Nearly Reach the Sky

by Brian Williams

  We had been drawn away at Aldershot, but the fourth division club were refused permission by their local safety committee to increase the crowd capacity at the Recreation Ground so they switched the game to Upton Park.

  Technically they were the home side – although they opted to use the away dressing room. We were required to play in our white away strip and the programme was a strange hybrid of our Hammer and the Hampshire club’s Shotscene.

  On the back cover of that programme there is a picture of little Robbi and a no-punches-pulled explanation of why he is there.

  Brave Robbi Reardon is our special match day mascot today. Five-year-old Robbi, from the Isle of Dogs, has an incurable brain tumour and sadly doctors believe he has only months to live. But Robbi’s parents, Ian and Jean, are determined to make 1991 a memorable year for him, and we are very pleased to make one of his dreams come true as our special mascot for the FA Cup tie.

  Gale was captain for the day because Alvin Martin had been ruled out with an injury. Part of his duties were taking care of the special mascot on his special day. And what a special job he did.

  ‘Robbi was really excited to be the mascot but it was evident right from the start that he couldn’t run about with the players like the kids normally do,’ says Gale. ‘He was out of breath in the tunnel, so I carried him out.’

  While his team went through their normal routine in the pre-match kickabout, Gale strolled around the pitch with young Robbi safely perched on his shoulders, ignoring everything and everyone apart from the little VIP he was looking after with such diligence.

  ‘I suppose they picked the right captain that day,’ Gale says without a hint of conceit. ‘I had a little boy about the same age as Robbi, so I could relate to him. He was a smashing lad. Robbi died not long after – it was so sad. I went to the funeral with Ian Bishop. They were a lovely family.’

  As Gale put life and sport into perspective by demonstrating a level of humanity not normally associated with professional footballers he had no idea how closely he was being observed in those few poignant moments. ‘I couldn’t believe that people came up and thanked me afterwards,’ he says. ‘The chairman’s wife had a tear in her eye.’ She wasn’t the only one, Tony.

  I anticipate some objections to my choice for the ’90s. I admit that it’s hard to describe a former club captain as an ‘unsung’ hero, especially when he has been voted Hammer of the Year twice. And his seventeen-year stint at Upton Park spanned three separate decades. But I loved Steve Potts and I feel he never truly got the recognition he deserved. (Besides, if the East End ‘village’ overshoots the original budget and Ms Segelman has to cut back on materials a pint-sized Pottsy is the obvious solution.)

  What can you say about Steve Potts that hasn’t been said before? A total of 463 starts for West Ham in all competitions; a grand total of 506 appearances in all; twice runner-up as Hammer of the Year to go with his two wins; unfailingly sound wherever he played in the back four despite being just 5 ft 7 tall; just one red card in all that time. And just one goal to go with it – which to my mind only goes to show that he spent most of his time doing what he was paid to do and stopping the other lot from scoring.

  On top of all that, Potts has done the Knowledge and is therefore qualified to drive a London taxi. Just imagine being picked up by Pottsy – how good would that be? It would mean that every time you hailed a taxi you could eradicate the danger of an unwanted diatribe from an opinionated driver by simply sliding open the dividing window and saying: ‘Oi, mate – you’ll never guess who I had in the front of my cab.’ As the man once said – get your retaliation in first.

  That often appeared to be Hayden Mullins’ preferred method of tackling. Alan Pardew’s first signing after becoming manager at Upton Park, Mullins went on to play more than 200 games for West Ham and is a serious candidate for the ’00s.

  Not always a crowd favourite, he never shirked his responsibilities in midfield – often getting stuck in where others feared to tread.

  So important was he to Pardew’s plans, Mullins played in every Premier League game bar one in the FA Cup final season before being sent off against Liverpool – which brought an automatic ban and ensured he missed the bigger game against Stevie Gee et al at the Millennium Stadium as well as having to sit out the last two League fixtures. The only other time he didn’t feature was when he was one of six players rested ahead of the quarter-final against Man City for a home game with relegation-threatened Portsmouth – managed at the time by a certain H. Redknapp – in which we got tonked 4–2. Managerial apologies to the supporters who paid good money to see that rang a little hollow, I’m afraid.

  Such was Mullins’ contribution to the defensive side of our game there is a strong case to be made that we would have held on to win the Cup had he been playing in Cardiff. However, I’m nominating Jack Collison, who courageously put aside the grief of losing his father in a motorcycle accident to pull on the No. 31 shirt in a League Cup tie against The Hated Millwall in 2009. Collison’s father Ian had been on his way to see his son play Tottenham two days previously when the accident happened. Emotionally, Jack must have been in pieces when he played in the cup game. But that didn’t prevent him trying to persuade the morons who had spilled onto the pitch to confront rampaging Millwall thugs that they should return to the stands if they truly had the club’s best interests at heart. The tears he shed at the end of the game speak volumes for the man.

  If there is to be a nomination from the present decade it goes to Kevin Nolan, who divided opinion from the moment he arrived in 2011 to take over the role of club captain. On the minus side are a seeming reluctance to chase back, too many misplaced passes and a bloody silly chicken impersonation when he scores. On the plus side are the goals that initiate the chicken dance, a broad smile and an obvious ability to unite the changing room. A controversial choice for statue status, I know – but it would be a dull world if we all agreed about everything.

  However, I’m starting to wonder if this statue of the Unsung Hero should be a player at all. On reflection my vote goes instead to the long-suffering supporter – whose games can be counted in thousands rather than hundreds and whose years of service are never-ending.

  What I’ve got in mind is someone who’s 6 ft-plus, slightly hunched to avoid looking like the big-I-am and not carrying quite enough weight for his height. His shoes are a bit scuffed and his trousers aren’t quite long enough. The jacket is rather crumpled in places and sticking out of one of the side pockets is a packet of fags. Maybe there’s a hint of a Ladbrokes betting slip in the top pocket. The cigarettes are Embassy – which he is forever trying to give up but can’t – partly because he needs the packet for his constant end-of-season calculations about how many points West Ham are going to need to avoid relegation. The sawn-off ballpoint he uses for these sums came from the bookies and the betting slip may actually be worth a couple of bob; this man is not a high-roller but he’s no mug when it comes to picking a horse. (He’s not bad with the dogs either – he reckoned an Irish greyhound once gave him a knowing wink at Walthamstow and he never looked back after that.)

  We’re going to need a pair of spectacles as well – tinted claret and blue, of course.

  The tricky part of any statue is the expression, but I’m sure someone as talented as Frances Segelman can handle that (to get an idea of her work, check out her Billy Bremner outside Elland Road).

  Ideally any statue of a typical supporter should be able to shake its head in disbelief occasionally. However, I appreciate the mechanics of that aren’t going to be easy. Therefore we need to concentrate on the facial features. Joyful? Depressed? Angry? What do you try to depict? My suggestion would be amused bewilderment. What you need to do, Frances, is capture the look of a man who has just been told by his wife of forty-plus years that he has buttered her cream crackers on the wrong side and you’ll have nailed it.

  Would Bobby Moore object to sharing his memorial garden with my unsung hero? I don’t
think so. He did, after all, once hold open a shop door for this man’s daughter.

  Chapter 16

  On the spot

  EVERYBODY WANTS TO go to Wembley; players, managers and – most of all – supporters. So, when one of the most famous goalscorers in history puts the ball on the spot and steps back to take the penalty that will surely have you queuing up for final tickets, you take a deep breath and wait expectantly for an unforgettable moment of ecstasy. Then the goalkeeper saves it.

  In this case the keeper was Gordon Banks, a man who is still considered by many to be the best there ever was in his position. Mind you, the penalty taker was no mug either. You may have heard of him: a bloke called Hurst. Geoff Hurst.

  The game in question was the 1972 League Cup semi-final against Stoke, which was eventually settled over four matches and has gone down in the annals as one of the most dramatic encounters of all time.

  Picture the scene. We had won the first leg at Stoke 2–1 – one of the goals was a Hurst penalty – and now we are back at Upton Park in extra time; a seething cauldron of an atmosphere and West Ham looking for a late, late winner. Then Harry Redknapp goes down in the box. The inevitable cries for a penalty from all corners of the ground. Anger as we think we’ve been denied – then delirium when we realise the ref is actually pointing to the spot. He’s given it! Wembley here we come!

  I am on the North Bank – not directly behind the goal, but still beautifully positioned to see the net bulge when Hurst does what he always does and smashes the ball past the flailing keeper into the top corner. He puts it to Banks’ right-hand side, just as he’d done in the first leg, but this time the England goalkeeper gets a hand to the ball – somehow forcing it over the bar. Hurst is stunned. The North Bank is stunned. Upton Park is stunned. The only man in the ground who isn’t appears to be Banks, who picks himself up, modestly accepts the congratulations of his disbelieving teammates and prepares to deal with the subsequent corner.

  In later life Banks came to see that as the best save he ever made – better even than the more famous effort against Pelé, which is still shown on telly every four years when the World Cup finals roll around. But as we trudged up Green Street to the station, we were not thinking about what happened in Mexico two years beforehand. All we could think about was how close we’d been to a final of our own.

  No one remembers the first replay at Hillsborough, which finished 0–0. But the game at Old Trafford, when Bobby Moore had to go in goal for a spell and saved a penalty, is well documented. Moore took over between the sticks after Bobby Ferguson had been concussed in a terrible challenge by Stoke’s Terry Conroy. The game was not even a quarter of an hour old when Ferguson went down. He was on the deck for seven minutes – Moore fiercely standing guard over him to ensure he wasn’t moved – before being helped to his feet and attempting to carry on. Again Moore intervened, this time drawing referee Pat Partridge’s attention to the fact the punch-drunk Ferguson was clearly in distress and in no position to continue.

  That’s when the keeper was led off and replaced in goal by his club captain. Astonishingly, Ferguson did come back on just before half time (there was only one sub allowed in those days and teams never put a keeper on the bench) but he barely knew what day of the week it was. An angry Ron Greenwood later revealed his goalkeeper had no recollection of the match whatsoever. Had the Scot been fully fit he certainly would have been disappointed with the two goals that saw Stoke come from 2–1 down to claim that precious Wembley place.

  I don’t think I’ve been left more dejected by a defeat before or since. And then, just when I thought I’d started to put it behind me, I learned that we could have actually bought the brilliant Banks, but Greenwood had a verbal agreement with Kilmarnock that he would sign Ferguson – for what was then a world record fee for a goalkeeper – and the fact that he could have instead bought the best in the business wasn’t nearly enough to make him go back on his word. What price integrity? Several Cup finals and a couple of League titles, I suspect.

  Against any other keeper, Hurst would have scored that penalty at Upton Park. I was fifteen years old and I had worshipped this man for as long as I could remember. He had missed the occasional spot kick (four, to be precise) since his first successful effort nine years earlier at Upton Park but, in my eyes, Hurst was blessed with superhuman powers. Then it turned out he was fallible after all. I’ll never forget the shock of learning that – it was like discovering your dad is a cross-dresser.

  It was years before I could trust another penalty-taker in claret and blue. There’d be an incident in the box; a cry for justice from the crowd; players’ arms rocketing skywards to endorse their appeals; a moment of hesitation as all eyes turned to the ref; widespread joy as the official’s finger lasered in on the splash of whitewash 12 short yards from the opponents’ goal. Then my celebration would turn to deep, dark doubt about the outcome of this gilt-edged opportunity.

  After Hurst left West Ham – by a strange quirk of fate he went to Stoke – the penalty-taking duties were generally shared by Billy Bonds and Pop Robson. (They let Bobby Gould take one once, but that was part of a hat-trick in a 6–0 drubbing of Tranmere in the League Cup so it doesn’t really count.) Normally I would have trusted these men with my life but the miss by Sir Geoff had scarred me and I felt a terrible sense of dread every time we were awarded a pen. It took the arrival of a nineteen-year-old lad from Dundee United to change that.

  OK, before we go any further it’s question time again:

  West Ham have won three FA Cup finals and used thirty players in the process. Of those, only one wasn’t English. Can you name him?

  Sorry, I’m going to have to hurry you. There is a pretty big clue in the fact we’ve been talking about penalty-takers. Of course – it’s Ray ‘Tonka’ Stewart. Anyone who didn’t get that please stay behind after the lesson so we can discuss some extra homework.

  Stewart had played fewer than fifty games in the Scottish top flight when word reached John Lyall that this was a kid who had something about him. Lyall put in a cheeky bid, knowing the pulling power of a glamour club like ours would be irresistible … and the Scottish club turned him down. So Lyall, ever the master negotiator, let them stew for a while before coming back with a slightly improved offer. To be precise, he improved the offer by doubling it, then adding a further 45.7 per cent, making it a world record for a transfer fee for a teenager. Ha-ha, you Dundee doughnuts – you didn’t see that coming, did you? I’m afraid you’re going to have to get up a bit earlier in the morning if you hope to outsmart a crafty cockney when it comes to dealing with financial matters.

  That was at the start of the 1979 season. Stewart made his debut at Barnsley in a League Cup game in the early days of September, and scored his first goal for West Ham later that month at Upton Park in a second division game against Burnley. It was, as you might expect, from the penalty spot.

  I regret to say I was not one of the 18,327 people who were there to see it. Neither did I see his second thunderbolt from the spot the following month in the next round of the League Cup against Southend. Nor did I witness his third goal – another spot kick – at Fulham. I kept up this proud record by missing him scoring two penalties in the same match against Cardiff at the Boleyn Ground in November 1979 and got 1980 off to a flying start by being absent for his next successful penalty against Preston North End in January. It almost goes without saying that his next three goals, all away from home, were scored without my help. Only one of those was a penalty though – at Orient in the fourth round of the FA Cup.

  I realise that absenteeism on this sort of level would have earned me a written warning had it been at work, and all I can do is apologise and promise it won’t happen again. By way of mitigation, though, I would like to explain that there was a woman involved.

  Some years earlier I had gone out with a girl who gave me a straight ultimatum: West Ham or her. That was simple to counter; I nodded her a swift goodbye and caught the football spe
cial to Port Vale for a third round FA Cup tie. It wasn’t Brief Encounter, but everybody knew where they stood.

  The difficulties that came with the relationship I was in at the beginning of the ’80s were much harder to contend with. My consort by then never actually came out and said she disliked me disrupting our Saturdays by going to Upton Park – or, worse still, away games – but you didn’t have to be a mind-reader to tell she was far from happy when I did. So I had to choose my games carefully, and the ones I went to all seemed to coincide with Ray Stewart not taking a penalty.

  I was there for his next spot kick though. Not that there was much riding on it. We were only in the final minute of a pulsating FA Cup sixth round tie against Aston Villa with the score at 0–0 and Upton Park at fever pitch.

  Villa were a good side – they were fifth in the first division and the following season would win the League title. We were a good side, too – but we were fifth in the second division. The general feeling was that if we’re going to get to the semi-final we had to get the job done at Upton Park.

  The second half seemed to fly by. Urged on by the biggest crowd for two seasons, a West Ham side missing the inspirational Billy Bonds laid siege to the Villa goal in front of the South Bank in an attempt to get a late winner. It seemed the clock would beat us, then we got another corner. Trevor Brooking swung it in, looking for the head of Alvin Martin. Instead, it found the hand of Villa’s central defender Ken McNaught. Penalty!

  There were people around me in the West Stand Lower celebrating as if we had already won the game. They clearly hadn’t been there when Hurst missed at the other end of the ground all those years before. Had I known West Ham’s name was on the Cup in 1980 I wouldn’t have worried either. But no one tells you that sort of thing in advance, do they?