After the events of the previous year I really wanted to avoid the play-offs. In the 2004 final, West Ham froze at the Millennium Stadium and blew the chance of an instant return to the Premier League by losing 1–0 to Crystal Palace. I’d had the sniff of a ticket in the Palace end, but I didn’t fancy it that much. So, as we couldn’t get tickets for all the family, we watched the game on television. That’s how I know witnessing a crushing defeat on TV can hurt just as much as if you were there in person. That particular loss cast a massive shadow over my entire summer – and I know every West Ham supporter felt exactly the same way no matter whether they were in the ground or saw it on the box.
In the event, I was glad to make the 2005 play-offs. Hopes of automatic promotion had vanished long before the final fixture of the season at Upton Park. In fact it was our opponents, Sunderland, who secured the Coca-Cola Football League title that night after coming from behind to win 2–1 in front of the biggest home crowd of the campaign. As Geoff and I trudged back to the car and the inevitable first-gear crawl to escape the back streets of East Ham it looked as if the chance to haul ourselves out of the quicksand of second-tier football had gone for another year.
That was a Friday night. The following day, Wolves did us a massive favour by surprising everyone and beating Reading, our rivals for sixth place. On the final Sunday of the regular season we capitalised on that by winning at Watford while Reading lost to Wigan – enabling us to sneak into the play-offs. It was through the back door admittedly – but we were there.
Our opponents in the semi-finals, as they had been the previous year, were Ipswich. This time we were at home in the first game, but we couldn’t get to Upton Park because friends were getting married and we had been invited to their wedding. We couldn’t watch it live on TV either – the game, which kicked off at the ridiculously early hour of 12.15, coincided with the ceremony. So thank you, Guglielmo Marconi, for taking the time and trouble to invent radio all those years ago. There can’t be a football supporter in the world who hasn’t had cause to be grateful to you over the years, just as we were that day.
Along with the rest of the congregation, we witnessed our friends declare their undying love for one another and shared their joy. But tucked towards the back of the register office my son and I also managed to share a set of headphones and experience some private joy of our own as Marlon Harewood and Bobby Zamora put us 2–0 up in the first quarter of an hour. A Jimmy Walker own goal and a late equaliser rather took the gloss off things, but by then I had handed my half of the earpiece back to Geoff and was enjoying the reception.
On balance, I wouldn’t recommend listening to a football match while you are at a wedding. It takes a good deal of self-control to restrain yourself to a silent fist-pump when your team scores. It would be all too easy to forget where you are and jump to your feet with a celebratory ‘Yes!’ at news of a goal. As my son pointed out at the time – showing, if you’ll forgive a certain amount of parental pride here, a remarkably well developed sense of humour for a thirteen-year-old – that would be most unfortunate if it coincided with the traditional question of whether anyone knows of a good reason why this man and woman should not be joined together in the holy state of matrimony.
Zamora scored twice in the second leg at Portman Road to ensure West Ham were going back to Cardiff. The Williams family, however, were going to the Gulf Coast of Florida. But before we went my brilliant wife had tracked down a bar in the sleepy little resort where we were due to stay which was promising to show the game live. You can see why I married this woman: ask yourself, would your wife go to all the trouble of ensuring the holiday itinerary included a televised football match? It took some doing as well. The internet was in its infancy then – we didn’t have broadband in 2005 – and it really was no mean feat to locate somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic that was accessible from our beach-side apartment which was going to televise a game of English soccerball.
We stayed in a place called Clearwater Beach which, it turns out, is something of a favourite with Tom Cruise. A lifetime of working in journalism has made me cautious about grandiose claims, so I was sceptical when the nearby diner showed me a written testimonial from Top Gun Tom claiming the establishment served the best pizza he had ever eaten. It seemed a long way for him to have gone for a quattro stagioni – Hollywood is well over 2,000 miles from Florida. Later we discovered that the adjacent town of Clearwater is home to Scientology, which explained Tom’s trip east. It is tempting to be rather scathing about a wacky religious cult that reckons the galactic ruler Xenu visited Earth in a spaceship 75 million years ago, but you’ll hear no word of criticism from me. Who am I to judge others’ beliefs? I believe West Ham will reach a European final again one day.
The bar Di had pinpointed was called The Big Ben British Pub and it has a special place in our family history. For us it was a 10 a.m. kickoff – but for once nobody was complaining about getting up early. We were in front of the telly with time to spare.
Geoff recalls much of the day better than I do. ‘It was probably the first time I got a sense that West Ham really was a big club,’ he told me.
Here we were, thousands of miles away from home in a little beach resort, yet this pub was full of West Ham fans. I was surprised we weren’t the only ones in there. It made me realise this club means so much to a lot of people around the world.
And the opposition? ‘There was a little table with two Preston fans on it and, obviously, they were pretty quiet throughout the whole thing.’
My son, of course, is some years older now than he was then. ‘As a computer scientist I tend to pride myself on my logical reasoning,’ he says. So?
Football is pretty much the one thing where that all goes out the window and superstition takes over. Towards the end of that season I’d established a lucky outfit which saw me through the run-in and the two play-off games. There was a cap involved, but on the morning of the final I couldn’t find it. I was terrified about that.
Looking back, Geoff thinks the early start was a good thing.
A game like that, you just want to get it out the way, don’t you? All that time spent in the build up is really nervous so a ten o’clock kick off worked out well. And I was too young to drink, so for me the alcohol couldn’t play its part.
Personally, I’m not so sure. Defeat would have been disastrous for West Ham. The parachute payments that come with relegation from the Prem were about to run out and financial ruin beckoned. A drink would have settled my nerves, but 10 a.m. is a bit early – even for a journalist. As I sipped my orange juice I tried to put the thought from my mind: lose this game and we are looking at years in the wilderness of lower-league football.
My extremely sober friend and erstwhile colleague Matt Scott reckoned my disquiet was unfounded. In his match report for The Guardian he wrote:
After defeat by Palace at this stage last season West Ham were better prepared than Preston and, despite the relative youth of players such as Elliott Ward, Marlon Harewood and Anton Ferdinand, seemed more at ease with the pressure of a 70,000 crowd.
It took only four minutes for West Ham to hit Preston’s woodwork. Shaun Newton spotted Tomas Repka’s sprint down the right wing and played a defence-splitting pass for the Czech, whose well-struck shot rattled the post.
West Ham sustained the momentum, Harewood glancing on a clearance from Jimmy Walker for Zamora, who fed Etherington. The winger took it into Carlo Nash’s area and forced a fine save.
With the London side defending well in numbers, Preston created next to nothing from open play but their threat lay in well-worked set-plays. West Ham wobbled when free-kicks and corners found their way into their box: had Chris Lucketti’s header from Eddie Lewis’ corner been delivered with more force Walker might have been hard pushed to stop it.
One of those set-plays nearly brought Preston a goal at the start of the second half; Newton had to clear off the line to prevent us going behind. We hit back immediately �
� Zamora should have scored from the rebound after Nash could only parry a Harewood shot. Then came the moment we had all been dreaming of.
Over to you, Matt: ‘With a looping ball, Zamora put Etherington down the left wing. His pace took him past Mawene and, as Claude Davis slipped, his cross allowed Zamora to hook in his fourth goal in three play-off games.’ When the ball hits the net like a fucking rocket, that’s Zamora! (For the avoidance of doubt I should point out the italicised bit is mine, not Matt’s.) The bastardised version of ‘That’s Amore’ – admittedly more popular with Zamora’s adoring Brighton fans than us – flashed into my mind, but I didn’t sing it. There were children present. But it’s fair to say that we West Ham fans gathered in a quiet corner of the Sunshine State did our bit to celebrate that oh-so-precious goal in the manner befitting.
Matt’s report makes it sound as if West Ham played out the rest of the game in relative ease, but it didn’t appear that way from where we were sitting. Especially when Walker handled outside the area, twisting his knee so badly in the process he had to be carried off and replaced by substitute keeper Stephen Bywater – whose first job was to deal with the resultant free kick.
I think the way Geoff felt at the time reflected the way many Hammers saw things: ‘It was a real heart-in-the-mouth moment. I thought that if he saves this we’ll be all right – if it goes in, we’ll lose. They’ll go on and get another one.’
Bywater did save it. But Walker’s injury meant seven minutes of added-on time. Seven minutes! No one should have to endure that in a play-off final – there ought to be something in the Geneva Convention to prevent torture of that kind.
One minute gone: We’re still winning.
Two minutes: They’re pressing, but we’re holding on.
Three minutes: I really can’t take much more of this.
Four minutes: The bloody transmission has gone down!
There was a collective groan, but no one spoke after that. All we could do was look at one another in dumbfounded silence. How could this have happened at such a crucial point in our lives? This was unbearable!
The screen seemed to be blank for an eternity. Then, just as most of us were reaching breaking point, the picture came back. ‘There was a close-up of Nigel Reo-Coker and he was looking around as if everything had gone pear-shaped,’ Geoff recalls. I remember a shot of white-shirted Preston players running towards one another as if to celebrate a goal. They’d clearly equalised – I felt sick to the stomach. ‘Then they panned out and it turned out it was only a throw-in,’ Geoff reminds me before I have another fit of the cold sweats over what might have been.
Then the final whistle went, and that was that. Throughout the bar the West Ham fans celebrated in their different ways – some jubilantly; others, like me, sat quietly for a moment or two, savouring the ecstasy of the moment. Geoff jumped off his barstool, punching the air. ‘There was a low ceiling and I got a fistful of lightbulb,’ he says.
It was early afternoon when we left the dimly lit, air-conditioned pub. The Florida warmth and dazzling sunshine came as a real shock as we stepped outside. It seemed so incongruous after being totally immersed in a football match all morning.
‘After the game we went back to the apartment,’ says Geoff. ‘There was nothing else to do but relive the goal over and over again. I remember sitting by the pool in thirty degrees of heat and asking myself, could this day get any better?’
The answer, my son, is no, it can’t. Tuck that one away in the memory bank and don’t lose it. Supporting West Ham, you’ll need to remind yourself of the sunny days from time to time.
Chapter 15
Local heroes
AFTER THE BULLDOZERS have razed Upton Park to the ground the builders will move in and start work on what has been dubbed the East End ‘village’ – a development of 700 homes, shops, underground parking and a landscaped garden dedicated to the memory of Bobby Moore.
Clearly no memorial park worthy of the name would be complete without a statue of the person being remembered, which is why sculptor-to-the-stars Frances Segelman has been commissioned to create an effigy of Moore, which – if she stays true to form – will be cast in bronze. While she’s at it she’s been asked to knock up various other bits of artwork celebrating the heritage of the club to be scattered around the new ‘village’. Chances are, there’ll be statues of a few other famous players for residents to admire as well.
There was a time when, rather than gazing at sculptures of West Ham heroes in E13, you could rub shoulders with the people themselves.
Bobby Moore once held open the door of a shop in the Barking Road for the girl I would one day marry. It was the stationer’s Davidson Back, and Di had barely started secondary school. But the captain of West Ham and England, probably the most recognisable man in the country, still found time to smile and confess that it was his pleasure when she thanked him for the courtesy.
It’s hard to imagine a living god buying his own stationery, and my wife admits to being somewhat taken aback at the time. But it’s not as if she only ever saw West Ham players on match days. When she was growing up in East Ham she lived two streets away from the fabulous Ronnie Boyce, whose family ran the local corner grocery store.
It is Boyce who has had more to do with me supporting West Ham than anyone else alive or dead. He scored twice in the 1964 FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United, which set the ball rolling for me. It was after this game, which West Ham won 3–1, that the kids at school started talking about who they wanted to win the final itself – and I found myself in a minority of one in leaning towards the Hammers.
It turned out that Sid had gone to Hillsborough for this momentous match. He had supported West Ham since he was a boy but, apparently, this was his first away game. Curiously, his final away game was to be an FA Cup semi-final as well – twenty-seven years later at Villa Park.
Although Sid was more than happy to take Di to Upton Park he felt that, being only eight, she was too young for the rigours of a trip to Sheffield and the hassle that goes with being in a crowd of 65,000 people. But he did take Rosie, the eldest of his three daughters.
Days like that are engraved on the memory for a lifetime. Rosie, aged just fourteen at the time, recalls getting up in the dark to catch the Lacey’s coach that took them to the game, the ham sandwiches on the way, her first impressions of Sheffield (‘I had never been north of London’), the optimism on the journey there, the ecstasy of the goals, the joy on the way home, the singing, the incessant rain, and the fish and chips when they got back to East Ham.
Of course you never forget moments like those: ‘I had spent a wonderful day with the man I loved most in the world, my dad, watching the triumph,’ says Rosie. It doesn’t get much better than that.
As a father myself I can see why Sid decided not to take his younger daughters. It would have meant carting around with him all the paraphernalia that is involved in travelling with small children. And, in my father-in-law’s case, the equipment would have included a four-legged claret and blue stool he had made for his girls to stand on so they could see what was going on whenever he took them to a game. Di, Rosie and Linda – the middle sister – all used it at one time or another. Sid bequeathed that stool to Geoff when he was a lad. Being 6 ft 3 he doesn’t use it much these days – but he wouldn’t swap it for the town hall clock. Not even if the council begged him.
Boyce justified my initial faith in West Ham United by scoring the winner at Wembley. I have occasionally asked myself if my life would have turned out differently had he not nodded home Peter Brabrook’s cross in the dying seconds. If West Ham had lost against Preston North End, would I still have supported them for the rest of my days?
I hate the thought that I might have been tempted by another club; the best outcome would have been for me to have turned my back on football completely and shown more of an interest in my dad’s mechanical tinkerings under the family’s Vauxhall Victor on a Saturday afternoon. That way I would have ce
rtainly saved myself a lifetime of mental torment. And I could well have also saved myself a small fortune in garage bills every time a car of mine developed the slightest fault. Ah well, que sera, sera.
The FA Cup team that Boyce was part of was a real oddity by today’s standards. The player born furthest from Upton Park was Geoff Hurst, who took his first breath in the Lancashire town of Ashton-under-Lyne – which is not to be confused with Staffordshire’s Newcastle-under-Lyme nor, crucially, the Northumbrian conurbation of Newcastle upon Tyne where, if you can master the language, you will find it far easier to get a bottle of brown ale, a ferry to Stavanger and chlamydia.
But be warned. Should you find yourself in a pub quiz and you’re asked the question, ‘In which year did West Ham become the last team to win an FA Cup final with a team comprised entirely of players born in England?’, do not jump in with 1964. The correct answer is 1975, when we did it again.
The idea of players living among the fans who support them is one that still appeals to me. I love the thought of walking into the original Cassetaris café in the Barking Road and seeing the likes of Bobby Moore, Malcolm Allison and Ken Brown sitting unostentatiously in the corner sipping mugs of tea and devising new strategies using the nippy salt and pepper pots to outwit a lumbering Sarson’s vinegar bottle. These days you feel there is more chance of bumping into a Premier League player outside a glitzy nightclub, where the only contact will be either him lighting your cigarette with a £50 note or sticking one on you for making an inappropriate remark about his girlfriend, who is wearing only slightly more than the last time you saw her on Page 3 of a tabloid newspaper.
It’s hard to see how players can truly understand the values of their supporters when, rather than live next door to them, they prefer a luxury flat in the fashionable part of town or a gated mansion in the wealthy suburbs where the security personnel will set the guard dogs on you given half a chance.
Nearly Reach the Sky Page 21