Read Nearly Reach the Sky Online
Authors: Brian Williams
Nearly Reach the Sky (3 page)
Any takers? Or will it just be yours truly, surrounded by Tottenham-supporting friends politely asking me to remind them of one or two of the finer points of the game, like why the fella standing in front of the goal is wearing a different coloured shirt to the rest of the team?
Where were we? Ah yes, the Sir Trevor Brooking Stand, where
– despite it being called a stand – you’re supposed to sit down. In all, there are the best part of 6,000 seats – some of which are given over to visiting fans, who generally refuse to use them. The big clubs get the majority of the lower tier, but most just get the left section. West Ham supporters who like to enjoy a little good-natured banter with our visitors take up the right half when they can. Unsurprisingly, there is invariably a generous filling of police and stewards in the middle of this particular sandwich. Above them is the family section, and you can only get a ticket for that if you have a child in tow. (It was in the family section that my son first abused a referee. I nearly died of shame. He called the ref a nincompoop! Of all the insults he could have come up with, he had to use nincompoop. People have been ejected from the ground for using words with that many syllables. I’m pleased to say, he uses much shorter ones these days when analysing a referee’s performance.)
The seats in the Trevor Brooking Stand – which, until 2009, had spent the previous fourteen years answering to the name of the Centenary Stand – are part of an overall capacity of just 35,016, which, you will recall, is why we’re having to pack our bags and leave. I was on the North Bank to see us draw 2–2 with Spurs when there were 42,322 in the ground, which is the official record attendance at Upton Park (it’s likely this figure was exceeded in the ’30s but no one knows for sure because many of the club’s records were destroyed when the ground was bombed during the Second World War).
In the 1970 game against Spurs, they had the likes of Pat Jennings, Martin Chivers and ‘nice one’ Cyril Knowles; we had Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and the real Frank Lampard. The two teams were evenly matched and both knew how to pass the ball.
Games between West Ham and Spurs regularly attracted crowds
approaching 40,000 back then, but this one was given added spice by the fact it marked Martin Peters’ return to Upton Park after a controversial swap deal had taken him to White Hart Lane in exchange for £50,000 and a rather rotund Jimmy Greaves. It finished 2–2, with neither Peters nor Greaves on the scoresheet. Their goals came from Mike England (who wasn’t English) and Alan Mullery (who was the first man to be sent off playing for England). Ours were scored by Peter ‘useless’ Eustace and the not-so-useless Hurst.
The significant thing about Hurst’s goal that day was that it made him the second-highest scorer in our history. In all, he went on to score 248 goals in 499 first-team games for West Ham – still some way behind the phenomenal record of Vic Watson, who scored 326 times for the club over fifteen years in the ’20s and ’30s – but nevertheless a tally that is unlikely to be surpassed in my lifetime, and probably anybody else’s. Although I don’t recall that being the first thing to go through my head as I punched the air in celebration, showed two fingers to the Tottenham fans (indicating it was the second time we had equalised, you understand) and took several involuntary steps down the terracing as the shoving from the back rippled down.
To your left is the East Stand. You’re right: it does seem totally out of place now, dwarfed by the rest of the stadium and looking rather sorry for itself. But it was quite the thing in its day. This was built in 1969, when England were world champions; Harold Wilson was Prime Minister; the Beatles dominated the charts; Moore, Hurst and Peters were still playing in claret and blue – and I was on the North Bank because I didn’t know about the shortcut that made it possible to get to the East Stand from Upton Park station without having to trudge all the way down Green Street, turn left
at the Boleyn pub and then take the Barking Road far enough east to gain access to the fab new stand from Priory Road.
The trick is to nip off down Tudor Road, which takes you to a footpath that snakes through a gap between the ground and the local bus station. My mate Tony, who wore two-tone tonic suits, showed it to me – and I have been grateful to him ever since.
The East Stand may now be the oldest and smallest in the stadium, but once it was the loudest. And the funniest. What made it different was the terraced lower tier that was to become, in West Ham folklore at least, a legend in its own right: the Chicken Run. (In the interests of accuracy, I should probably point out that the original Chicken Run was an old wooden construction surrounded by fine-mesh wire, knocked down to make way for the new East Stand – which in turn awaits its own appointment with the bulldozer. But a name that good shouldn’t be allowed to die when we move to the Olympic Stadium. Let’s find room for Chicken Run III.)
I didn’t discover this unique part of the ground until the early ’70s but, when I did, it was love at first slight. No one was spared the insults that came flying out of there like machine gun bullets – opposition players, officials, even our own players. Actually, it was especially our players – particularly the ones who were judged to be failing to put in the required effort. It wasn’t just the barbs themselves that lifted this abuse into an art form; it was the timing with which they were delivered. If taking the piss had been an Olympic event rather than part of the mandatory drugs test, these boys would have won every gold medal going.
The only time you didn’t want to find yourself in the Chicken Run was on one of those rare occasions that saw the sun shine on
E13. In fact, it’s a problem to this very day in the lower part of the East Stand. Unless you have the foresight to go armed with a peaked cap, you have to spend most of the game shielding your eyes with your hand when it’s sunny. From the other side of the ground it looks like a parade ground saluting its commanding officer, which is quite amusing for them, but becomes a bit annoying if you have to do it for an entire game.
Still, that’s a small price to pay for all the fantastic humour that came out of there over the years. Funnily enough, a lot of that seemed to go when they ripped out the terrace and put in seats. Did I ever tell you about the campaign for safe standing, by the way? Oh. Seems I did.
If the Boleyn Ground was to have been saved, it would have been done by redeveloping the East Stand, which can only hold 5,000 people. As recently as 2005 this was still very much on the cards, to the extent that planning permission was being sought. The idea then was to use the extra space that became available when the old West Stand went west – both literally and metaphorically. That happened in 2001. It was replaced by a new construction, which was repositioned several yards further back to allow more elbowroom for the playing surface. (I much preferred things when fans were closer to the pitch down both sides, but I can understand why opposition players and shortsighted linesmen didn’t.)
But I know that isn’t going to happen. No one is going to save Upton Park, not now it has been sold to property developers Galliard. Still, if rubbing shoulders with cockneys all these years has taught me anything it’s that there’s no mileage in feeling sorry for yourself, so let’s get on with this tour before someone realises we shouldn’t be here and chucks us out.
Opposite you is the imposing Bobby Moore Stand. You will notice that there are two tiers and the 9,000 seats are painted in such a way that they spell out the name of our magnificent club. As far as I know, the contractors who were given the job stuck to the terms of their contract. (Unlike the artist who was charged with painting a giant seagull in the main stand when Brighton moved into their new Amex Community Stadium. He added a little scatological flourish on one of the seats below, which was later painted out because it was considered to be in bad taste.)
It used to be the poor relation in its days as the South Bank, which is perhaps why the away fans were housed there. Back in the heyday of hooliganism, that’s where West Ham’s serious psychos went in search of aggro. Not that they needed much encouragement, but they got it from time to time from other parts of the ground with the scarily sinister chant of ‘South Bank, South Bank, do your job’. There is a story that the Boleyn Ground is haunted by one of Anne’s maids. But when I go in the stand that now graces the southern end of the ground and is named after the most famous figure in our club’s history, the ghosts I see wear braces, bovver boots and Ben Sherman shirts. To be honest, they are about the only thing I won’t be sorry to leave behind.
To your right is the main stand, which can accommodate up to 15,000 Happy Hammers. It also accommodates a whole bunch of happy hangers-on, who are regularly invited by their business chums to watch a game from one of the executive boxes that separate the two tiers. Have you ever watched football from behind glass? It’s like having sex with your trousers done up.
This is the stand you saw on the way in – the one with the iffy plastic castles attached to the outside walls. It has been suffering
something of an identity crisis in recent years thanks to the wonders of corporate sponsorship. When it was rebuilt it was named the Dr Martens Stand, which must have pleased all those former skinheads who had stomped around in DMs back in the ’60s and ’70s. That deal ran out in 2009, and for a couple of years it resumed its former unimaginative but geographically accurate title. The West Stand was not to be left in peace, however, and was renamed once more when currency broker Alpari became the club’s sponsors. Then they went belly up. We haven’t had a lot of luck with sponsorship deals in recent years – this was the second one to end in tears following a debacle involving the XL airline in 2008. As Lady Bracknell would have undoubtedly observed had she been a West Ham season ticket-holder: ‘To lose one sponsor may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.’
Anyway, there you have the Boleyn Ground. You’ll excuse me if I don’t show you the changing rooms and the directors’ box and the trophy cabinet (not that that would take very long) – if you want to see that sort of stuff you’ll have to take the official stadium tour. No doubt they’ll also throw in a few facts I’ve left out, like West Ham’s first game here ended in a 3–0 victory over The Hated Millwall in front of 10,000-odd spectators (the spectators weren’t odd, the number is; well, 10,000 is even actually, but I’m sure you get my drift). They might even point to the part of the pitch in the south-west corner that was hit by a Nazi flying bomb in August 1944, forcing us to play all our games away from home until December (apparently we won nine on the bounce, before returning to Upton Park and promptly losing to Tottenham – which is the kind of thing West Ham does).
But I haven’t invited you here to listen to a load of facts and figures. I just wanted to show you the place that has meant so much to me and countless others before we have to leave it. To be honest, I should have brought you when there was a game being played – that way you could have really understood the unmistakable feel of this unique part of the world for yourself.
Honestly, there’s no place on earth like the Boleyn Ground. If you don’t believe me, you really ought to try it for yourself before it goes the same way as poor old Anne.
6.58:
I open my eyes cautiously and, as the bright red figures directly in front of me reshape themselves into focus, I become aware of the time. Normally, the alarm clock would be on the point of loudly reminding me of the need to leave my warm, comfortable bed. But I don't have to bend the knee to its tyranny today. It's Saturday. Easter Saturday, to be precise. I have plans, but they can wait.
8.35:
Those plans can wait no longer. The extra sleep was welcome, but it's time to abandon the duvet and do the decent thing with the kettle. The slumbering members of my family get their first tea of the day. Getting up is never difficult on match day.
10.16:
I turn on the sports channels in search of some early team news. A second cup of tea and a hot cross bun constitutes breakfast. I've showered and dressed. Jeans and a white, short-sleeved shirt with claret and blue trimmings, which commemorates our 1980 FA Cup final triumph against Arsenal, plus the lucky socks â all assembled in the correct match day order. There is a cartoon strip by Charles Schulz in which Charlie Brown is explaining to his little sister that on the day of a baseball game he always puts on his left shoe before the right one, otherwise they would most certainly lose. âHave you ever won?' she asks him. The final frame depicts Charlie, long after the game has started, still sitting on his bedroom floor looking hopelessly at both of his shoes, unable to decide which one to put on first. Schulz was nothing if not perspicacious (see â it's not just Arsenal fans who know long words). It is true my lucky socks don't always do the trick. But I choose not to think about the
Peanuts
dilemma today.
11.04:
Geoff and I are on the train as it pulls out of Brighton. Di has decided to give this one a miss. The sun is shining. My hopes are high. This has all the makings of a great day.
11.15:
It's a chance to catch up on how my son's doing at university. This is a crucial time for him: after four years at Warwick he will soon take his master's exams. Then come some life-changing decisions. What career to follow; where to live; whether to take some time out to go travelling or find a job? They are his choices, but as a parent I feel privileged that he wants to share his thoughts with me. Over the years football has given us the chance to talk in a way we may not have done otherwise. Rules could be relaxed
when there was a game involved. And on those rare occasions the fatherâson relationship was strained to the extent we didn't really want to talk to one another, there was always West Ham. Pardew better than Lyall? Di Canio as good as Brooking? Upton Park or the Olympic Stadium? Some issues just have to be discussed, if not resolved.
11.42:
Time to check that my mate from south of the river is up for the contest. Mark supports Crystal Palace, today's opponents. We've got a pound-a-point bet about who will have the more successful season. After they had lost nine of their first ten games it looked like I was in for some easy money, but that's not the case now. Palace have gone three points above us after a shock result at Everton during the week. We need to win this one. âFeelin' lucky?' I ask Mark by text.
11.45:
Seems he is. There's even a gag about him having seen our teamsheet, a reference to a minor controversy that's simmering between his side and Cardiff City.
11.48:
I resist the temptation to be too bullish at this stage. I took a lot of stick from Mark when Palace won at Selhurst Park earlier in the season, and I'm going to enjoy repaying him in kind today. I keep my reply non-committal, with a limp crack about Allardyce v. Pulis being London's answer to El Clásico. I'll save the rough stuff until later. Keep it simple when we take the lead, then work on something more imaginative for the second goal. That's the point of a bet like ours â it's not about the money, it's about the bragging rights. It's going to be a long summer if we finish below Palace.
Still, no need for negativity. Win today and we go above them on goal difference. After that, with just three games to go, we should be able to keep our noses in front until the end of the season.
12.04:
I glance out of the window and catch sight of the Shard, the pointed monstrosity built next to London Bridge station that towers over the capital. In exchange for a small fortune, you can go to the top and take in the view. I ask Geoff if he remembers a more modest construction that we had climbed in search of a vista during the Easter holidays several years ago. Of course he does â that was Zamora's Tower! At least, that's what it's known as in our house. It was 2007. West Ham, looking certainties for relegation, had gone to the Emirates. We'd gone to the Lake District to visit family. On the Saturday afternoon, rather than listen to the Hammers getting stuffed on the radio, we went for a long walk through the Cumbrian hills where we came across an old Roman fortress, no doubt built to keep marauding Scots at bay. A couple of the look-out posts were still intact, so Geoff and I climbed one for no other reason than when a male sees a tower in the middle of nowhere he generally has to scale it. While up there, Geoff noticed it was half time. Nervously, he asked if we should check the score. We feared the worst, but decided to look anyway. Astonishingly, the magic of the worldwide web allowed us to tap into the news from north London. And, even more astonishingly, it turned out we were winning! The solitary goal of the first half had been scored by Bobby Zamora. We didn't find out until later that it was a fluke. Neither did we have any idea that, in our goal, Robert Green was playing a blinder. What we did know was that, having discovered we were winning while up
the tower, we couldn't possibly come down until the game had finished. Furthermore, those family members on the ground had to stay there if the spell was not to be broken. Luckily, both Di and her sister Linda had inherited enough of their dad's DNA to understand that this wasn't just mindless superstition; we were dealing with the universal law of the cosmos, and that was not to be messed with when West Ham was involved. So they continued the walk with my brother-in-law and daughter, while we sat it out on the tower. As any football supporter will know, we couldn't look at the score again â that would have surely invited disaster. So we waited until several minutes after we were certain the final whistle had sounded, took our courage in our hands and checked the score. To the cockney boys, 1â0! We had become the first away team to win at the Emirates (having been the last away side to win at the Highbury Library). It was our third victory on the bounce, and we did eventually avoid relegation by the skin of our teeth. It truly was the Great Escape. But it never would have happened if we'd abandoned Zamora's Tower.
12.19:
The train pulls into Blackfriars on time. Change here for the District line. On the Tube there are a group of guys discussing where best to get off. I overhear one suggest âPlay-stow'. I can only assume they are Palace fans.
12.53:
We arrive at Plaistow â correctly pronounced âPlar-stow' by the train's computerised Tannoy system. We, too, mind the gap and alight here.
12.57:
Geoff and I fight our way into the Black Lion.
13.04:
Geoff and I finally get served.
13.06:
A quick exchange of texts reveals that an arrangement to meet
Blowing Bubbles
editor David Blackmore has gone awry. Pity. He's an interesting man, is David. He describes
Bubbles
as a fanzine, which worried me at first. To me, the word âfanzine' conjures up images of badly typed sheets of A4 paper, folded, stapled and handed out by its angry contributors who want to sack the board and get a new manager. Don't get me wrong â I'm always in favour of sacking the board and there's rarely a time when I don't want a new manager. But, at my time of life, I really can't be persuaded to hang around the gates of the Boleyn Ground before kickoff trying to flog something that, more often than not, is going to be used primarily for wiping away the remains of a burger from greasy fingers. Happily, David had something rather more ambitious in mind. His vision was to produce a package for this digital age; not merely a print version, but something that could also be read on just about anything else as well â PC, mobile, tablet ⦠if he could find a way to have a
Blowing Bubbles
chip implanted in your brain, I wouldn't put it past him. However, digital-age technology can't help him at this particular moment in time. It turns out he's on a dawdling Tube at Earls Court and unlikely to be joining us any time soon.
13.30:
Geoff and I opt for the second pint, but it's pointless ordering food. There's no chance of getting a table. Again there's a wait before we're served. Next to me is a bloke who is also brandishing a note in the traditional manner of someone who wants to attract the bar staff's attention. They ask him what he wants â but he insists they serve me first because I have been waiting longer. I thank him for
his courtesy. He nods briefly, knowing that a man who's done the right thing needs no thanks, and contemptuously points to another fella who didn't observe the time-honoured tradition of waiting his turn and is now sipping illegitimate beer. I concur with his terse assessment of the other man's manners. That prompts a brief conversation in which we agree that Palace fans are a decent bunch but disagree on the question of whether the Premier League should be open to clubs from Wales and Scotland. We part on the best of terms. If you know how a pub works, you will understand football supporters â or, at least, the West Ham supporters.
14.03:
Geoff and I quit the Black Lion and join the steady procession through the streets of Plaistow. I don't envy the motorists' fruitless search for parking spaces. I've had plenty of that over the years. Now I prefer to leave the car in Brighton.
14.13:
We're in Walton Road. The Boleyn Ground is directly ahead. The 21st-century stadium looms large over the nineteenth-century streets. We reach the junction of Green Street and turn right, which takes us past the tiny house once occupied by Di's Auntie Vi. What I would have given as a kid to have lived directly opposite Upton Park. Better still would have been the flat rented by Auntie Marjorie. She had a place in Priory Court, which overlooked the pitch. And there was me, having to put up with my parents' choice of a centrally heated three-bed semi plus garden and garage in leafy Berkshire. Talk about a deprived childhood.
14.20:
Geoff gets a programme. I buy a copy of
Over Land and Sea,
the last of West Ham's old-style fanzines.
14.22:
Lunch is two Mad Dogs from Britain's best burger stall, handily positioned for supporters of West Ham United outside the south-east corner of our ground on Priory Road. I usually prefer bacon to a hot dog â even if it is named after a cult hero â but, having had a drink, the sausage seems more appealing. For me, booze and bacon don't work well together.
14.26:
As Geoff attempts to wipe the splodge of ketchup from the front of his shirt I idly tune in to some of the chatter going on around us. One bloke wants to see us play two up front â you'll be lucky, mate. Another fella is on his mobile, arranging to meet someone after the game. I recall overhearing a similar phone conversation earlier in the season: to the left of me, one guy had asked the precise whereabouts of the man he was due to meet; to the right of me, his mate had explained that he was standing in front of the Priory Road burger stall. I had looked at one, then at the other, and wondered briefly how much fun it would be to introduce them while they were still speaking to one another. In the end, I let them work it out for themselves.
14.45:
We take our seats at the top of the East Stand Upper as four of the 1964 FA Cup winners are introduced to the crowd as part of the fiftieth anniversary celebrations. Eddie Bovington, Ken Brown, Peter Brabrook and Ronnie Boyce wave and accept the generous applause. I resist the temptation to tell Geoff how Boyce headed home Brabrook's cross for the winning goal in the final minute, or that his mother and grandfather celebrated alongside thousands of others outside the town hall the following day as the team started their open-top bus victory tour. He's
heard it all before. Come to think of it, I've never told him that the morning of the final was the one and only time I was a Cub Scout. I hated it so much I refused point blank to ever go again. Not a particularly interesting story in itself, but it does explain why my son has never been subjected to the strange practices of paramilitary organisations.
14.55:
The teams are out. They've been through the usual preliminaries and are now solemnly lining the centre circle. This is a black armband day. It's the blackest of black armband days. We're not being asked to remember a fallen veteran who has slipped away peacefully after a long and fulfilling existence â sad though that always is. Our grief is for a young man who died only yesterday, having been robbed of his rightful life by testicular cancer aged just twenty.
14.56:
The family of Dylan Tombides have requested that he be honoured by a minute's applause rather than silence â and that's what we do. I glance across at the Palace fans and, to their eternal credit, they too are applauding respectfully. Tombides' father Jim and brother Taylor bring out his No. 38 shirt â never to be worn again. The club are to retire the number. The only other time that has happened at West Ham was when Bobby Moore died and the No. 6 was decommissioned at Upton Park.
14.58:
As the pitch is cleared for action I allow myself to remember the tragedy of Moore's untimely death twenty-one years ago. The first game at Upton Park after he died was against Wolves. On that sad and mournful day, Moore's claret and blue shirt â complete
with number â was represented by a giant floral creation in the centre circle, carefully placed there by Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters. I look to my right at the Palace fans and recall how, shortly before the official remembrance, a Wolves fan had come charging out of the same end and made a dash towards the middle of the pitch. What was this outrage? Did he not know the meaning of respect? And what did he have in his hand? Abuse was heaped upon the interloper from all sides. Then he quickly laid his highly unofficial wreath on the halfway line, bowed his head briefly and, without seeking any sort of applause or recognition, dashed back to join his comrades from Wolverhampton. I've looked out for the Wolves score ever since.