magical evening. But it wasn’t the same as being there.

  While we’re on the subject of ‘being there’, this might be a good time to point out that it doesn’t always pay to believe what people tell you about how to get there in the first place. The fella I was going to the game with was something of a hippy by nature and a big follower of a self-styled Tibetan monk called Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, who advocated a method of getting around called ‘astral travelling’.

  Prompted by my mate – who reckoned he could do it – I tried to master astral travelling myself. The idea is to project your inner self into the ether and then control your out-of-body experience, allowing a ghostly form of yourself to go wherever you like (a sort of spiritual Oyster card). The benefits seemed obvious: for one thing you could float over Upton Park and watch a game for free without actually having to slide out from under your Slumberland continental quilt. And it would take all the hassle out of getting to away games. But I could never do it, which is why I’d saved my hard-earned cash and bought a second-hand Escort instead.

  It turned out there was a good reason I couldn’t astral travel. The whole thing was total bollocks and Tuesday Lobsang Rampa (real name Cyril Henry Hoskins) was, in fact, the son of a plumber rather than a spiritual guide with an A–Z of the cosmos.

  Back on the A406, my bullshitting mate and I had come within a whisker of spending the rest of eternity floating in the ether after a juggernaut misjudged the moment to change lanes and solved the problem of my rusting flitch plates once and for all – by obliterating the front half of my car. And while the collision didn’t prove fatal for us – nearly, but not quite – it did for my beloved jam jar.

  Had we made it to E13 we would have witnessed one of the most truly outstanding West Ham performances of all time.

  The highlights I have watched subsequently offer no evidence that anyone trotted out ‘Trevor Brooking Walks on Water’ that night. But there is a burst of ‘Aye-aye-ippy’ as we put Frankfurt to the sword. Was there a squadron of Boy Scouts in the ground that night? I’ve sung some questionable songs at Upton Park in my time (including a highly juvenile version of ‘Distant Drums’ that still makes me redden with shame at the memory). But ‘Aye-aye-ippy’? What were you thinking, guys?

  Trevor Brooking scored twice that night. Contrary to public opinion, he did not use his head purely for thinking. Occasionally he would use it to score goals for West Ham. This was one of those nights when he did just that – with a powerful header from close to the penalty spot at the start of the second half.

  That made the tie all square on aggregate. Brooking’s pass from inside his own half gave Keith Robson the chance to slam the ball home from 25 yards to give West Ham the overall lead. Then Brooking conjured up a little piece of magic that convinced me he truly could have walked on water and replicated several other miracles had he not been such an unassuming and all-round decent chap.

  This time he was the one on the receiving end of a pass from the West Ham half. His first touch – with his left foot – gave him the space he needed; his second – with the right foot – eased the ball into the bottom corner. The TV cameras naturally concentrated on Brooking as he ran towards the West Ham bench to celebrate, rather than following the Frankfurt defender who had tried, with a spectacular
lack of success, to cover back and had last been seen hurtling towards the Priory Road turnstiles after being utterly bamboozled by that wickedly deceptive shimmy. So we never discovered if he was ever able to find the right money to re-enter the ground.

  You really do have to be something out of the ordinary to end up having a stand named after you. And they don’t give out knighthoods lightly. Trust me, Sir Trevor Brooking really was different class – take a look at the highlights of the Frankfurt game if you’re still not convinced.

  That night, as I sat by the side of the road contemplating my mangled Ford Escort, West Ham’s favourite son taught the Germans everything there is to know about fußball. Although, come to think of it, he had yet to be tapped on the shoulder by the queen. If we are going to be strictly accurate, Sir Trevor was still plain old Mister Brooking back then. But who cares? That’s just splitting Herrs.

  Chapter 5

  The West Ham Way

  DON’T BE FOOLED by the sardonic humour at West Ham – we take this football lark very seriously indeed. Believe me, you won’t hear people using words like ‘footy’ in the Boleyn Ground. You’ll hear other words beginning with f, but not footy.

  And you can forget all this romantic twaddle that we’d rather watch our beloved Irons lose 6–5 in the game of the season than grind out a 1–0 win. Where do people get ideas like that?

  Some years ago my ears pricked up when I heard on the radio that Man Utd had won 5–3 at White Hart Lane – a result made even more remarkable by the fact that Tottenham had been 3–0 up at half time. The venerable gentleman who had been watching the game at BBC licence-payers’ expense was particularly enthusiastic about United’s performance when asked for his summary of the game; in fact, he reckoned the visitors had ‘sprinkled stardust’ over north London and any Spurs fan who witnessed the event would consider themselves lucky to have been there. I don’t think so, my friend. I can’t believe there is a supporter in the land who would feel anything but despair after watching a capitulation of that magnitude. (Some say the commentator in question is an institution. Personally, I think he should be in one.)

  While we’re on the subject of misfortune befalling Tottenham Hotspur (an occurrence dear to the heart of any West Ham supporter), this was the game that spawned news reports of a Spurs fan who was so confident of victory at half time that he took the annoying cliché about ‘putting your mortgage on it’ and did just that.

  The story goes that the guy was keen to impress a new girlfriend, and was no doubt feeling pretty smug when the team he had just introduced into her life trooped off at the interval three goals to the good against the reigning champions. But rather than trying to press home his advantage with a mug of Bovril and a meat pie as any normal man would do, he got on his mobile (which would have been the size of a house brick back then) and arranged for someone to place a six-figure bet, equivalent to the value of his home loan, on his behalf. Forty-five minutes and a liberal helping of stardust later, the bloke had no house. History does not record if he had still had a girlfriend.

  Tottenham-supporting friends (I know, embarrassing isn’t it?) reckon this is just an urban myth, although I’m not so sure. They like to portray themselves as pessimists, but in recent years they have been a pretty cocksure bunch and I can just picture one of them making that call. Your typical West Ham fan, on the other hand, would be considerably more cautious in similar circumstances. When you’ve watched your team throw away a 3–0 lead at home to the likes of Wimbledon (1998) and West Brom (2003) you don’t start counting your chickens until they are surrounded by roast potatoes having been plucked, stuffed and cooked until the juices run clear. Snatching disaster from the jaws of triumph just doesn’t come as a surprise any more – it’s simply the West Ham way of doing things.

  I should point out that at West Ham the way we do things is not to be confused with the West Ham Way – a phrase generally used to describe a free-flowing style of football that the supporters want to see.

  There are those who will tell you there is no such thing as the West Ham Way. Sam Allardyce, in his first season as manager, put forward this fanciful idea after a trip to the picturesque cathedral city of Peterborough. Having been offered some helpful and constructive criticism by 6,000 pilgrims who’d made the journey as well, he responded to the repeated chant of ‘We’re West Ham United – we play on the floor’, by saying: ‘There has never been a West Ham Way shown to me. I’ve spoken to a lot of people at the club and no one can tell me what it is.’ Apparently those of us who believe there is such a thing are ‘deluded’.

  This is the same Sam Allardyce who, the following season, cupped his ear in astonishment as a highly disgruntled Upton Park crowd booed him off after a diabolical performance against Hull. Admittedly we had won and effectively banished any lingering fears of relegation – but West Ham supporters know what we want from our team and had expected better against a side that found itself a goal down and reduced to ten men after barely a quarter of an hour. Allardyce complained it was the only time he’d ever got a response like that after winning – he just didn’t get it at all.

  Then, just as Allardyce appeared to have seen the error of his ways and changed the system to incorporate two men up front rather than a lone striker (and had West Ham playing some of the best football we’ve seen in years), his old mate Sir Alex Ferguson chipped in with: ‘I hope that, before I die, someone can explain the West Ham Way.’ Well, if the crowd of naysayers would care to let me through for a minute or two I’ll do my best. You see, WE ARE THE FAMOUS, THE FAMOUS WEST HAM! And we’re famous because of a football genius who laid down a (claret and) blueprint for the club that has now become an indelible trademark. His successors ignore it at their peril.

  Ron Greenwood was not a man to go out of his way to win friends. He didn’t like his own captain (a certain Robert Frederick Chelsea Moore) and he didn’t have much time for West Ham supporters or the East End as a whole. ‘This community and this area doesn’t understand or appreciate anything that this club stands for,’ he is quoted as saying by West Ham historian Charles Korr. The problem, according to Greenwood, is that we ‘don’t understand sincerity and intelligence’.

  Maybe not. But we do know a thing or two about football, and we came to appreciate the way he believed the game should be played.

  Greenwood joined West Ham from Arsenal in April 1961 – the same month that Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space (personally I’m in no doubt which was the more important event). His footballing philosophy can be traced back to the day he saw the brilliant Hungarian team of the mid-1950s trounce England 6–3 at Wembley – the first time England had ever lost at home – with a performance that revolutionised the way the young Greenwood thought about the game and convinced him he wanted to become a coach when his playing days as a centre half were over.

  He said later: ‘I knew then for sure that football was a combination of thought and intelligence, and fun and concentration, and vim and vigour, and everything, if you like, even art, if you want to call it that.’

  In short, Greenwood’s way – the West Ham Way – is about playing open, attacking football by passing the ball quickly and accurately, based on the concept that it is more important to score goals than it is to prevent them. That’s not to say defence isn’t important: Greenwood built his team around the best defender the world has ever seen and was even prepared to go out and buy some big lads to play alongside him who – in Bobby Moore’s words – could ‘do some kicking’ (as long as they didn’t do too much of it).

  But the main objective of the game, in the gospel according to Ron, is to break down the opposition using skill plus intelligence and put the ball in the back of their net more often than they put it in yours. And it doesn’t always mean playing on the floor, either. While Greenwood liked his players to pass their way through the other side’s midfield, repeatedly trying to get two on one so they could play the give and go, he was quite prepared to put the ball in the air – only
he wanted to do it in such a way as to produce panic in the defence rather than frustration in the stands.

  Sir Geoff Hurst is rather better qualified to explain Greenwood’s thinking than me, so why don’t I let him do the talking?

  ‘What he took specifically from the Hungarians was the near post cross, a tactic that was to become one of West Ham’s trademarks during my time with the club,’ says Hurst in his autobiography, 1966 and All That.

  One day he put cones down in wide positions on the training pitch. The cones were to act as full backs, he said. The wingers had to run and cross the ball before they reached their cone. They had to bend their pass around the cone so that the ball landed in the space between the opposing goalkeeper and his back line of defenders. It was the task of forwards like me to get into that space and attack the ball before the goalkeeper or any of the defenders could reach it.

  One of the wingers expected to master this particular skill was Harry Redknapp, who was to go on and make his own distinctive mark as a West Ham manager in the years that followed.

  If ever West Ham has produced a love-him-or-hate-him character, it has to be H. I know he’ll never again be flavour of the month with most West Ham supporters but, for all his faults, I still have a soft spot for Redknapp. But then I like Marmite.

  Like most Hammers, I had mixed feelings when he got the manager’s job at Upton Park in 1994. The way Billy Bonds was eased out was nothing short of a disgrace. But there was a feeling that Redknapp could take us to the next level. He certainly understood the concept of the West Ham Way.