Some things you just can’t put into words. Even as I type these lines, I know I’m struggling to translate those precious moments of delirium, as well as the nice warm afterglow that sits upon me now, into anything that could possibly feel as real as they do.
I first became a West Ham fan in the very late sixties and watched my first live game in 1971. The addiction and attachment have waxed and waned through many phases over the years, with varying levels of resignation and intensity. But it’s always there and will never, ever go away. Many people associate me with cycling, others with my work in law firms, and others as a strong advocate of road safety. All these matter of course, but none have the longevity, or the meaning that comes from being a West Ham fan.
Which is awful really. What about all the personal relationships I have, you may ask? My wife, my son, my siblings, my friends, and colleagues? My son of course shares my attachment, although again, that word does not reflect the visceral connection to abstract notions of loyalty and blind faith that he often possesses. It was me that ensured he was enrolled as a Junior Hammer at 5 days old, bought his first season ticket at 7 years of age, and ensured, through a steady campaign of bribery and propaganda, that he would also have no choice but to be an Iron.
My wife’s situation is more problematic. In the early days of our relationship, it was a “fun thing about Guy”. She didn’t know what she didn’t know. There was a crisis of course, and in our first few years together, and then when our son was first born, there were compromises to be made and logistics to agree. So, we have come to an agreeable way of managing this thing.
My family, in particular my younger brother, well, they just get it. They saw me grow up with it, latch onto it, be subsumed by it, from a young age.
Where were my parents when all this was going on? Well thankfully they were aiding and abetting it. My Dad took me to matches, starting in 1971, and though I remember little of those early days, I can claim to have been there when Bobby Moore scored a rare goal for us on that day. My Mum did the research that allowed replica kits to be bought, badges sewn on, in a world long before the internet and the voracious world of football club marketing. We had to scour the far-flung sports shops for them, and I’m pleased to say that those early 1970s jerseys, shorts and socks have a special place in my collection. I even had a classic blue and two claret hoops kit in the mid-seventies.
When West Ham conducted their open top bus parade in 1964 after winning their first FA Cup, my Mum stood on the balcony of their flat in High Street North and was just a short pass away from Bobby Moore on the top deck. Within her at that very moment was an embryonic fan in the making. In a strange coda to that tale my son was present in utero when my wife came to watch the game with me where Paulo scored his wonder goal. It starts early.
My brother has his own team, his own cross to bear too, so we have shared understanding. He now comes to occasional games with me, we message each other as we watch the same games on the overpriced TV platforms that serve us our fix when increasingly getting to games is impossible. I don’t have to explain it to him. He is sometimes a voice of ridiculous optimism, trying to get me to be more positive. But he has not been through what I have.
My brother watched me watch the 1980 Cup Final, so he knows. Just as stressful an occasion as last night as I recall, St Trevor scoring in the 13th minute and Willie Young chopping down the babe that was Paul Allen, to ruin a fairytale ending. Years later my Dad was sitting next to Trevor Brooking at Buckingham Palace (really) and I only half-forgave him for not asking for an autograph. Even though I was 36 years old at the time. But we won the FA Cup again, for the third time, much to my relief, and after four trophies in 15 years, it seemed a regular thing.
But the long wait started right there.
I really care about my friends, have deep attachment to my work and colleagues, and some have become friends too. Some will understand, some may not. There was a point about 12 years ago where I was thinking of giving up my season ticket, and it was a then-colleague who persuaded me not to. I’m grateful to her, but really it was never going to happen. The attachment is too deep, too much a part of the essence of me.
So all of these relationships matter, it’s just this one matters in ways like no other. It’s more than just tribal too. It’s like all the neuroses and all the joys I ever had, wrapped up into a force that is embedded in my very essence. I will never understand it and I can never explain it. As Nick Hornby said:
“We do not lack imagination, nor have we sad and barren lives; it is just that real life is paler, duller and contains less potential for unexpected delirium.”
I drifted away from it a bit when I was in my late teens and early twenties. University was too cool for football in the mid-eighties, but I still checked the scores and the teams every week. That our best-ever League finish happened during that time is a source of disappointment to me, I didn’t really revel in that as much as I might now. Though of course there would have been crushing disappointment at failing to win the League, and I was shielded a bit from that because of an immersion in politics, music and well, women.
But all it took was a little heartbreak and my first love came roaring back into my life in my mid-20s. I met and became friends with a group of season-ticket holders and that, as they say, was pretty much that. I’ve had a season ticket myself now for over 30 years, and still sit with the same group. Our own children have come and joined the party, and despite the inevitable slim pickings of success, we have become a big club, almost against our own will. With over 50,000 season-ticket-holders and filling our 60K-plus seater stadium every week, how could we not be?
And now this. A trophy. A victory. Genuine success in a way I can barely remember. It feels odd, amazing, deliriously good, tortuously stressful in the final minutes of the game, when we were 2-1 up and all I could say was “please not again”. Memories of Gerard’s fluke, shinned shot into the top corner to deny us the 2006 FA Cup, all came flooding back like some recurring episode of defeats past. As my son said to me today, it’s normally us conceding last minute goals, our hopes dashed but our expectations fulfilled. Homer Simpson so eloquently summed up the secret of happiness as “lower your expectations”, and ours can’t generally get much lower. The fear of disappointment is so huge without that, and the pain that comes from a dashed hope is the most acute of all. The feelings associated with last-minute victory, Jared Bowen’s run and shot finding the bottom corner are all the sweeter for their scarcity.
That I wasn’t at the match leaves me with another discombobulation. Now a resident of Somerset I am used to missing games, but not big games like this. I wanted to be there, but with only 5000 tickets allocated, it was beyond the complexities of logistics and cash to make it happen without a winning place in the ballot. I won’t be at the victory parade tonight either, but that doesn’t lessen the feelings of acute joy, as unusual though those feelings are.
The delirium at the second goal was so unexpected and so joyful, counterbalanced by the pain and stress of the final few minutes. My son came home to watch the game with me, and we jumped and screamed around the living room, incredulous, mad with joy and disbelief. Even my son knows, already at 22 he is well-versed in the agony of being a West Ham fan: “it’s just not our thing to score last-minute goals and hold on to win, it’s usually the other way round”.
It may not be the usual thing, but it is possibly the greatest moment of being a West Ham fan that I have ever experienced.
I have a shirt collection. Of course I do. Every single West Ham shirt, without fail, goes into it. I’m a traditionalist too, I like the kits with largely claret body, blue sleeves. That’s it. Away kits should be dark blue, or nowadays I’ll allow black, or light blue. This year I was appalled. The home kit was awful, but the “third shirt” was without doubt, the worst in our history. A kind of white, but with this mess of orange and yellow and other flaming colours in it. A proverbial breakfast for a canine.
I cursed it, I swore not to get it out of its wrapper, but my compulsive urge to collect would take no prisoners, so of course, I bought it along with all the others. It’s an irony of history that it had to be the shirt we wore last night, wasn’t it? A taunt to my obsession, a tweak to my slavish addiction to this club and its history. That shirt will go down in our folklore, and if I’m honest, I think that we won because I hate that shirt so much. That some mesmeric force somewhere decided that this must be my price for victory. A constant reminder that it would have been so much better in next year’s home kit.
Do I mind?
What do you think?
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