Nearly Reach the Sky (23 page)

Clyde Best, MBE, we salute you for making life just that little bit easier for those who followed in your stud marks.

I’m sorry to report that the same cannot be said of Clyde’s more famous namesake. I fully realise that George Best had a serious drink problem, but that’s no excuse for the racial slur I once heard him use.

He was on stage at the Fairfield Halls in Croydon as part of a question and answer session with fans of all clubs. It was days after
Andy Cole had been transferred to Manchester United from Newcastle and Best was asked if he thought the record British transfer fee of £7 million was a reasonable price to pay. He contemptuously dismissed the suggestion with a description of Cole that began with the letter ‘n’ and rhymed with ‘trigger’.

There were gasps throughout the hall, but Best seemed completely unconcerned that his use of possibly the most abusive word in the English language could cause such offence. I stood to leave but Nick placed a restraining hand on my shoulder, just as I had done with young Mike at the Spurs Cup tie. He’d spent a lifetime learning to live with abuse like this and had the maturity to shrug it off. It was precisely the same sort of racist stupidity that would later cost Ron Atkinson his job as a TV pundit, but Best clearly felt it was all perfectly acceptable.

Ten years later Best died as a result of fatal complications with the drugs that he had been prescribed after a controversial liver transplant. Man U’s first game following his death was at Upton Park and, while I bowed my head to mark the sorrow of the family and friends he left behind, I couldn’t bring myself to join the minute’s round of enthusiastic applause that was offered up by way of a tribute.

When, I wonder, will gay footballers unearth a pathfinder cast in a similar mould to the likes of Clyde Best and John Charles?

It is inconceivable that every single professional footballer is heterosexual – the laws of probability dictate otherwise. I recognise that narrow-minded attitudes in the game, both in the dressing room and in the stands, make it difficult for players to be open about their sexuality. But there has to come a time when the anti-gay abuse will look as embarrassingly stupid as the monkey noises do now.

We dish it out to the Brighton fans whenever we meet – most
clubs do. ‘Does your boyfriend know you’re here,’ and: ‘We can see you holding hands,’ are dusted off with monotonous regularity. I reckon the Seagulls have come up with the perfect response, though. ‘You’re too ugly to be gay!’

If any set of supporters is going to get behind gay players, I like to think it’s going to be us. In a way we do it already.

At Upton Park, if you hear the cry of ‘Come On The Hammers!’ it will almost certainly be from a pre-pubescent child attending their first game. What you will hear, often quite loudly, is ‘Come On You Irons.’ To the uninitiated it simply sounds like we are getting behind the team. Some of the better informed opposition supporters may even know we were once the Thames Ironworks, and think the connection lies there.

What they probably don’t know – particularly if they come from north of Watford – is that an ‘iron’ is also a shortened version of ‘iron hoof’, which in rhyming slang is a distinctly non-PC reference to the one in ten males who are sexually attracted to their own gender. If it’s not a phrase you’re familiar with, take a minute or two to work out what ‘hoof’ rhymes with. It’s a rather old fashioned term now, but it’s not that difficult. (If you’re Phil Brown – Sam Allardyce’s former assistant – give yourself a little longer; as the man who believed a player couldn’t settle in a foreign country because he was homophobic rather than homesick, you clearly need all the time you can get.)

Incidentally, can anyone tell me what an iron hoof actually is? I know about iron fists, iron lungs, iron horses, the Iron Age, the Iron Duke and even the Iron Cross. But what the hell is an iron hoof? I’ve always assumed it’s an ancient term for a horseshoe, but that could be as misplaced as a James Collins back-pass.

Whatever the explanation, it does rather give a double meaning to ‘Come On You Irons.’ Could you imagine a fan of any other club urging on their team while simultaneously suggesting that the whole lot of them are a little less than totally alpha-male? Of course not. But we do – and, given the testosterone-fuelled atmosphere inside Upton Park at any given moment, it is another clue to the workings of the claret and blue mind. A case of ‘Come On You Ironies’, in fact.

If the bigotry surrounding homosexuality in football is to be broken down, it needs gay players to come out when they are at the height of their fame, not wait until they retire as Thomas Hitzlsperger did. One thing has intrigued me since the German international who turned out for us a few times in the dismal 2010/11 season made his announcement. Long before he joined West Ham he had earned the nickname of Der Hammer on account of the explosive shot he packed in his left foot. Had he come out when he was playing at Upton Park would it have been right and proper to rename him Der Iron? I’ll leave you to work that one out for yourself.

Given that touching on sexual politics is as risky as attempting to offer a peckish Luis Suarez the temptation of naked flesh, let’s take a leaf out of the early Allardyce coaching manual by giving this political football a serious hoof and getting it out to the wings as quickly as possible. The question, at West Ham, is whether or not that is left wing or right wing? The reason I ask is that a friend of mine once suggested his club was essentially left-of-centre – which set me thinking about whether or not football clubs in the UK were political and, if so, how would you categorise West Ham?

As with all the best debates, this one took place in the pub. David, being from Yorkshire, was supping a pint of northern filth
with some name like Theakston’s Old Knee Trembler when he came up with his theory. I swirled my red wine gently to allow a little more oxygen into the already passable Merlot and listened carefully as he explained.

David, I should warn you, supports Sheffield United:

Hmmm. And is there more ‘evidence’ to support this argument? ‘Clubs on the eastern side of their cities have always been more working-class than those elsewhere because the east is where the capitalists built the factories, steel mills etc (so the wind wouldn’t blow the pollution in their direction). So United have always had more working-class fans than Wednesday, which is miles away in the suburbs to the west. It’s the same with West Ham and Chelsea.’

Back in 1974, of course, the Sheffield United fans got their wish and Ted Heath was ousted as prime minister. Unfortunately for us all he was to be replaced as leader of the Tory party by a certain Margaret Hilda Thatcher, who was no lover of football supporters wherever they came from.

Ten years later, when the most radical Conservative government of the twentieth century was busy ripping the heart out of
industrial England, some West Ham fans would wave fistfuls of tenners at visiting supporters of northern clubs such as David’s and chant ‘We’ve got jobs, we’ve got jobs!’ No doubt the man who was MP for West Ham South at the turn of the twentieth century was spinning in his grave at that – although mention the name Keir Hardie to most East Enders these days and their initial thought is a large housing estate in Canning Town rather than the first leader of the Labour Party.

Despite David’s compelling case, my guess is that most West Ham fans care as little about party politics as the rest of the country. However in Italy, particularly Rome, there does seem to be a clear connection between followers of political parties and the club they support. AC Roma is generally considered to appeal to fans whose political beliefs lean to the left, while Lazio attracts those of a right-wing persuasion.

Lazio is the spiritual home of Paolo Di Canio, who many West Ham fans would like to see back at the club in the manager’s office. He himself believes it is his destiny.

He was a wonderful player for our club – one of the best we’ve ever had. Anyone who has ever seen his astonishing goal against Wimbledon as he morphed into Neo from
The Matrix
to volley home Trevor Sinclair’s cross will know instantly what I’m talking about. Goal of the season? That was the goal of a lifetime. There are so many Di Canio memories: the fantastic moment of sportsmanship that won him the FIFA fair play award when, rather than head home into an empty net, he caught the cross and demanded that play be stopped until the prostrate Everton keeper was restored to full health; the time he wrestled the junior Frank Lampard for the ball when we were awarded a penalty in
the amazing comeback game against Bradford City in which we turned a 2–4 deficit into a 5–4 victory; the way he had pleaded with Harry Redknapp to substitute him only minutes before in the same game.

And there’s no doubting his love of West Ham; he’s even got the tattoo to prove it. The trouble is he’s got other tattoos as well, and they are a good deal less savoury. His back alone is a tribute to fascism, featuring a symbolic imperial eagle and a portrait of Italian wartime leader Benito Mussolini, complete with military helmet. Mussolini, Adolf Hitler’s closest ally and architect of one of the most repulsive ideologies mankind has dreamt up, liked to be known as
Il Duce
– ‘The Leader’. If the picture on Di Canio’s back wasn’t enough, his arm carries a tattoo that says
Dux
, the Latin translation of
Duce
.

In his time at West Ham, from 1999 to 2003, Di Canio wisely kept his political thoughts to himself. Neither did he celebrate any of the forty-eight goals he scored in 118 appearances by hailing the crowd with a straight-armed fascist salute. But he did just that when he returned to Lazio – the club he supported as a boy and notorious for its links to extreme right-wing politics. And he did it more than once.

Di Canio is adamant that he’s not a racist, which rather suggests he doesn’t fully understand what fascism is all about. A political movement that is based on the idea that the people of one nation are inherently superior to those of other countries and continents is inherently racist – and it doesn’t become any more palatable when the believers of this idiocy try to implement their way of thinking with extreme violence.

Politics has no place in football, say Di Canio’s supporters. I
disagree – politics and money go hand in hand, and there’s a lot of money in Premier League football. But even if they were right, there are some things that are just wrong. To appoint a man who has aligned himself so closely to fascism as club manager would do untold damage to the credibility of West Ham.

I should probably be more disapproving than I am of the fact that West Ham’s owners made most of their money from pornography, which is not exactly one of humanity’s most noble endeavours. But you reach a certain stage in your life when you realise you can’t be outraged about everything – your mates stop talking to you for one thing – and while I accept that a significant proportion of the population is offended by porn, I personally don’t lose a lot of sleep over the fact some people are prepared to strip off their kit for the amusement of others. Censorship is more dangerous than sex, I reckon.

I do, however, still have it in me to stand up and protest against those who wish to subjugate me and mine. The East End has a proud tradition of resisting fascists. The Battle of Cable Street sent Oswald Mosley and his blackshirts packing as they tried to spread their message of fear and intimidation. And the people of the area withstood the worst Hitler and his air force could throw at them as the bombs rained down during the Blitz. They even coined a phrase to encapsulate their defiance – ‘We can take it.’

I think there is something in the DNA of every West Ham supporter that yearns for one of our great players to return as manager and create a side in their own image. But I’m sorry, Paolo, it can never be you. You see, if you were to get the job it would send out the message to those who want to intimidate Jews and Muslims
and gays and anybody else they don’t like that it is somehow all right to do so. And that we couldn’t take.

I
HOPE YOU DON’T
mind me writing to you like this. You don’t know me – we’ve never met. I’ve wanted to drop you a line for a long time now, but I’ve always been worried you’ll think I’m a bit daft for saying this. You see, you’re my hero.

Is it all right if I call you Billy rather than Mr Bonds? I know it’s a bit informal, but you don’t strike me as the sort of bloke who insists on standing on ceremony. To be honest, I’ve always thought of you as Bonzo, but I’m worried that would sound overly familiar in a letter from a complete stranger.

As a supporter you get the feeling some players think of us as nothing more than a bunch of mugs. Perhaps they’re right – putting your heart and soul into a football team probably isn’t the most intelligent thing in the world. But that’s what we do – and
you got that, didn’t you? You understood the passion, the loyalty and the pride that drives us on. Not only did you understand it – you shared it. In fact, you personified it.

‘Legend’ has to be the most overused and undervalued accolade of our age. Give your mate a lift to work when his car won’t start and all of a sudden you’re a legend. But there was a time when to be a legend meant a whole lot more, and it is in that knights-of-the-round-table spirit I would use the word to describe you.

Please don’t think I’m trying to embarrass you – that’s the last thing I’d want. Having read a bit about you over the years (well, quite a lot actually) I understand that you are a deeply private person who would be horribly uncomfortable at the thought of receiving a letter out of the blue that’s gushing with praise for all the things you did at West Ham. I’ll try not to do that. It’s just that for me – and countless others – you embody everything the club should stand for. We’d like you to know how we feel.

You, Billy, are truly one of the West Ham greats. You may not have had giant Upton Park stands named in your honour, nor are there statues gracing the roads around the ground that you brought to life every time you stepped on to its precious turf – or battled your way through its cloying mud – yet you have a special place in the hearts of every one of us who saw you fight the good fight on our behalf.

Enshrined as you are in West Ham folklore, it’s easy to forget now that you didn’t begin your career at Upton Park. As you will know better than anyone, you joined the Hammers from Charlton for a transfer fee of £49,500. I put that figure into an inflation calculator and it comes out as being worth a bit more than three-quarters of a million in today’s terms. That’s the sort
of money that gets bandied about in the lower leagues for very ordinary players. I’m no expert – I’ve never had to wheel and deal in the transfer market – but it’s my guess that you’d struggle to get a real-life Captain Marvel for £800,000 in this day and age.

Your first year in claret and blue, of course, was 1967. By then I’d been supporting West Ham for three years but that was the first season I got to see a proper game – so in some ways we started at the same time. Astonishingly, it would be more than twenty years before you finally hung up your boots. Incidentally, do retired players really hang up their boots? I’m guessing they’re not the sort of things you’d want dangling on a hook in the shed for years on end – they’d go mouldy. And you couldn’t leave them in the house for any length of time; not if you’re married. I don’t suppose you’ve still got yours, have you? If so, you should put them on eBay – they’d sell for a small fortune.

You were three months short of your forty-second birthday when you played your final game at Southampton in April 1988. The previous season, when you had clocked up the Big Four-O, you were actually named Hammer of the Year! I am proud to say I voted for you. Normally, the idea with Hammer of the Year is to leave it until the final few fixtures before deciding how you’re going to fill in your ballot paper. I made my mind up after watching you against Forest in early September. It was a fortnight before you turned forty – and you were still the best player on the pitch.

Remember Billy Jennings? He was the fella we signed from Watford in 1974 who scored thirty-odd goals for us in something approaching 100 appearances. While you were still flogging yourself up and down the Boleyn Ground at an age when other men are considering taking up bowls he had packed up the game and was
running a really nice little bar opposite the
Daily Express
, which was paying my wages at the time. I guess you’re not much of a drinker but I have to admit a small proportion of my salary did find itself being spent in Billy’s most days. And while I was there I used to pick his brains about the West Ham players he had known.

Billy didn’t have a bad word to say about anyone – well, not to me anyway. But he was especially complimentary about you. And he wasn’t the least bit surprised that you had been able to carry on playing for as long as you did. According to him, you were the most dedicated individual he ever saw on a training ground in his entire career. Five-a-sides? You’d play like it was the Cup final. Timekeeping? You’d be the first to arrive and the last to leave. A cross-country run? There was only ever going to be one winner. Mind you, when it came to running he reckoned you left the others standing because you had an unfair advantage. Apparently you have a remarkable metabolism. The way Billy told it, your heart beats once every six hours and you barely need oxygen at all.

You probably won’t remember this but the year Billy Jennings came to Upton Park a Japanese soldier called Hiroo Onoda emerged from the jungle in the Philippines after he was finally persuaded to lay down his arms and stop fighting the Second World War, which he believed was still going on. At the time it was thought he was the last of his kind. Then, as you were approaching retirement, the story went round that Onoda was not alone – and another Japanese soldier who didn’t know that hostilities had ended had been found in a different part of the forest.

Reluctantly he agreed to come out under a flag of truce – but refused to surrender until he was certain that the Land of the Rising Sun really had run up the white flag. His would-be rescuers
tried to convince him that the world had moved on since he had volunteered for active service. He listened suspiciously as he was told that since Japan had laid down its arms humankind had been to the moon and flown an aeroplane faster than the speed of sound – and, not only was Winston Churchill dead and buried, Britain had elected its first woman Prime Minister. On hearing all this he shook his head in disbelief, picked up his rusty rifle and headed back to the jungle, pausing briefly to turn and ask: ‘What sort of idiot do you take me for? Next you’ll try telling me Billy Bonds is still playing for West Ham.’

Sorry, Billy. You must have heard that joke a million times. But, you have to admit, the statistics are pretty remarkable. In all, you were at West Ham for twenty-seven years – twenty-one of those as a player – and you made an incredible 793 appearances for the Hammers. You were captain for ten years. You are the only West Ham skipper to lift the FA Cup twice. You were Hammer of the Year four times and runner-up on three other occasions. You were honoured by being made a Member of the British Empire for services to football (although if it had been me giving out the gongs it would have been a knighthood plus the Victoria Cross and the George Medal). It was an amazing career.

Those FA Cup wins were something special, weren’t they? Between you and me I’m starting to have serious doubts that today’s generation of West Ham supporters will ever get the chance to experience the same thrill we did. God knows, I hope I’m wrong. And I suppose we did come within a bootlace of beating Liverpool in the final a few years ago. But now the game is all about survival in the Premier League – what manager is going to risk his job by taking a full-blown tilt at the Cup?

By the way, what would you have said to Lionel Scaloni if you’d been his captain when he rolled the ball out like that in the final minute at the Millennium Stadium? I’m all for giving the ball back to the opposition after an injury, but why didn’t he make sure they fished it out of the River Taff first? You’d know better than me, of course – but I’m sure even Ron Greenwood would have allowed him an honest-to-goodness hoof on that occasion.

We didn’t hoof it much in the ’75 final against Fulham, did we? That game was dismissed as boring by much of the media, but it looked exciting enough from where I was sitting (near the halfway line, opposite the Royal Box). Perhaps we did win too easily to make it a classic but I’d take that over blowing a 3–2 lead in the final minute and then losing the penalty shoot-out after extra time any day of the week.

I can only guess what it must have been like for you to receive the Cup. I once got a runners’ up medal in a five-a-side tournament, but that’s not quite the same thing, is it? I can tell you what it was like watching you do it, though. First, there was the mixed emotion of the final whistle. We were two up and coasting by then: I didn’t want the game to end – Alan Taylor might have got his hat-trick (or Billy Jennings might have nicked one) and we were never going to concede. Still, the last shrill note meant victory was ours, and that was a fantastic feeling. It was the triumphant end to a long journey that had begun in January and taken us from Upton Park to Wembley via random stop-off points such as Swindon and Villa Park. Winning was the object of the exercise and we had done just that.

There’s always that wonderful confused frenzy for the winning side on the big occasions. You fellas on the pitch are desperately trying to congratulate one another while, in the stands, we are
celebrating in our own way. All British reserve goes out the window for once – you raise your arms to the heavens; you dance on the spot; you can even go completely wild and embrace a stranger because, for a few glorious moments, there are no strangers. If they’re cheering, they’re family.

It all calms down slightly when your captain begins the long climb up the most famous thirty-nine steps in football to collect the trophy, followed by his team. Our team. Ecstasy gives way to pride. It’s permissible to applaud, but I kept silent as you scaled that staircase. I was saving myself for the special moment that I knew would come soon. You received the trophy and looked at it briefly. I remained silent. You kissed the Cup and teased us with it before glancing at your teammates as if to confirm you did this together. Still nothing from me. Then you raised the holy grail to the sky – sharing it with us like a priest shares the blood of Christ at Holy Communion. That’s when I finally roared my heartfelt thanks for this wonderful gift you had given us.

The descent was far more informal as parts of the trophy were passed from hand to hand and the scarves were draped around your neck. A small point, I know, but I remember you made no attempt to shake them off as you came down the steps as I suspect the immaculate Bobby Moore would have down. These were the scarves we wore. This was our uniform. I had always believed you were one of us, Billy. Now I knew.

I guess when I saw you carry out the same ritual five years later I was starting to become a little blasé. I never thought Wembley would become a second home exactly, but I felt that with a team as good as ours we would appear in a showcase final every few years. Got that one wrong, didn’t I?

By rights, Arsenal only had to turn up that day to collect the Cup. But it didn’t quite work out like that, did it? Trevor Brooking got all the headlines, naturally. He scored the winning goal. The only goal. That’s how headlines work. But you were fantastic, Billy. Next to you in the centre of defence was the man who would eventually receive the captain’s armband from you, but in 1980 Alvin Martin was considered to still be a bit raw round the edges and it was felt you might need to look after him. In the event, neither of you put a foot wrong. And it was your well-timed tackle on Alan Sunderland that sparked the counter-attack which produced our goal.

I watched an old video of the game recently. ‘Billy Bonds – he seems to grow in stature as the years go by,’ observed Motty as you masterminded our second-half rearguard action. I am not Mr Motson’s biggest fan, but he called that one right.

What made it all so special was the fact we were such massive underdogs – we were in the second division, for God’s sake! It is a matter of eternal pride to me that we were the last side from outside the top flight to win the Cup, and I don’t see us giving up that distinction any time soon.

The fact that we were able to do that is a huge testament to the loyalty of men such as yourself and Sir Trev. We had been in the second division for two years by the time we got to Wembley and were facing yet another season out of the top flight. It’s inconceivable that players of your stature would stay with a lower-league club for that length of time nowadays, but you did. That will never be forgotten by us, the people who can’t walk away.

What’s it like for you guys after a big win such as that? Obviously there’s the initial elation we all feel, but do you get a sense of anticlimax when that wears off? Perhaps it’s just me, but the emotions
that come with victory never last quite as long as those that follow defeat. If winning is like a glass of champagne, losing is an all-day hangover. The pain of one lasts far longer than the pleasure of the other. There was a time when I was younger I could barely bring myself to speak to other people until Tuesday after we’d lost on a Saturday – and it seemed to me you felt the same way.

I guess it can’t be much fun at the training ground after you’ve lost a match, but going in to work after a defeat is awful for supporters. School; factory; office; I’ve had to face them all in the wake of a West Ham loss, and it often feels as if it’s you against the world. A run-of-the-mill defeat is bad enough but it’s truly humiliating when the team has thrown in the towel. You made sure that didn’t happen on your watch. You never backed out of a tackle. You never hid when things weren’t going well; you never seemed to tire – and you made sure teammates followed your example. Woe betide anyone who didn’t put in a full shift; Ted MacDougall can testify to that!