I’m a bit of a retro kind of person, I don’t know if that is because I was born in the 60s, or whether it is something that happens when one gets older, but I long for the past and seek to find ways of holding on to it for as long as I can. I’d rather play Subbuteo than get RSI on a computer game, I even had a cricket version as well and I would iron the pitch flat before setting out the players ready to play. It was a game of skill, tactics and luck and I played it so often many of my players had to be glued back onto their stands due to being used so much – but also because they broke under our knees as me and my friends moved around the floor to play.
When we moved from Upton Park, there was a connection to the past that was cut, a link to the West Ham many of us grew up with as we were introduced to our first game and then to when we were able to buy our own match tickets and for some of us, taking our own children and young relatives to see the Hammers play as a way of passing on that history. Me and my eldest boy sat in the family section in the Sir Trevor Brooking Stand and it was great to be amongst the generations of Hammers fans watching the game. One older fan who sat next to me had so many stories to tell about the matches he had witnessed and players he had seen in claret and blue.
Losing club legend Billy Bonds last season brought home how far we have moved away from the history of the club and we mourned not just the passing of a great man, but the closing of a door to the past, something that the previous owners did not understand. It’s not something you can package into cheap memorabilia to sell in a shop, but it is something that lives within us all and is passed down from generation to generation as memories and photos and things we collect to remind us of that journey, both personal and shared, of supporting West Ham Utd over the years.
I have this scruffy old scarf from when I used to take my eldest boy, now in his 30s, to matches when he was young, which we decorated with loads of badges that we collected together as part of our match day routine. We would walk out of Upton Park station, turn right and pop into Queen’s Fish Bar and queue for a portion of chips to eat as we walked down Green Street. At the back of the chippy they had this wonderful display of photos that reminded us of some of the history of the club.
As we walked towards the Boleyn Ground, the road was lined with stalls selling scarfs, t-shirts, hats and banners and then there were those who sold old match day programmes, all stacked in boxes balanced on the front garden walls of the houses leading up to the stadium entrance. There was a real sense of community here, a place where young and old fans mingled amongst the claret and blue that decorated the street and where you felt part of the family that is West Ham. Then we would meet the ‘badge man’, we never got to know his name, but we would chat away about West Ham and carefully go through his collection of badges to see if there were any that we did not have. We didn’t always take the scarf with us, so we had to rely on memory, but he would always replace any doubles we had the following home game. He was such a nice guy and said at the time that he would not be able to take his stall to the new ground. The club had refused to allow him to set up a stall – it didn’t fit in with what the owners wanted as part of the match day experience.
Before turning into the stadium, we would stop briefly to chat with Gary Firmager, who stood on top of his step ladder selling copies of OLAS, a wonderful guy, with his loud voice and strong views on all things to do with the club. Buying a copy of OLAS was a must as me and my son would read it together in our seats whilst waiting for the match to start. I still have all my copies that I bought from Gary over the years, filled with opinion pieces but also interviews with past and current players. I remember him talking emotionally about not supporting the move to Stratford throughout the final season at Upton Park.
Enough to say that I miss those times, I even managed to take one of my younger boys to one of the final stadium tours, where we bought a bag of chips from Queen’s Fish Bar, and as we wandered down towards the stadium, I told him what it was like to see the colours of the stalls, with banners flapping in the breeze, boxes balanced on the garden walls and where Gary stood to sell his fanzine. It was strangely emotional as we were led through the different areas of the stadium as memories flooded back of some of the matches I had witnessed over the years. Seeing the ground empty, with the pitch being used for the annual community football competitions, I couldn’t help but feel that it was a mistake to move, although in some way I had supported it at the time.
As we enter a new era of the club, it’s hard not to look back and feel that not just West Ham, but the game we all grew up to love and enjoy, has changed beyond recognition. It’s not just the stadium, nor the owners who are business people first and foremost, but the connection we had then with the club and the players is something that is lost forever. I do my best to pass on my memories and the history of West Ham Utd to our boys, but eventually what they remember will be very different to what I experienced as a fan. I am excited about the new season, despite our stuttering start, as there seems to be a different feel around the club recently, with all the shenanigans of last season hopefully confined to the past since the share ownership seems to have been resolved, baring any issues with legal deadlines and payments. Some things should not linger on and the bad taste from both Sullivan and Brady’s exit from the club is still there, especially as Sullivan stubbornly refuses to stay away from matches on top of the emotional roller coaster us fans were all put through in more recent times.
Looking Forward to Rebuilding Connections
Another reason I am excited about the new season is because so many fans have renewed their season tickets and as we have seen, so many of us are prepared to continue supporting the club and the team and that is what is going to carry us out of the Championship and back into the Premier League. I have enjoyed picking up our match day routine where we left off, and although I will have all these memories from the past, the experiences that connected me to the club before, I am hoping the club will value us fans and find ways to rebuild some of those connections so that we can move forward together.
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