Nearly Reach the Sky
Page 11
The first game between the two clubs took place on 14 December 1895. That day, Thames Ironworks played a game against Millwall Reserves and lost 6–0. A return match was arranged on 25 April 1896. This time the result was 1–1.
Thames Ironworks won the Southern League’s second division in 1898/99. That meant that in the following season they were playing in the same league as Millwall. Until then, Thames Ironworks had home gates of between 1,000 (Chatham) and 3,000 (Bristol City). However, for their first game against Millwall in the top division they had an attendance of 12,000. John Powles, the author of Iron in the Blood (2005), does not report any crowd trouble. Millwall won the game 2–0.
That season, Thames Ironworks also played Millwall in the FA Cup. This time 13,000 people saw Millwall win the game 2–1. It might be this game that caused the conflict between the two clubs. Tom Bradshaw scored the Hammers’ goal. It was the last game he played, dying on Christmas Day 1899. Officially, the 26-year-old Bradshaw died of tuberculosis. However, friends claimed that he had been complaining of terrible pains when he headed the ball. Did he receive a blow to the head while playing against Millwall? Bradshaw was a popular player and if the fans thought this was the case it might have caused considerable anger.
Interestingly, Bradshaw’s death also increased hostility towards Spurs. In 1899, Francis Payne, the club secretary, was given the task of finding good players for Thames Ironworks to prepare them for the first season in the top division of the Southern League. His record signing of £1,000 was Bradshaw from Spurs. Hammers’ fans were convinced that Spurs would have known he was suffering from tuberculosis when they sold him. Bradshaw only played four games for Thames Ironworks before that fateful game against Millwall.
The third game of that season against Millwall was even more important. Thames Ironworks were second from bottom of the League when they played Millwall on 28 April 1900. The Hammers won 1–0 in front of 8,000 people. This stopped them from being automatically relegated. Instead, they had to play a ‘test match’ against Fulham. The Hammers stayed in the League by winning 5–1.
The following season Thames Ironworks became West Ham United. For the next fourteen years West Ham v. Millwall was the most important game of the season for supporters, attracting nearly double the attendance of any other game. Crucially, West Ham secured dominance over Millwall during this period. In 1919, West Ham joined the second division of the Football League and, in the 1922/23 season, were promoted to the first division.
After this, West Ham were rarely in the same division as Millwall – although we did beat them 4–1 in the FA Cup in 1930. The next time we played them was in the 1932/33 season after we had been relegated to the second division. Early in the season we beat them 3–0 (two of the goals were scored by the great Vic Watson). The relative size of the two clubs is reflected in the fact that 30,000 attended that game, but the return match at Millwall only had a crowd of 5,000.
Many thanks for that, John – good to know that history proves we really are the bigger club.
They say that if you sit in St Mark’s Square in Venice sipping a cup of coffee long enough you will get to see everyone you’ve ever met in your life. Personally, I think they’re wrong (and I’m certain your cappuccino wouldn’t be worth drinking by the time every last one of them turned up). More likely, I reckon, is that if you spend long enough supporting a football team you are going to fall out with just about every other club you come into contact with.
I’m not talking about the long-established enmity that West Ham supporters reserve for traditional foes such as The Hated Millwall and Tottenham. This isn’t even about that natural human instinct to revel in the failures of the glamorous and successful like Manchester United, Liverpool and Leyton Orient. What intrigues me is how you can grow to dislike so many teams that you once thought would never give you cause to complain.
Take Southampton. There was a time I had no problem whatsoever with the Saints. The whirling arm of Mick Channon when he celebrated a goal; the one-club loyalty of Le Tiss; the 1976 Cup final underdog win against Man U – what was there not to like? Then, in the season we both came up from the Championship, we had a date with Southampton on Valentine’s Day and they behaved so badly that I won’t talk to them again until they call to apologise (with chocs and flowers too, I should add).
Yes, our man Matt Taylor was stupid to get involved after we were awarded a penalty. And he shouldn’t have raised his hands to an opponent. But Southampton’s Billy Sharp went down like he’d been decked by a heavyweight boxer in what looked to me to be a cynical and deliberate attempt to get a fellow professional sent off. The football they played afterwards was no great shakes either and – like the bottle of over-priced Irish cider I had at half time – the whole evening left a very nasty taste in the mouth. So now the south coast side are on the long list of clubs with which I have issues.
Oh, and while I’m at it, on the way to the Southampton game I saw a Saints fan smoking on the platform as he waited for a Tube train – which these days is about as socially acceptable as picking clinkers out of your crack at a family wedding. No one lights up on the Underground any more. Have some people still not heard of the King’s Cross fire?
Southampton are not the only team in red and white stripes to have upset me over the years. I never forgave Stoke for ‘stealing’ Geoff Hurst and I’ve no intention of ever forgiving Sheffield United for the fuss they kicked up over Carlos Tevez. Yes, we broke the rules and were fined accordingly. I’ve no problem with that. What does still rankle is the way they sought compensation for being relegated. They went down because they weren’t good enough over the course of the season and then lost to Wigan on the last day, not because we had Tevez – who had actually been in the side when we were beaten heavily at Bramall Lane some weeks earlier. Still, no one wants to rake up all that again.
The Argentine will of course be for ever considered a West Ham hero after he gave us the crossed Irons salute upon returning with Man Utd. But I fell in love with him the day he tackled a Watford player with his head. He didn’t challenge him in the air – the ball was on the floor when a prostrate Tevez lunged in with his cranium. That, my friends, is how you get to achieve legendary status at Upton Park.
Incidentally, a few days before the Blades played their Sheffield rivals, in the so-called ‘steel city semi-final’ at Wembley, The Guardian ran a story previewing the match. My colleague who was given the copy to edit was no expert on the beautiful game. She felt that, as we were running the piece on a Thursday and the game was on Saturday, it would read better if, rather than mention the days of the week repeatedly, she changed it slightly. Which is how Sheffield Wednesday became ‘Sheffield yesterday’ in a great national daily newspaper.
While we’re in Yorkshire this might be a good time to explain why Leeds is still one of the teams that vexes me greatly. The explanation is simple: Don Revie – the man who set out to win at all costs and convinced talented players they would be better off kicking their opponents instead of the ball in such a way as to be considered entertainment.
One particular moment still gives me the shudders all these years on. Leeds were pressing in front of the South Bank and a speculative cross came into our box. Keeper Bobby Ferguson went for the ball – and, after colliding with defender John McDowell, came crashing down like an Olympic diver performing a double twist with pike. Only Ferguson wasn’t throwing himself into a diving pool – he landed head first on hard, unyielding ground. He had clearly lost consciousness – yet the hard, unyielding style that Revie demanded of his teams meant they played on, and would have happily celebrated a goal with a fellow human being lying motionless nearby if a Mick Jones shot hadn’t been blocked by the horizontal, but alert, McDowell.
Newspaper reports from the time say Ferguson was out cold for four or five minutes. A witness remembers our bonny Bobby lying there for ten. It seemed much longer. I don’t believe there was a single person in the ground who didn’t fear he had broke
n his neck. Back then they didn’t quiz managers after a game in quite the same way as they do now, so we never got to hear Revie’s thoughts on the matter. It’s my guess he wouldn’t have batted an eyelid if Ferguson had left Upton Park in a wooden box. (The world record fee we paid for Ferguson certainly didn’t prevent him getting battered from time to time. More famously than the Leeds game, he had been carried off the previous season in the League Cup semi-final replay against Stoke at Old Trafford … but that’s another story.)
I realise it’s a fair old leap from the art of gamesmanship to artificial pitches, but join me by the long jump pit as I begin my run-up. As I recall, four clubs had the drastic plastic: QPR, Preston, Oldham and Luton. I suppose I should despise them all equally but, hey, no one said life is fair. It’s you, Hatters, that really gave me the ache – somehow the beach ball effect at Kenilworth Road seemed even more laughable than at any of the other grounds. I’m not putting you in the same league as loathsome Leeds, you understand – but I won’t be buying one of your Luton Lotto tickets any time soon.
And where do you think you’re going, Bristol City? I still haven’t forgiven you for that 10.30 a.m. kickoff.
Then there’s Oxford United. How can anyone fall out with them? Well, I managed it after a rather unpleasant disagreement with one of their supporters following a game at their place. I won’t bore you with the details, but I think it’s a reasonable guess that the young man with whom I debated the various merits of our respective teams was not an undergraduate at the university that fields the dark blue crew in the boat race.
I never thought I’d have a problem with Coventry – not after they beat Tottenham in a Wembley final. Then, in the Championship at the Ricoh, we had a whole load of tomfoolery about who broke the minute’s silence for the city’s wartime bombing victims – and now they’re on my list too.
I could go on – and I will because I haven’t got to Notts County yet. My lack of goodwill towards them goes back to what used to be known as the second division. The only consolation on missing out on the Cup final, courtesy of our old friend Keith Hackett, would have been to have gone up as champions. Only Notts Co spoiled that particular party with one of the most negative displays seen at Upton Park in years. The fact they later appointed Paul Ince as manager only serves to prove that my initial judgement about them was spot on.
Swansea could well have found themselves on this list as well, but their supporters did have the good grace to be genuinely embarrassed by the disgraceful play-acting from Chico Flores that earned Andy Carroll a straight red and a three-game ban in the 2014 relegation battle. Their manager, the high-class Michael Laudrup, did what so few do and criticised his own player publicly for his actions. (Laudrup’s reward? He was sacked three days later.)
There is, I know, a slight chance that I am beginning to sound like a cantankerous old curmudgeon who bears a grudge. As my wife and children will testify, nothing could be further from the truth. Rather it is that I have a strong sense of justice – which is hugely satisfied by seeing the likes of Luton, Leeds and Sheffield United flounder in the lower leagues.
The Italians may have got it wrong about St Mark’s Square, but they are right about revenge. Unlike frothy coffee, it is definitely best served cold.
There was a time when, if you wanted a biscuit to dunk in your cappuccino, you’d look to Reading to provide it. But not any more – which explains the reason I don’t really care for them either.
Let me be clear about this. I have no problem whatsoever with the good people of Reading – or indeed the town itself. It gave me my big break in journalism. It’s just the football club I dislike, even though I used to watch them occasionally as a youngster and have some ancient programmes from 1968 to prove it (Mansfield, Oldham and Gillingham – they’re yours if have any use for them).
The thing is, I have no time for anyone who makes up their own nickname (Paul ‘The Guv’nor’ Ince? Of course this includes you!). Once, Reading were the Biscuit Men; now they like to call themselves the Royals. Talk about social mobility!
Remember Huntley and Palmers? No, they weren’t the England full backs in the good old days of two-three-five. They made biscuits. Lots and lots of biscuits. In fact, they made so many biscuits that Reading became known as Biscuit Town. And, without wishing to labour the point, the local football team became known as the Biscuit Men.
At its height, Huntley and Palmers employed 5,000 people in Berkshire’s principal conurbation, which is considerably more than the number of supporters Reading FC attracted when I first saw them. I used to go and watch them sometimes after my parents moved us out of London to Bracknell, where my dad had got a job.
I was able to justify to myself these expeditions to support a club other than West Ham with the fact that Reading’s goalkeeper – the memorably named Steve Death – had once been on the books at Upton Park. He only ever made one appearance for the Irons, but he was a legend at Reading. At one time he held the record for the longest period in English football without conceding a goal. He went 1,104 minutes without letting one in – that’s the equivalent of 12.25 games. He was a brilliant keeper, and I was genuinely sorry when I read that he lost his life to cancer in 2003.
It’s no exaggeration to say Huntley and Palmers was one of the main driving forces in Reading’s growth as a town. The Quakers who ran the company that bore their names were decent men who gave generously to the local community and offered their employees top-of-the-range working conditions. All of which made the football club’s response to the factory’s closure in 1976 seem somewhat less than gracious. Rather than revere its proud traditions, the club decided to ditch the Biscuit Men tag and go for a grandiose new nickname instead.
They wanted something that matched the times. And a year later we were all knee-deep in bunting from the endless street parties that marked the Queen’s Silver Jubilee as Britain renewed its on–off love affair with the royal family. Berkshire likes to call itself the Royal County, so the big-wigs in the boardroom came up with the brilliant idea of calling themselves – you’ve guessed it – the Royals! Of course, there had to be a poll of the fans to give this idiotic idea an air of legitimacy – but that was about as democratic as an election in North Korea and ‘the Royals’ (unlike the family of the same name) was duly elected.
The closure of a factory is no excuse to drop a football team’s nickname (we didn’t change our moniker when our founding fathers stopped building ships with hammers). And when it involves a company who had done so much for the town that spawned the ungrateful football club in question, it’s a real slap in the face.
It’s fair to say I’m not a royalist at heart, even though the Queen is a West Ham supporter (I haven’t been able to confirm this personally but that’s what it said in the Daily Mirror, which is good enough for me). Had I ever been a monarchist, all those street parties would have cured that. I’d swapped my forklift truck for a typewriter and a career in journalism but, as a young reporter, I wasn’t given the big stories – so I got to cover the street parties. Hundreds of them. In fact, it felt as though I visited every patriotic knees-up held in Berkshire in 1977. Which is one of the reasons I jumped at the chance to swap general reporting for the sports desk soon after.
It was more politics than sport that made me want to become a journalist. Back then I was a bit of a lefty and wanted to change the world for the better. (Still am and still do, to be honest.) But I’d always been interested in sport and was on the verge of captaining England in football, cricket and rugby during various stages of my teens –in my imagination, that is.
The sports desk offered me a chance to learn a range of journalistic skills, and I will be forever grateful to the guys who took the time and trouble to teach me so many tricks of the trade when they could just as easily have been in the pub sinking pints of Courage Best. The acting sports editor in particular was a major guiding light in my early career. He answered to the name of Dibbo.
One of his many tale
nts was to be able to swear in a way I’ve heard no British subject do before or since. He swore like an American, stringing long phrases together to come up with compound profanities that would make a squaddie blush. Think of Pepsi’s lip-smackin’ ad campaign of the 1970s, then substitute the most foul-mouthed abuse imaginable, and you’ll get the general idea. He was also a fantastic journalist, which is why he was the paper’s football correspondent as well as acting sports editor.
However, he was less than popular with the management of the football club whose affairs he was paid to report. Reading’s opinion of him wasn’t improved by an incident with a director’s Tupperware sandwich box, which Dibbo used to answer a call of nature on the team coach when the driver refused to let him off. Then there was the business with the fish and chips, which led to him being banned from travelling on the team bus altogether.
On this occasion, the man at the wheel had been persuaded to stop and allow his passengers the chance to buy something to eat before they hit the motorway for the long haul home, but he refused to pull over when it turned out the fish and chips they had all bought was half-cooked, cold and inedible.
No one quite knew what to do with it all until Dibbo came up with a solution. Once more they implored the driver to stop so Dibbo wouldn’t have to put his radical plan into action. And once more he refused. Which is when the football correspondent of the Reading Evening Post opened the vent on the roof of the coach and began disposing of uneaten fish suppers through the gap.
Have you ever seen a coach carrying a team of sportsmen on the motorway – or any other road, come to that? They kinda stand out – they’ve generally got the team’s name on the side of the bus for one thing.