So Paddy Got Up - an Arsenal anthology (7 page)

And then there are the titles and the title run-ins. It’s hard to define exactly why, but the ‘We’re going to win the league’ moments are hard to beat; those specific points in a season when the whole stadium – as one – realises the title is within grasp, and starts to sing. The surge of expectancy, of excitement, coupled with an underlying, gnawing fear of failure; it grabs the pit of your stomach. It’s magical. We’ve not had that at the Emirates. As for the titles themselves: Adams dancing through Everton’s defence to pick up Bould’s through pass will take some beating. Gathering below the home dressing room, serenading players in 1991, 1998, 2002, 2004. Those are the kinds of things that add to the aura of a ground, to its history. You can’t pluck them from a marketing manual.

With regard to Highbury itself, well it might have been long in the tooth in its latter years, but it was still one of the most elegant grounds in the country. Archibald Leitch’s listed Art Deco stands, the bust of Herbert Chapman, the Marble Halls, the commissionaire stationed outside the entrance to the East Stand; it stank of history, and class seeped from its every pore. The first time I went there, one Saturday at 3 o’clock in December 1985 (back then it was of course almost always Saturday at 3 o’clock) is partly vivid and partly completely forgotten. As, if I am honest, is my memory of most games since. Above all else I remember emerging into the sun of West Stand Upper tier, peering down at this impossibly high, impossibly large and impossibly noisy cathedral of football. I was awestruck. I have a vague memory of Niall Quinn scoring on his debut, and of Charlie Nicholas getting one too, but details of the goals themselves, and most other memories of the day, have retreated into the recesses of my mind. For years, I could recall the exact attendance, but at some point in the intervening decades I have forgotten the last three digits. It was 35 thousand and something. That’s age for you.

Oddly, but this could again be an age thing, I have fewer crystal clear memories of my first trip to the Emirates than I do of my first visit to Highbury. I have a feeling I spent most of my time craning my neck at its architectural glory. I do remember we equalised to ensure its debut didn’t go too flat… but that’s about it. I could only guess at the line-up now (Justin Hoyte started – who knew?). In fact, I have had to look back at my blog entry for more prompting. Turns out it was Walcott’s debut, we were ‘guilty of over-elaboration’ and the queues for beer were frustratingly long. Glad all that’s been fixed these last five years, eh…?

Thinking back to Highbury though, some of my own little favourite bits make no real sense at all: The ‘JVC and Arsenal: A Perfect Match’ signs on the side of the East and West stands. The precipitous walk up to the North Bank from Gillespie Road, manned turnstiles, complete with piles of match-day stubs; the programme seller’s cupboard under the stairs. If pushed, I would say my favourite thing about the Emirates is the view as you walk up to it on a dark weekday evening, lit up, buzzing, grand and magnificent.

I was weaned on Highbury for twenty-years, and the Emirates has only been with us for five, so it’s perhaps no great surprise that I look back at the old place more fondly than I do the new. My first visit, those seminal early years in any fan’s life, all took place at Highbury. Will the latest generation of fans – those who have been coming to the Arsenal only since 2006, or who have been watching Arsenal somewhere across the globe only since then – have similar rose-tinted specs in 15 years? My son, whose first game came last season, a 2-1 home defeat by Aston Villa, already wants to go back, and back again, to the Emirates. So inevitably, they will. It’s a wonderful stadium and it’s the only place they have ever known.

Me? Well I’m afraid I’ll be – if I’m not already – one of those old buggers who waxes on about the good old days at every opportunity. My love for Arsenal was forged at Highbury. The players I grew up on, whose careers I saw start and end, graced it; Seaman, Big Tone, Bouldy, Keown, Dicko, Nige, Paul Davis, Rocky, Steve Williams, The Merse, Michael Thomas, Alan Smith, Wrighty, Perry Groves, Petit, Vieira, Overmars, Henry, Le Bob, Dennis Bergkamp, Kaba Diawara and dozens besides. All those memories are Highbury memories.

I love the Emirates, and I doff my acrylic Kenny Sansom flat cap to its size, facilities and above all to its ambition, but in terms of memories it’s just not there yet. How can it be? These things take time.

It’s over to you, Emirates, to make up the deficit.

***

Jim Haryott started his blog, East Lower after Arsenal won the FA Cup in 2003 and has since enjoyed one glorious, unbeaten season, one jammy FA Cup, one oh-so-close European Cup final and, last but not least, six trophyless seasons. He’s supported Arsenal since 1980, and to this day holds a grudge against Graham Rix for missing that penalty and making him cry

6 – CONTINUED EVOLUTION - Tom Clark

It’s strange to me now, but being an Arsenal fan isn’t something that always came naturally. When I was a small boy, I played football at school in both classes, and in the playground, but I wasn’t that much of a fan of the game itself. I enjoyed it, sure, but I didn’t play it with the same enthusiasm that I did rugby, or cricket, and I didn’t really watch anything on the TV except the big games – FA Cup finals and the like – nor did I go to games. I didn’t come from a footballing family. My parents didn’t even have teams that they even nominally supported – and I can only remember one of my close friends specifically being a fan of a particular club: my best friend, in fact.

Robin, as we shall call him (for that was his name), did come from a footballing family. He had posters on his wall of his favourite players; both his father and his grandfather, who lived with them, were both season ticket holders. Robin and his older brother, Matt (also his name), went to games with their dad, and Matt played football in the school team. I even remember his mother wearing ribbons in her hair for a game. It may well even have been the 1987 cup final. In which Coventry City beat – yes, that’s right – Tottenham Hotspur. My best friend Robin came from a family of die hard Spurs fans. The posters on his bedroom wall were of Hoddle, Waddle, and Ardiles.

I’m not a psychologist, and, it’s been a quite a long while since I was a small boy, but I think it speaks volumes for the nature of small boy relationships that I ended up becoming a fan of my best friend’s team’s biggest rivals. That or I’m some kind of sociopath. I mean… what kind of kid does that? But, at that time, it simply didn’t register as being possibly the most annoying and provocative thing I have ever done. Like many small boys, Robin and I were competitive. We competed over who had the best dad, whether the Atari or the Amiga was better than a BBC Micro (it totally wasn’t), who was better friends with our mutual friend Greg; I clearly wanted another thing to compete over. Either way, I’m glad my friend Robin’s family were Spurs fans. Things could well have turned out quite horribly had they been Arsenal fans.

As entertaining as that was, becoming an Arsenal fan wasn’t only about diametrically opposing myself to the extended family of my so-called best friend. In truth, I was jealous. The sense of belonging; of being part of a tribe, at one with culture, history, and identity are powerful ideas for a small boy. I mean, obviously I wasn’t jealous enough to be part of Robin’s particular poxy tribe, but the concept of belonging was appealing. I didn’t rationalise and explain it to myself in quite the same way when I was ten, but there was definitely something that drew me in. So unlike many people, becoming an Arsenal fan was, for me, an active choice, and I chose it for that most healthy, positive, and constructive of reasons – the deep-rooted male need to compete with another male. To his credit, Robin took my massive insult to him and his family surprisingly well – it didn’t really change anything between us and we remained friends.

I made friends with other Arsenal supporting kids, and it wasn’t long before one of their families adopted me and I got to go to my first game at Highbury. The relationship was firmly established, and I was doing the things boys did: collecting Panini stickers, completing World Cup wall charts – pretending to be Arsenal players when we played football at school. I had posters on my bedroom wall. By the time 1989 and 1991 brought forth all their wonderful glories, I was thoroughly consumed. And then something rather unfortunate happened. My father was informed by his job that he had to relocate and was given the choice of either Singapore or Aberdeen. For one reason and another, he chose Aberdeen, which meant that we were moving from just outside London to the North-East of Scotland: it might as well have been a million miles away. Aside from this being the end of my burgeoning social life, how would I keep up with Arsenal? There was no Internet, no blogs, no wall-to-wall coverage. And I could forget about actually going to games!

So, both unfortunately and somewhat inevitably, supporting Arsenal turned into a long distance relationship – and anyone who’s ever been in one of those will tell you how they can work out, particularly for teenagers. What’s more, by this time, I’d gone full teenager, and although Sky and the Premier League had turned up and were doing their best to turn football into what they thought was a cool product, I was drifting away from the game to find my own definition of cool by doing incredibly cool things like smoking cigarettes, drinking cider, and hanging around. I followed results less keenly, and given that most of my friends at school who actually had an interest in football were Aberdeen fans, I began to lose interest. I still vaguely kept up with results, but it was only for the biggest of games that I showed any real interest, and even then, it was very much a personal thing; I didn’t know any other Arsenal fans in the wild north, so I generally confined my relationship to reading occasional match reports in the paper.

It wasn’t until a few years later, in the summer of 1996, when I went to university, that I rekindled things, which as it turns out wasn’t a bad time to rediscover an affinity with Arsenal. Being a football fan had changed. The Premier League and Sky bonanza had turned football into a highly marketable and lucrative product; footballers were superstars, household names who were being fortunes. Fronted by those erstwhile bastions of respectability and taste, Andy Gray and Richard Keys, Sky had turned the football match into an event; one that, for me at least, took place in the pub. To their credit, they really did change football broadcasting, bringing a pizazz and excitement to their coverage.

As a freshman at university, I looked for ways to fit in and connect with people, so I started going to the pub to watch the football. I went to university in Scotland, but the Premier League juggernaut and the magical Sky dish meant that it didn’t matter where in the country you were – you still got to watch your team. To begin with, I went on my own and nursed my way through a few pints in a quiet corner, watching whatever game happened to be on – it wasn’t just Arsenal I wanted to see, I wanted to watch all of it. Then I started making friends with people, fans of other clubs. Ironically enough, one of the first people I started going to watch the football with at university was, yes, a Tottenham fan. This time, however, I wasn’t looking to compete, and I’m still good friends with that person today (he actually asked me to go to the last North London derby at their place with him; I politely declined).

For us exiles marooned in Scotland by our studies, football had become a thoroughly social event. It was about going out, drinking beer, having a laugh, enjoying some banter with mates, but most importantly, seeing your team beat the other lot so you could mock them mercilessly. And considering this was the tail end of the 1990’s, I was lucky enough to be able to do that a fair bit. It was all based around the big screen in the pub, which as an arts student with plenty of free time, suited me very well.

Then, in 1997, we started being shown this thing in the university library called Netscape Navigator. It was all rather confusing, and frequently didn’t work very well, if at all, but it provided access to this other new thing called the World Wide Web (“a tool for learning”, oh yes). It fascinated and puzzled me in equal measure, and I spent a lot of time playing with it, enthralled by the idea that I could swap data with people on the other side of the world. Of course, I never remotely saw the potential for what it would become, or I’d probably have retired by now, possibly even laden with Arsenal shares, but some people did see what it might be used for, particularly with regard to football. One of the earliest sites I remember visiting, Football365, still runs today and has turned into a media, betting, and advertising empire. And it’s still a major source of football news.

After I graduated, I moved to Edinburgh and once again supporting Arsenal changed for me. This time it was more of an evolution. The reason I chose Edinburgh, and not Glasgow, or anywhere in England, was because we had friends there – but they were mostly friends I’d had at school; that’s to say, not Arsenal friends. This time, however, there was to be no drifting away. I had Sky Sports at home now, with its glitzy, in your face coverage, that I’d watch for an hour before the game, and for at least as long afterwards for the analysis and post-match interviews. Then I’d fire up my dial-up modem, get on the web, and see what the match report on the BBC said about it and either glow in the praise lavished on my team after they’d done me the courtesy of winning, or wallow in misery had they shamed me. Actually reading all the opinions and finding out what was being said and by whom became a pursuit in itself; something in which I could happily immerse myself for hours on end.

And then, sometime in 2002, I discovered Arseblog, the website that changed the way I supported Arsenal permanently. Arseblog was well written, which I very much appreciated, but more importantly it was funny. It had rants, but they were good rants – the sort of rants I had – which was a new concept in the football writing that I’d spent any time reading. There were plenty of match reports on the web – plenty of earnest pieces about how wonderful or terrible the team had been, with serious analysis of the matches; but what was new, at least to me, was the humour; you came for the post-match report, but you stayed for the jokes.