Nearly Reach the Sky (24 page)

What really did happen at Leeds in 1973? In your autobiography you say that it was nothing more than a heated argument, but in later years you seem to have let it slip that you did actually lamp him in the dressing room. No one would blame you if you did, of course. Losing 4–1 is bad enough but, as I say, it’s so much harder for the supporters to take when you feel the players aren’t trying. And that, in your eyes, was MacDougall’s crime at Elland Road. The story goes that Ron Greenwood let you get on it with it, which speaks volumes when you consider how much he abhorred violence. He didn’t like his defenders kicking opposition strikers but he was prepared to turn a blind eye when you gave his big-money signing from Manchester United a knuckle sandwich. MacDougall
was gone a month later; ahead of you there were still fifteen years before the West Ham mast. I think it’s fair to say there was only one winner in that contest.

Not that there is any suggestion you were some sort of thug. Hard, yes. Hard as nails, in fact. But never unfairly so. That’s why, in time, you even won the grudging respect of opposition supporters – and there aren’t many players from any club who can claim to have done that over the years.

By my reckoning you were only ever sent off twice – although the second time it happened it nearly cost you your place in the Arsenal final. That would have been a disaster. It’s true that some of the tackles you made in your early days as a right back would have got you into early bathfuls of hot water with today’s referees, but it was a different game back then.

I recall how Greenwood’s decision to move you out of the back four to provide some much-needed bite in the middle of the park raised a good few eyebrows at the time. But putting you alongside Sir Trev was a masterstroke. You were no mere holding midfielder though – you had licence to go where you liked, which was generally where the action was. The energy and inspiration you brought to the side from midfield were a revelation for those who thought of you as nothing more than a destroyer. I can close my eyes now and still see you flying into a challenge, emerging with the ball and then positioning yourself on the half-turn in the way Greenwood had taught you as you looked around for a better-placed colleague. Because not only could you win the ball and keep it, you could use it, too. You were a terrific passer of the ball, Billy. And you could score goals.

Remember your hat-trick against Chelsea that ended our
relegation fears and resulted in you being our leading scorer in the 1973/4 season? To be honest, I don’t – but it was 40 years ago and I must have missed that particular London derby. However, I do know that you never used to hang about when a game had finished, preferring to join the traffic queuing up to get through the Blackwall Tunnel and go home to your family rather than heading off to the pub for a pint with the boys. I hope you hung around long enough to collect the match ball after the Chelsea match though, because that was your one and only hat-trick for West Ham. (If that’s in the shed with your boots you could put them on eBay together – you’d have buyers queuing round the block.)

About the time you were lining up with Sir Trev and the hugely underrated Graham Paddon in a midfield that absolutely dripped with class, I found myself kicking a ball about on a beach in Italy with my mate and a bunch of weirdos from the US who called themselves the Children of God.

We were challenged to a game by a group of Italian lads, who clearly thought we were there for the taking. To be honest, we were. On paper, we didn’t have a chance. But, as they say, football isn’t played on paper, it’s played on grass. Or, in this case, sand.

It was clear from the start which side had all the class. They were sleek, tanned and wearing sunglasses. We were a rag-bag of a team: the Americans were energetic but sadly lacking in talent. I hoped they would be able to use their religious connections to summon up some divine intervention, but as the early exchanges unfolded it was evident that heavenly help would not be forthcoming. Which is when I asked myself, what would Bonzo do in these circumstances?

The only way we were going to avoid a hiding in this game was
for me to win the ball, my more-than-useful mate to play a bit and the Yanks to make thorough nuisances of themselves.

The playmaker was a decent footballer. You could tell he was good because he kept his packet of Marlborough tucked in the waistband of his stylish swim-shorts. He was the one we had to stop.

I got my opportunity after several minutes of backs-to-the-wall defending. He had moved out wide, received the ball and gone round one of the God squad when I clattered him on the water’s edge with the sort of tackle I had watched you make time and again. The impact was so forceful we both ended up in the sea, which was bad news for his Marlborough. I really cleaned him up – you’d have been so proud of me, Billy!

I later read that before one of those great European nights at Upton Park you looked across at the opposing captain as you lined up in the tunnel shortly before kickoff and you could see from his face that the intimidating atmosphere had got to him – you knew then that the game was already won. I think I saw a similar look as that young Italian emerged from the water and contemplated his unsmokable cigarettes. We won ugly, but we won.

Your international career, sadly, is about as notable as mine! Why you never played for England is a total mystery to me. There was an Under-23 appearance and you were on the bench for a World Cup qualifier against Italy in 1977. But at a time when some very ordinary players were being picked to represent their country and you were producing the best football of your life, you never got a full cap.

The England manager for much of the time was Don Revie – who had never forgiven West Ham for thrashing his Leeds side 7–0 some years before. He believed, wrongly, that Greenwood
had arrogantly snubbed him after that game. Did that colour his thinking, I wonder?

Revie famously – and controversially – walked away from the England job in ’77 to take up a lucrative contract in the United Arab Emirates. The next year I followed him to Dubai to take a considerably less rewarding contract on a newspaper that was being launched there. I was asked to handle the sports pages and, as acting sports editor of the
Gulf Daily News
, tried to fix up an interview with Revie. Why he chose not to give you a game was one of the questions on my list. But he never returned my calls.

I know you don’t really like to talk about your time in management – or certainly not the way it ended at West Ham. As Jimmy Greaves used to say: ‘Funny old game, innit?’ You presided over our longest ever unbeaten sequence, won promotion twice and took us to an FA semi-final, yet in many ways your time in charge is still best remembered for the controversy off the pitch rather than success on it.

It all started well enough, with promotion in your first season. Then came that harebrained bond scheme, which provoked huge unrest and resulted in disastrous performances. What were they thinking of? Asking people to pay anything from £500 to £950 simply to give them the privilege of buying a season ticket – with the implied threat that if they didn’t pay they would forfeit that right – was never going to go down well. The fact that 808 people did take up this dubious offer proves Abraham Lincoln was right and that you can fool some of the people all of the time. But most of us weren’t having it.

Still, at least there wasn’t some clever-dick marketing executive thinking the sort of thoughts that now reckons we are ‘Moore than
just a club’. How puke-making is that? The only stomach-churning slogan that could possibly be worse than the present Barcelona rip-off is if, back in ’91, some overpaid clown in a sharp suit had come up with: ‘Not just a Bonds’.

Your time at West Ham finally came to an end at the beginning of the ’94 season, and it still leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. Harry Redknapp has had his say about the circumstances that led to him replacing you in the manager’s office on several occasions, but you chose to maintain a dignified silence until relatively recently when you let it be known you don’t exactly agree with H’s recollection of events.

What a shame your friendship went up in smoke as a result of all that. As a kid I used to watch the two of you bombing up the right-hand side – him as a winger and you as the overlapping fullback – and sing my heart out. ‘Harry, Harry Redknapp, Harry Redknapp on the wiiiiing,’ and ‘Oh, Billy, Billy – Billy, Billy, Billy, Billy, Billy Bonds,’ seemed to go together like Fred and Ginger. I’d love to hear your side of the story one day – we all would.

These days we are West Ham’s claret and blue army. When you were the gaffer we were your army. I doubt we’ll ever sing another manager’s name the way we sang yours. Shamefully it took the ‘Moore than just a club’ the best part of twenty years before it got round to officially recognising what you did for us. But the supporters never forgot, and I hope the reception that greeted you at the Cardiff game when you were given the Lifetime Achievement Award gave you an inkling of the limitless admiration Upton Park has for you.

As I said at the beginning I don’t want to embarrass you, but I reckon I speak for everyone with claret and blue in their heart
when I tell you that your place in West Ham’s history is assured. It wasn’t just your ability, it was all the qualities that went with it: loyalty, honesty, leadership, dignity, courage, humility – you are everything we all strive to be, knowing that all too often we will come up short.

Moore, Hurst, Peters, Brooking, Greenwood, Lyall, Bonds; your place alongside the West Ham greats is guaranteed. You, modestly, would probably disagree. But you’d be wrong. In fact, Billy, in the eyes of so many of us, you are actually the greatest of the greats. And we thank you for it.

Yours respectfully,

Brian Williams

I
T’S A FEW
minutes before 3 on a mid-winter’s afternoon and what little daylight that’s left is fading fast. You’ve been looking forward to Saturday all week, and here it is at last. Now you are impatient for the game to get started.

Perched towards the top of the Bobby Moore Stand you shift your gaze beyond the confines of the rapidly filling stadium to the north east, where the grey sky has merged seamlessly with the colourless landscape below. And, with a sudden chill in your heart, you are gripped by the terrible realisation that everything is about to go horribly wrong.

There’s no logical reason for this surge of pessimism. Everything up to this point has been fine. The players looked sharp enough in the warm-up. There are a couple of injuries, but that’s to be expected
at this time of year. The opponents are mid-table and their away form is woeful. Even the ref is one you can live with.

You are prone to the odd superstition but have done nothing to anger the fates – you even put on your lucky claret socks in the right order. What’s more, things augured well on the way to the ground. It’s not as if the Tube let you down again. Sure, there was the usual hold-up waiting to get into the station but it was nothing out of the ordinary. Better still, you actually managed to smuggle that can of lager past the security guy on the turnstiles for once and you’re grateful for a swig of it now. You thought your mouth was dry because of the salty bacon in the sandwich you bought from the burger stall. But you know the cause is something different. Not panic, exactly. More a certainty that today is going to end in bitter defeat. You’ve had this feeling before, and you’re rarely wrong.

You try to shake it off by singing ‘Bubbles’ at the top of your voice. You give them an ear-shattering ‘Come On You Irons’ before you resume your seat and try to tell yourself that things will be all right. You even brighten up as we win a throw in their half.

Then the bloke behind you starts to moan to his mate. He is of the opinion that we won’t have scored even if we’re still playing this time tomorrow. You fear he’s right, but you don’t want to hear him say it. He’s still saying it ten minutes later, by which time your illicit can is empty and it’s become clear that the last time this man set foot inside the ground Scott Parker was still in the team. What’s worse, he’s one of those clowns who think Parker was club captain.

You want to turn around and say something but you keep your thoughts to yourself. Another pass goes astray in midfield and, in the defensive scramble that follows, we’re forced to concede a corner. You have no doubt that this is the moment they will score.

We’re still one down at half time and you can’t be bothered to fight your way to the bar to get another beer. Instead you remain in your seat, grateful that the idiot behind you has gone – in his words – ‘for a pie and mash’. In your day it was an Arthur Bliss, but it’s painfully obvious that composers of classical music no longer register in popular culture and it appears Arthur has been aimed out. Time moves on, and you fear it may be leaving you behind.

Sitting alone quietly you try to make sense of it all.

You know that you can’t win ’em all and you don’t expect the Hammers to sweep all before them. Not these days anyway. Besides, you don’t support a club like this one for the glittering prizes. It’s been a long time since a West Ham captain hoisted aloft a significant trophy (the piece of Ratneresque crap they hand out for winning the play-off final doesn’t count – that game is about promotion, not silverware). And you’re not expecting to win anything any time soon, certainly while the finances of modern-day football mean clubs regard Cup competitions as an annoying distraction from surviving in the Premier League.

It’s not simply the fact we’re losing that has brought on this blac-kdog mood: you’ve seen West Ham get beaten before and, while it still hurts, you can cope with the disappointment better than you once could. This is something more fundamental. And dangerous. You are on the point of asking yourself why you do this in the first place – knowing that a failure to answer satisfactorily will make a mockery of your entire life.

You can’t invest fifty years of heart and soul devotion into something only to discover that it’s utterly pointless.

Things, undeniably, have changed in that time. For a start the football itself rarely excites you in the way it once did. You will
concede that the game is more athletic than when you first stood on the Upton Park terraces: the players are fitter, faster and stronger – but brawn is no substitute for brain. You still appreciate a defender throwing his body in front of an opponent to block a shot but it doesn’t send a little shiver down your spinal nerve-ends in the way Bobby Moore did when he stepped in to intercept a pass, taking the ball on his chest and instantly bringing it under control before side-stepping an onrushing attacker in his own penalty area and springing a counter-attack with an inch-perfect pass.

There’s no place for risk in today’s game. Flair has to be sacrificed for points. Get the ball into the channels and then press until the other side makes a mistake. Forget precision passing; now the order of the day is to play the percentages. Get it forward as quick as possible and look for the second ball. It brings results, but it doesn’t make the hair on the back of your neck stand to attention.

Not everyone agrees with you though. You’ve been informed by the younger generation that the West Ham you once knew has gone for good. Now we’ve got to mix it up: you can’t just hope to pass your way through a well-drilled opposition, you’ve got to be more direct. Get the ball wide and bombard them with crosses.

You counter with the suggestion that 4–4–2 produces a brand of football that’s easier on the eye than 4–3–3, only to be told in no uncertain terms that no one plays 4–4–2 these days. It’s said in the same way you’d have once told an old bloke with a fondness for the way things used to be that 2–3–5 had been consigned to the dustbin of history along with the dodo.

Fashions alter – you know that. So do tastes. Take clothes: it used to be that you wouldn’t wear a pair of jeans unless they were made by Levi Strauss; now you prefer the ones with a stretchy
waistband from Marks & Sparks. Or music: as a teenager you were obsessed by Rod Stewart and the Faces – you even had your hair cut like the diminutive Scotsman. The Roundhouse; the Rainbow; Hammersmith – you’d go anywhere to watch them belt out ‘Stay with Me’, ‘Maggie May’ and ‘You Wear It Well’. Now you wouldn’t get out of your armchair to watch Rod the Mod do a gig if he were playing in your back garden. Then there’s food: you used to love a sweet and sour; now you only ever eat Chinese when you’ve been outvoted by the rest of the family who reckon it’s time to give the Indian takeaway a miss for a change.

So, while you’ve moved on in so many other ways why do you maintain this unswerving loyalty to a football team you picked for the flimsiest of reasons when you had barely passed the age of reason? The players change, the managers change, even the shirt changes every couple of years with a view to parting you from large lumps of money in the club shop. All things must pass (except the midfield in a 4–3–3, it seems) but your support never wavers. You’d be well within your rights to hand in your notice – this isn’t what you signed up for all those years ago. Not that you’d even think of switching your allegiance to another club; there’s more chance of you applying for French citizenship than supporting someone else. But you could let it all go without anyone unfairly accusing you of cowardice in the face of the enemy.

The world didn’t stop spinning when you gave up the season ticket, did it? You told yourself that it was a sacrifice that had to be made now you were a family man because you could no longer justify the expense. Yet part of you was secretly relieved that the ball and chain of hauling up to East London from the south coast every other week (regardless of how badly we were playing or who
the opposition was) had been sprung from your ankle. Not that you would ever voice that thought in public.

However, you still feel the gravitational pull of Upton Park. You may not go to every game now but it’s unthinkable that you’d never come here again. Everything else about the club may be different but the Boleyn Ground is a constant reference point in your life in the way the North Star has been a focal point for navigators over the centuries. But your personal star is going to go supernova when the demolition men’s wrecking ball puts an end to a century of football. What the hell will there be to hang on to then?

There are the memories for a start. There are just too many of those to stuff into a suitcase and hide away in the loft in the hope they might be forgotten like the rest of the junk that’s up there. There are all those heroes – too many to name, in fact. There are the villains as well – the donkeys are just as much a part of the jigsaw puzzle as the thoroughbreds.

The emergence of home-grown talent still excites you. Watching the youngsters come up through the Academy and force their way into the first team allows you to believe the club hasn’t yet lost its heart and soul.

And there are all those intangibles: pride in the club’s heritage; the comforting sense of solidarity that comes with being a supporter; respect for those players who exhibit a determination and effort that shows how much wearing claret and blue really matters to them; the unalloyed joy of a goal; the simple silliness of match day rituals. Best of all, occasionally, is the immeasurable pleasure of beating one of your Billy Big-Bollocks London rivals.

The way you feel about your football team can’t be compared with your preference for a pair of chinos or a chicken jalfrezi. This
isn’t a commercial transaction – it’s a deeply personal relationship that begins with blind passion and then, if you are among the lucky ones, turns into true love, allowing you to grow together and recognise there are sometimes faults on both sides but being able to forgive one another’s mistakes too. A bit like marriage really.

For better or worse you know you are going to be hitched to West Ham until the day you are finally called to the celestial Bobby Moore Stand, where the angels are dressed in claret and blue and you never have to queue for a beer at half time. It’s a comforting thought in so many ways.

The second half is under way when the bloke behind returns to his seat, disturbing everyone around him as he does so. He has barely settled down before he starts talking nonsense again. The fella clearly doesn’t recognise half the players. True, these days you are a bit hazy about some of the opposition. There was a time when you could instantly identify every player in the division and be able to pronounce all their names, but you don’t seem to have the time and enthusiasm to maintain that level of knowledge these days. Still, unlike the bloke behind, you’re savvy enough to have bought a programme – and you know how take to a surreptitious shufti at the runners and riders without giving yourself away. More to the point, you can name all the West Ham players. You may be getting on a bit but you’re not senile.

It’s reaching a point that you’re having trouble concentrating on the game. Your brain is drowning in his inane prattle. The muscles in your neck are getting tenser by the minute and your overworked sense of humour has decided to take the rest of the day off. For the second time you consider telling Motormouth to button it but then think better of it. There’s no point having a row with someone
sitting behind you – their position gives them a strategic advantage that is almost impossible to overcome.

You think back to the good old days when standing made it the easiest thing in the world to gently sidle away from someone in whose vicinity you’d rather not be. For the first time that afternoon you smile inwardly as you think back to the time you told the buffoon selling his inflammatory pamphlets in Priory Road precisely where he could stick his Nazi propaganda, only to find yourself standing next to him on the Chicken Run half an hour later. It was apparent from the way his ape-like forehead knitted slightly when your eyes met that he knew he’d seen you before but couldn’t remember quite when or where. By the time he did you were down the other end of the terrace, proud to have struck a blow for free speech. (It was a complete coincidence you opted to watch your football from the other side of the stadium for the remainder of that season – large skinheads with extremist views and a taste for violence don’t frighten you.)

When you do manage to focus on the game once more, West Ham are no better than they were before the break. They have days like this sometimes – perhaps all teams do. It’s just the opposition never seem to have their off-days when they’re playing us. There’s no explanation for a performance like this, but you try to rationalise it anyway.

Perhaps we’d have been better if this was live on the telly. Trouble with that is it means one of those stupid start times you hate so much. You’re a traditionalist at heart and you believe that three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon is the right time for a football match to kick off. The TV schedules made a mockery of all that with their 12.45s and 5.30s, and you know you should be grateful
that your body clock hasn’t been jolted out of its finely balanced precision by one of these untimely fixtures. That early kickoff is the worst – it completely throws the rest of the day. But this is a dismal performance on a dismal day and you’ve seen too many of those over the years. Sod tradition. A 3 p.m. start may be great for everyone else but it clearly doesn’t suit West Ham.

The bloke behind is off again, stumbling slightly and steadying himself with a hand on your shoulder. You really don’t appreciate being manhandled in this way. Why do you put yourself through afternoons like these? Then it’s as if a giant filament is suddenly illuminated inside your head. The answer is so simple you wonder why no one has ever thought of it before: don’t play in the afternoon – play in the evening. All our games should be under lights!

You get a different crowd at evening kickoffs – not quite the uncompromising support of an away game but certainly not as many whingers. There’s a totally different feel about the whole experience. The team simply plays better.