November began with a 1–0 win at Notts County, followed by a 1–1 draw at The Hated Millwall, with Morley and McAvennie doing the honours. Di and I sat those ones out (which meant we missed Chris Hughton’s debut) but, let’s face it, a girl can have too much of a good thing. We were, however, in our seats in the West Stand on 17 November for the game against Brighton and Hove Albion. We had no way of knowing it then, of course, but one year to the day after that, Di would give birth to our first child – in Brighton. Spooky or what? Stranger still, big Colin Foster got his name on the scoresheet that day. That, and a goal from Stuart Slater, secured a 2–1 win.
The following week, a 1–0 victory at Plymouth (McAvennie again) put us top of the table – a position we cemented on 1 December with a 3–1 demolition of West Brom at Upton Park thanks to Macca, Morley and the legendary George Parris.
That bet was now starting to concern me. It’s one thing ripping the piss out of a close friend about the possibility of relieving them of a thousand quid – it’s quite another doing it. I knew by then that if West Ham could hold out for just three more games, and go unbeaten to Christmas as I had predicted, I would never ask for the money. But I was worried that Geoff would insist on honouring his obligations – he was a serious punter and would hate the thought of welshing on a gambling debt.
The next game was at Portsmouth – that’s the one where we found ourselves in the pub with the Pompey fans. Strewth, it was cold that day. Di, me, Geoff and the wonderful woman in his life, Dee, were huddled at the back of the main Portsmouth stand. When Morley scored the goal that was to give us a 1–0 win, our enthusiastic celebration was more an excuse to get the blood circulating again than an expression of joy. Even so, it earned us some filthy looks from the home fans.
I don’t think I’d thawed out properly by the time we dogged out a 0–0 draw with Boro at Upton Park seven days later. So this was it – one game left and me on the point of winning a grand that I no longer wanted. How could our friendship survive if I won? Geoff would either be offended by my refusal to accept his money, or left flat broke if I did. In the event a Barnsley player called Smith spared me the misery of finding out. His goal meant we went down 1–0 at Oakwell, and Geoff had been proved right – when it comes to gambling you must let your head rule your heart. Mind you, had he not been so obsessed with the form book he might have backed a horse called Upton Park, which was running at Chepstow while we were losing in Barnsley. Geoff reckoned it had no chance. It romped home at 16–1.
Two weeks later, on the Saturday, it was Geoff’s forty-second birthday and, by way of a present, West Ham failed to beat Aldershot in the third round of the Cup. The following day I rang to tell him how the West Ham fans had given the visitors a standing ovation after their battling performance. Then, on Monday, I got a call from Dee that left me numbed with disbelief. Geoff had died overnight. He had gone to bed with a headache and never woken up. It was a brain haemorrhage – nothing could have been done to save him. We got the call early in the morning. The enormity of what had happened didn’t truly hit me until the afternoon. Di and I were shopping in Sainsbury’s when the tears began to fall from my eyes.
It came as no surprise that the funeral was to be a non-religious affair: Geoff was a fully paid up atheist and to have had a Christian burial would have been plain wrong. Equally wrong, in the eyes of many of us who had congregated to say a final farewell to our friend, was the way in which the Socialist Workers Party turned such a deeply personal event into a political rally. Leading lefty Paul Foot gave a tub-thumping speech that made Geoff out to be something he wasn’t; they draped his coffin in the red flag then sang ‘The Internationale’ when his coffin was lowered into the grave. They even had a whip-round at the wake to boost party funds.
Geoff’s dad didn’t share his son’s political views – in fact he was a lifelong Tory (although that didn’t stop him giving the Trots a cheque for a hundred quid when they passed the hat round – grief can do strange things to a man). Geoff had told me that politics had sometimes soured their relationship when he was younger, and there were times that the only subject they could agree on was West Ham. His dad was a season ticket-holder and he’d taken Geoff to games regularly.
Although Fleet Street journalists tend to be a fairly secular bunch, we do have our own parish church. It’s called St Bride’s, and it does a marvellous line in memorial services – which is handy for people who feel the funeral they have just attended is an inadequate way of channelling their sorrow. They like to throw in the odd prayer and an occasional hymn but, in general, they will shape the service to your bespoke requirements. You can even ask the choir to sing ‘Bubbles’. Unlike most West Ham supporters, they know the words to the verses as well as the chorus.
For the record, the first verse goes like this:
I’m dreaming dreams,
I’m scheming schemes,
I’m building castles high.
They’re born anew,
Their days are few,
Just like a sweet butterfly.
And as the daylight is dawning,
They come again in the morning.
The second isn’t quite as snappy:
When shadows creep,
When I’m asleep,
To lands of hope I stray.
Then at daybreak,
When I awake,
My bluebird flutters away.
Happiness new seemed so near me,
Happiness come forth and heal me.
I have seen a version of the lyrics that suggests the first line of the second verse is: ‘When cattle creep’. But, let’s be honest, have you ever seen cattle creeping in the East End of London? Either way, in the hands of such a brilliant choir the song is magical. By the time they had raised the roof of St Bride’s with their unique version, there wasn’t a dry eye in the church. As I cleared the lump that was the size of a football from my throat, I looked over at Geoff’s parents. No one truly gets over the loss of their children, no matter what age they are. But the look on his dad’s face suggested that, for him, the healing process had at least begun.
As I mentioned before, later that year Di and I were to have a child of our own. Some years down the line a colleague, who clearly knows me better than I’d imagined, asked if the fact we had named him Geoff had anything to do with either my boyhood hero or a sadly missed friend. To be honest, it’s starting to look like my son will never score a hat-trick in a World Cup final (although a father never truly gives up hope), but if he can make others feel lucky to have known him, in the way Geoff Ellen did, I will be more than happy. And, I’m proud to say, my son can belt out ‘Bubbles’ with the best of ’em.
Chapter 7
The ghosts of Christmas
IN AN EFFORT to do my bit for charity I would like to help an aged joke find a new home by asking if you know why West Ham are like Christmas decorations? All together now: they both come down in the New Year.
Actually, there is rather less to this old chestnut than you might think.
In 1964, the year we first won the FA Cup and the time this all started to matter to me, we finished fourteenth. On Boxing Day 1963 we had suffered the club’s record home defeat as we crashed 8–2 to Blackburn, leaving us in sixteenth place. (According to a report in the Daily Mirror, West Ham’s ‘tactics were all wrong and their covering terrible’. Sadly, that wasn’t the last time anyone was to say that about the Hammers.) From sixteenth to fourteenth is, of course, an improvement of two places. By the time I had chalked up my golden anniversary of following West Ham, the second half of the season had seen us slip down the League on twenty-two occasions. But we’d also improved our position in twenty-two seasons and finished in the same place we were in on Boxing Day six times.
Admittedly, the reason we don’t plummet after Christmas is usually because we haven’t got very high beforehand. Our most spectacular decline was a fall of twelve places – from sixth to eighteenth in 1975/76, but that can largely be explained by
a fantastic run in the European Cup Winners’ Cup, which took us all the way to the final. The previous season – again one that ended with a Cup final – saw us fall eight places from the dizzy heights of fifth on Boxing Day to finish thirteenth. I suspect that was when the ‘decorations’ gag was first unwrapped.
In our heart of hearts most West Ham fans do not expect to win the League. The highest we have ever finished is third, and I fear that is as good as it’s going to get for me. Having watched the team I love get relegated five times, I’m prepared to settle for mid-table security in my old age, maybe with the occasional top-half finish thrown in for good measure (on average they only come around once every three years).
The FA Cup, on the other hand, does offer hope of success once you’ve got the last of the Christmas tree needles out of the carpet. In my lifetime we’ve been to the final four times, winning three of them and coming within a whisker of beating Liverpool at the Millennium Stadium in 2006. And, of course, West Ham contested the first final at Wembley in 1923, which is now better remembered for Billy the white horse than the result. (For those of you who like to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s, it finished 2–0 to Bolton and Billy the horse eventually got a bridge at Wembley Tube station named in his honour.)
The FA Cup really matters to West Ham supporters. We have the tradition, and we sometimes have the realistic chance of winning the six games that earn a captain the right to hold aloft football’s most glamorous piece of silverware. So when the draw for the third round is made, many of those in claret and blue hope to get off to a flying start by being paired with a team from the lower divisions. Not me. I’d much rather play the likes of Manchester United than one of the small fry – our record in such games is not exactly spotless.
My first experience of enduring a giant-killing that amused the rest of the nation while throwing me into a well of depression was against third division Swindon in the 1967 FA Cup. I was ten, and took these things personally. (I still do, to be honest.)
West Ham went to the County Ground for the third-round replay with all three of our World Cup-winning heroes. And they came back with their tails between their legs after being turned over 3–1.
I tried to console myself with the thought that this was a once-in-a-lifetime disaster – a team that contained the likes of Moore, Hurst and Peters and had triumphed in Europe only a couple of years before would never allow itself to suffer that sort of humiliation again.
Two years later we went to Mansfield in the fifth round of the Cup. Not only did we have the World Cup winners, we had Trevor Brooking and Billy Bonds as well. What could possibly go wrong?
This time we failed to score against our third division opponents, while they got what was now becoming the customary three by repeatedly pumping the long ball into our penalty area and waiting for the inevitable defensive errors. Simple. Ugly. But invariably successful against West Ham back then.
The Swindon defeat had been hard enough to swallow. Mansfield was far worse. My Chelsea-supporting schoolmates were now, like me, two years older – and starting to master the art of taking the piss. I’m not saying they were all that subtle, but they were remorseless. Not a day went by, until Man City beat Leicester in the final, without me finding a slip of paper – in my desk, in my satchel, in my pocket, even once in my football boots – with the simple message: Mansfield 3 West Ham 0. Children can be very hurtful.
School life didn’t get any easier when we went down 4–0 to Blackpool in the infamous third-round Cup tie of 1971.
As soon as young West Ham supporters are old enough to understand the spoken word they are sat on their father’s knee and told the cautionary tale of being spotted in a nightclub hours before a televised Cup game against a team from a lower division.
Toddlers brought up to be claret and blue sit hushed in disbelief as they learn how the mighty Bobby Moore and his mate Jimmy Greaves were on their way to their separate beds when a cameraman from the Match of the Day team told them the pitch was iced over and there was no chance the game would take place the following day.
Sympathetic dads, who know how easy it is for a quiet pint to be misconstrued, make it plain that there was nothing wrong with rounding up a couple of teammates and heading for a nightclub run by a washed-up boxer. They stress that the lads hardly touched a drop between them. One of their number – the saintly Clyde Best – was actually teetotal. But all that counts for nothing when a bunch of northern mischief-makers scrape away the ice, enabling the game to go ahead … with inevitable consequences.
Having had this conversation with my own children, I can testify how hard it is to keep the lump out of your throat as the story unfurls. Because what happens next simply serves to underline the fact that you really can’t trust anyone in this life.
A number of West Ham supporters who had travelled up for the game were necking pints of Robinsons ale when Moore and co. walked into the 007 club (which was clearly licensed, although not necessarily to kill). No doubt they were thrilled to be in the presence of West Ham’s finest at the time – although they got the right hump when the Irons capitulated the following day. They were no happier on the Monday morning, complaining about late-night drinking to the club. Then someone phoned a newspaper and the story became headline news.
Now as a journalist myself I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but one or two of my colleagues are partial to a drink. In fact in 1971 you could be fired for being found sober at your desk. So the idea of a newspaperman with a liver like a lace-up football, flicking the fag ash off his typewriter and settling down to a write a story about young footballers far from home enjoying a few lagers is not without a hint of irony.
Unfortunately for Moore, Greaves, Best and Brian Dear, the fourth member of the party, their manager didn’t have a sense of irony. In fact, Ron Greenwood wanted to sack the lot of them. Cooler heads in the Upton Park boardroom talked him out of it, but Dear and Greaves were gone soon afterwards. Best was given the benefit of the doubt, but the already strained relationship between Greenwood and his captain was damaged beyond repair. It’s no coincidence that West Ham never looked like getting to Wembley again until both men had been replaced.
Although defeat in the FA Cup is far harder to take than an unexpected exit from the League Cup, you will naturally get a hard time from rival fans if you are on the wrong end of a David and Goliath act in either tournament.
After the Blackpool disaster my final three years at school didn’t get any easier. The education authorities had taken the decision to raise the school leaving age from fifteen to sixteen, so when we lost 2–1 to Stockport County in 1972 the kids who would have otherwise left to follow their careers in plumbing, carpentry or petty larceny were still my classmates. They were most disgruntled to still be there – and our defeat at the hands of a fourth division side in a League Cup tie was one of the few things that brightened their lives. Thank you, boys, for sharing your joy with me.
That match is not be confused with the 2–1 defeat at Stockport in which Iain Dowie scored an own goal that is still regarded as one of the finest of its kind by many. There’s a 24-year gap between those two games in which we rarely wasted an opportunity to find ourselves on the wrong end of a humiliating defeat by a team from the low-rent end of the Football League.
The pick of the bunch? Hmmm, that’s tough – why don’t you choose one? There are certainly plenty from which to make your selection: Hull City 1 West Ham 0 (FA Cup, 1973); Hereford 2 West Ham 1 (FA Cup, 1974); Fulham 2 West Ham 1 (League Cup, 1974); West Ham 1 Swindon 2 (League Cup, 1978); Newport 2 West Ham 1 (FA Cup, 1979); Watford 2 West Ham 0 (FA Cup, 1982); West Ham 2 Barnsley 5 (League Cup, 1987); Torquay 1 West Ham 0 (FA Cup, 1990); Crewe 2 West Ham 0 (League Cup, 1992); Barnsley 4 West Ham 1 (FA Cup, 1993); Luton 3 West Ham 2 (FA Cup, 1994). And then, just to make 1996 a really special year, there’s a 3–0 defeat at Grimsby on Valentine’s Day in the FA Cup – their first win against top-flight opposition in sixty years – to add to
the Stockport League Cup debacle a week before Christmas ten months later.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t get any better after 1996.
In January 1997, West Ham went to Wrexham for a third-round FA Cup tie that had a touch of the ’71 Blackpool game about it. The pitch was covered in snow and barely fit for purpose. In fact most of the country was covered in snow, and almost half of the third-round games were cancelled. But the Match of the Day cameras were there, suspecting an upset, so the Welsh club pulled out all the stops to ensure the fixture went ahead. Somewhat surprisingly – and much to the annoyance of the MOTD boys who had gone all that way in search of blood – we got away with a 1–1 draw, courtesy of a goal from Hugo Porfirio.
So it was all back to Upton Park for the replay. Third-tier opposition at home after surviving a tricky tie at their place? Surely we already had one foot in the next round, where our opponents would be the lowly Peterborough? Our name was possibly on the Cup once more! But no, that’s not the West Ham way. We lost 1–0 after a truly dreadful performance that left Harry Redknapp looking more lugubrious than a bulldog with toothache.
Shall I go on? Look, I’m sorry about all this – I know that those of you with a delicate constitution can’t take much more, so I’ll spare you the games in which we were humiliated in one of the legs but won the tie overall (such as the 1–0 League Cup defeat at Huddersfield in 1997). But in all honesty I can’t really walk away without mentioning the 2–0 setback at Northampton in the same competition the following year – eventually going out 2–1 on aggregate.
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