Nearly Reach the Sky

by Brian Williams

  The crucial deal was the sale of Glen Johnson to Chelsea for £6 million halfway through July. It was the first signing they made under Abramovich. Yes, we all knew the boy had bags of potential but he was still an unknown quantity in terms of top-flight football. In short, Chelsea were prepared to take a punt – and Brown made sure they paid top dollar.

  By setting the bar at that level he was able to extract £2.5 million from Manchester City for a fast-fading Trevor Sinclair six days later. Then, at the beginning of August, he persuaded Tottenham to part with £3.5 million for Kanoute, who had spent all season looking like he would rather be anywhere than Upton Park.

  Sadly, one more still had to go. Sadder still for most of us, that other one was Joe Cole, who joined Johnson at Stamford Bridge for £6.6 million. The following season they finished runners-up to the Arsenal ‘Invincibles’ in the Premiership, while we failed to secure automatic promotion. It was hard to take: made harder still by our inability to beat Palace in the play-off final – which ruined my entire summer – but, on the plus side, we were still solvent. And when you see what has happened to the likes of Portsmouth and Coventry after relegation, that is a very big plus.

  Of course, we weren’t as solvent as Chelsea, who were now owned by a Russian multi-billionaire with money to burn on little things like winning Premiership titles, FA Cups and the Champions League. While they were doing that we were bouncing up and down between divisions like an ageing punk rocker who refuses to admit that the Sex Pistols have had their day.

  It was certainly going to be a long time before we beat Chelsea again. That finally came after a ten-year wait in our first season back in the Premier League under Sam Allardyce. Carlton Cole got his first goal against his former club then, with four minutes left, Mo Diamé drilled home the second. When Modibo Maiga wrapped it up in injury time, those of us with claret and blue in our hearts celebrated from Afghanistan to Zanzibar (honestly – you can’t go anywhere in the world without bumping into a Hammers’ fan). The final score was West Ham 3 Chelsea 1 – as it was in the first game I saw between the two teams back in 1967. This victory felt every bit as good as it did then.

  Now we await the next win at Stamford Bridge. But if we keep turning in the sort of heroic performances that José Mourinho dismissed as nineteenth-century football in January 2014 it can only be a matter of time (Radio 5 suggested we parked the horse-drawn carriage; great gag, guys – I wish I’d thought of that).

  Chelsea aren’t the only team to have benefited from a mega-rich benefactor over the years. When Manchester City clinched their first Premier League title so dramatically as they came from behind to beat QPR in the dying minutes of the 2011/12 season you could practically hear fans up and down the country thinking the same thing; why can’t a billionaire buy our club and transform us from a bunch of no-hopers into title contenders?

  In the words of the old adage, be careful what you wish for.

  We at West Ham had a brief taste of the high life when a couple of chancers from the land of ice and snow decided to pluck us from obscurity. At the time it seemed as if all our prayers had been answered. But as we know now of course, unlike mum we shouldn’t have gone anywhere near Iceland.

  Many people still think of Eggy as the owner but I suspect that’s partly because Eggert Magnússon is a damn sight easier to pronounce than Björgólfur Guðmundsson, who actually put his hand in his pocket towards the end of 2006.

  That transaction really did put an end to the idea that West Ham were a family-owned club, rather than a high-risk business venture. Brown had been a bridge between the past and the future, but at least he had one foot in an era of continuity that lasted more than a century.

  The Cearns family connection with West Ham can be traced all the way back to 1900 – Jimmy Cearns was one of the founding fathers. Martin Cearns, who was on the board when the club was sold in 2006, was the third member of the clan to have been chairman at one time or another. Another one of the directors who approved the sale to Guðmundsson was the great grandson of Arnold F. Hills, without whom there would be no West Ham United. We can only guess at what he would have made of his successors.

  For a comprehensive portrait of the man who is generally considered to be the father of the club, you can’t do much better than Charles Korr’s excellent book, simply titled West Ham United. Read it when you get the chance. In the meantime, here’s a potted history.

  Hills joined his father’s firm – the Thames Ironworks and Ship-building Company – after graduating from Oxford University and took over after the death of his dad.

  He was vegetarian, teetotal and a decent sportsman in his younger days, playing for the university football side and becoming England’s champion runner over a mile. He was one of those upper-class, well-educated Victorians who knew what was best for the hoi-polloi – Hills believed with a missionary zeal that what the likes of us need most is hard work and clean living.

  To be fair, after leaving Oxford he chose to live near the factory in Canning Town where he began to get an idea of what life was really like for working men. He was particularly concerned about the lack of recreational facilities in the area. However, he was also a hardnosed industrialist, who was quite prepared to sack those workers who took part in the illegal strikes organised by the General Labourers’ Union (all strikes were illegal back then). The final decade of the nineteenth century was a torrid time for industrial relations, particularly in the East End, and there was a series of bitter disputes that affected Hills’ business just as they did the docks and other factories in the area.

  In 1895 he set up a company newspaper – the Thames Ironworks Gazette. It gave him the chance to argue the case that the massive and hugely overcrowded Essex suburb of West Ham should become part of the County of London. And in the June of that year, under a headline that read: ‘The importance of co-operation between workers and management’, he used the paper to announce he intended to set up a football team. This, Hills believed, would heal the wounds in his factory caused by the repeated stoppages and dismissals.

  That team, of course, was Thames Ironworks FC and it was made up of Hills’ employees. They paid the princely sum of 2 shillings and sixpence to join and trained on Tuesdays and Thursdays under gaslights at a church hall in the Barking Road. After attracting more than fifty members they were able to put out two teams in their first season.

  Not only did Hills finance the teams, he took an active interest in their results. He even took the trouble to share his thoughts on how the game should be played with every member of the new club: ‘As an old footballer myself, I would say, get into good condition at the beginning of the season, keep on the ball, play an unselfish game, pay heed to your captain, and whatever the fortunes of the first half of the game, never despair of winning, and never give up doing your very best to the last minute of the match. That is the way to play football and, better still, that is the way to make yourselves men.’ Hear, hear, Mr Hills.

  The first season was good; the second was even better. Membership was up and Thames Ironworks were now able to field three teams. The fixture list included thirty first-team matches and six Cup competitions. In these early years the home ground was near the factory, in Hermit Road, but they were thrown out by the landlords for breaking the terms of the tenancy agreement by building a fence and charging people to get in.

  Once again Hills came to the rescue. In a massive show of faith, he found the money to fund the building of the magnificent Memorial Grounds, which was to be the club’s new home. The stadium really was something to behold. The capacity was well over 100,000 – for an amateur factory side, remember. Not only was there a football pitch, the grounds included a running track, tennis courts and a swimming pool. (Olympic Park, eat your heart out.) The year it opened, 1897, was Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee – and she’s the one being remembered in the ‘Memorial’ part of the name. However, with a staggering lack of gratitude, the ruler of an empire on which the sun never set failed
to stump up the 5s 6d reduced price for a ladies’ season ticket (blokes had to pay ten bob). Unlike Queen Elizabeth II, she was not a West Ham supporter.

  Thames Ironworks continued to do well, beating all the other amateur sides in the area and rising steadily – joining the Southern League in 1898 and immediately winning promotion to the first division. But success on the pitch was not matched by support on the terraces. This was essentially a works side – albeit one that was attracting top players – and the wider community who weren’t employed by Arnold Hills simply didn’t warm to it.

  Hills himself didn’t want to hire professional players, whom he referred to as ‘mercenaries’. His factory ran several different clubs, not all of them associated with sport, and he wanted anything bearing the company’s name to be made up of his employees. But those handling the day-to-day running of the football club thought differently. They strived to attract the leading talent of their day. And just to show that there is nothing new about double standards in football, Hills swallowed his principles and announced in 1899 that: ‘It may be necessary to introduce a little ferment of professional experience to leaven the heavy lump.’

  The big bang moment for West Ham United came in 1900. It was brought about by a combination of Hills’ increasing disillusionment at what he had created and a need to raise money to enlarge his business interests. This involved turning his firm into a limited company to raise capital and, with shareholders to answer to, he felt unable to plough other people’s money into his football team. He had no choice but to wind up Thames Ironworks FC.

  But rather than simply walk away from the whole idea he proposed a new club, which would itself be a limited company with him as the major shareholder. He realised that if it was going to stand on its own two feet it would need his help until a new and, hopefully, larger group of supporters made it financially viable. He offered to personally buy one share for each share sold to the public and he allowed the new club to continue to use the Memorial Grounds, where we stayed until moving to the Boleyn Ground in 1904.

  A little over 100 years later Guðmundsson stumped up £85 million to become owner of West Ham – small change to a man who was one of the richest geezers on the planet (although, coming as he did from Iceland, that should probably be ‘geyser’). What a strange period in our history the aftermath of the takeover turned out to be.

  On the pitch we appeared to heading towards a much-needed period of tranquillity. Guðmundsson’s first term in charge ended with the Great Escape at Old Trafford – which was anything but tranquil – but after that it promised to be onwards and upwards. The following year we happily settled for mid-table security under Alan Curbishley, knowing it was only a matter of time before those Icelandic billions had us challenging for a Champions League place.

  In March of the 2007/08 season, as we closed in on the serenity of a tenth place finish under Curbs, our owner was number 1,014 on the list of the world’s wealthiest people compiled by Forbes magazine, which takes an interest in such matters. It reckoned he was worth $1.1 billion. What could possibly go wrong?

  Well, for a start, at the beginning of the next season our sponsors, XL Airlines, went bust. Now, I know this probably won’t come as a total surprise, but our sponsors and our owner were not exactly unknown to one another. In fact Guðmundsson had provided most of the money to finance XL’s buyout from its parent company, which was also part of the magnate’s financial empire. In all, it was estimated the collapse cost our billionaire ‘saviour’ £200 million.

  But worse was to follow as the Icelandic economy went up in more smoke than you get from one of its volcanoes, taking with it our dreams of trips to the Bernabeu and San Siro in search of European glory. About this time, Forbes revalued Guðmundsson’s net worth slightly … to $0. When we finally parted company he had debts of almost £500 million and was declared bankrupt shortly afterwards. Be fair, that’s a spectacular decline even by West Ham’s standards.

  Perhaps we were just unlucky. As we have seen, some billionaires actually manage to hang on to their cash long enough to make a significant difference to the fortunes of the club in which they invest.

  Financially, West Ham’s present owners are pretty comfortable by most people’s standards, but they aren’t in the same league as Abramovich. (I suspect Arnold Hills would not have approved of how they made their money, though – ‘missionary zeal’ is not to be confused with the missionary position.) However, they are going to be a good deal richer when they sell off the Boleyn Ground and move to rented accommodation in Stratford.

  As supporters we are supposed to be consoled by the thought that the destruction of our home ground will provide the funds for better players and more success. So, will the rubble of Upton Park mean we can match the roubles of Stamford Bridge? I doubt it. And even if it does, there are some things money can’t buy. I have a lifetime of memories invested in Upton Park. And I’m not selling those to anyone.

  Chapter 13

  Unlucky for some

  EVER HAD ONE of those days that make you wish you’d never got out of bed in the first place? Of course you have – you’re a football supporter.

  For me, 13 November 2004 was just such an occasion. I realise now there were some things I could and should have done differently, but when the unfathomable cosmic forces that decide these matters decree you’re going to have a thoroughly miserable day, you’re sort of stuck with it.

  It all started well enough. Saturday always means a lie-in, even on match days, but the bright, sunny winter weather meant there was no hardship in getting up. Besides, I wanted to make an early start. This was the weekend before Geoff’s birthday – his thirteenth birthday – and he had money from his nan that needed spending in the club shop. It was new shirt time.

  Uncharacteristically, my son needed no second invitation to leave the comfort of his bed and we were on the road in plenty of time. Correction: we would have had plenty of time if the section of the M25 we required hadn’t been closed because of an accident the previous day, in which a petrol tanker had overturned and deposited its potentially lethal cargo all over the motorway. Of course I should have checked the traffic reports before I left home – the accident had made national headlines the night before and there had been dire warnings of disruption on the roads. But, hey, we all make mistakes.

  The enormity of the problem only became apparent when we pulled off the M23, took the M25 slip road and discovered we weren’t the only ones who’d failed to check the travel news before setting out. There was a queue of traffic at dead stop, and it showed no signs of moving any time soon.

  West Ham were at home to Brighton that day and, judging by the selection of shirts on display in the stationary cars, it was obvious that many of the occupants were on their way to the game as well. I’d say that for every set of blue and white stripes there was a claret and blue equivalent.

  You’d be surprised how many West Ham supporters live in Brighton and Hove. It was first brought home to me by an interesting piece of legislation known as the Football Spectators Act of 1989. The centrepiece of this particular law was something called the National Membership Scheme, designed to combat hooliganism by ensuring the only way you could get into a football ground was with an identity card.

  Leaving aside for now the civil rights issues involved in this sort of thinking, there were some practical problems too. The technology wasn’t fit for purpose and queues built up at the turnstiles as frustrated fans waited to be admitted. A similar scheme had failed in Holland. And most of the sporadic violence that still took place occurred outside the grounds rather than in the stadiums themselves. But Margaret Thatcher was not a woman to let small details like that get in the way of a headline-grabbing initiative.

  No longer could you go to an occasional game as a casual spectator. So, unlike previous years when we’d gone to the Goldstone Ground to watch West Ham in our home town, we now had to become signed-up members of Brighton and Hove Albion FC or risk the lottery that
goes with trying to get one of the few tickets in the small area set aside for away supporters.

  When I turned up with my best mate Simon, and the necessary documentation to prove we were solid citizens who lived in East Sussex, we were asked if we required tickets for any of the forthcoming games once the formalities of becoming members had been sorted out. We said we wanted some for the West Ham game. It seems we weren’t the only ones. And, we discovered, the other new recruits to the membership scheme wanting to watch the Irons didn’t seem interested in any of the other Brighton fixtures either. The woman who told us this couldn’t understand it at all.

  We opted for the main stand, right on the halfway line. And, come the day of the game, we took our seats behind a couple of pensioners who’d clearly been supporting Brighton from the days when the Goldstone was used as a venue in the post-war Olympics. Flat cap, blanket, Thermos flask – they might actually have been sitting there since 1948.

  The travelling West Ham supporters were on the opposite side of the ground, standing on an uncovered terrace and getting soaked in a downpour. The local West Ham support was seated and sheltered from the driving rain. Just how many of us were in those dry, comfortable seats became apparent when the players came out and the rival fans declared their allegiance. Rarely has ‘Bubbles’ been sung by so many in the opposition’s main stand. The look of alarm on the faces of that nice old couple in front as they huddled together and peered around to see the extent of the invasion has haunted me to this day. Remember – you could only be in that stand if you were a member of their club. Mind you, they had the last laugh. The Seagulls were 3–0 up within twenty minutes and never looked like losing. By the end we’d all given up with ‘Bubbles’ on our side of the ground and were giving the Brighton fans a helping hand with ‘Sussex by the Sea’ instead. Don’t look at us like that. We’re allowed – we live there!