These days I can’t imagine my life without The Arsenal.
I have to thank my brother for getting me into football. When I was around 10 or 11 I would always see him watching the EPL highlights show on TV which got me interested.
At the start of 2004 I felt like I needed to choose a team and since I didn’t know much about football, I chose the team at the top of the ladder (and what a season to pick from).
The first time I got to watch a full Arsenal game was the 2005 FA Cup final versus Manchester United. I was so excited I even recorded the game on VHS. My understanding of football wasn’t great back then but I was just happy Arsenal won that day.
The next few years involved checking the scores, reading the match reports and watching the occasional Champions League or FA Cup game (which was the only games you could watch on free to air TV in Australia).
In 2009 I finally got pay TV and I was able to watch my first EPL game. I was so excited. I’m pretty sure it was when Arsenal beat Blackburn 4-0. And ever since then my love for Arsenal grew stronger.
The first jersey I bought was from the Sunday market. It was a cheap imitation of the 2007/08 one with Fabregas on the back which didn’t even fit me. I didn’t even care that it didn’t fit me I was just excited that I was able to buy my first jersey. However when I was old enough to finally buy Arsenal merchandise online it has been a constant purchases ever since including mugs, stationary, key rings and of course jerseys.
Being an Arsenal fan in Australia has been difficult with the ridiculous time differences. Staying up late to watch EPL games at 2am or getting up early to watch the Champions League at 6:45am sometimes does suck when you have work or uni but you eventually get used to it.
The question that I have gotten the most from friends who don’t like football is:
“I don’t know how you can wake up at 3 or 4am in the morning just to watch a football game”.
1980 and 1981 has many similarities with similar to 2011 and 2012.
The great Liam Brady departed , the team coming in to a new season following two cup final defeats in five days. The team and fans were on the floor, like 2011/12 when Cesc and Nasri went and the shambles of the start of that season.
My memory of 80/81 was the team had taken a step back. We still had the bullet forehead of frank Stapleton up front. We sang Rixy was better than Hoddle (even if we didn’t quite believe it!). The crowds dropped and the games were dull! But we had great times off the pitch…
There was so much going on to deflect from the poor show on the pitch. The young teens of 1978 were growing up! Going to games was about dressing up. Our meetings with the Scousers of 1980 spawned copycat wedge haircuts, Adidas track tops, kickers. Winter of that year was a sea of ski jumpers in then clock end.
Musically, we had a new wave band to follow, the 4 be 2’s , our own Arsenal band at a time when West Ham had the Cockney Rejects!
The 4 be 2’s stable created an Arsenal record ‘Crack Away on the Beano’ and a Celtic London Irish spin off (Pope Paul and the Romans) brought out a song ‘Why won’t Rangers sign a Catholic!’. It was rumoured that the lads behind the above went down the lane and sold the records to gullible fans in a Tottenham cover sleeve!
Richard Jobson of the Skids as well as the Lydons were seen in the Clock Cnd! The soul and dance music side of our fans was also in evidence. The Clock End was a great place to be. It wasn’t so for away fans. For some reason,they were placed in the middle of the clock end fenced on both sides, but how were they to get there?
Through the home fans!! Unless away fans came in great numbers, eg Leeds in spring 81, they had a torrid time! Whilst, Arsenal is proudly a broad church in the best traditions of a rebellious movement, the first item on the agenda was the split!
The growing identity of the Clock End ,gradually to be dubbed by hooligan opponents as the Gooners saw them to grow apart from the greater mass of fans in the North Bank. At the Christmas North London Derby, the /Clock End decided to stay put and not help the North Bank with the annual Tottenham incursion.
It was a bit of a cut of nose to spite thy face gesture, which wasn’t repeated. We had a great run towards the end of 81 season, I went to Brighton, Norwich, Ipswich, and Wolves towards the
end of that season. We were unbeaten again like the run ins of the last two years! We had a big away following.
We beat Aston Villa at home on a mad day to end the season. They still won the league that day, Pele, the real, not the Romford one, did a lap of honour on the pitch pre game and there was a mass pitch invasion by our fans at the end of the game. Villa came on as well, but the police horses get the fans apart!
1981/82 and like the Van Persie sale to Man U, we sold our main striker Stapleton to them! We couldn’t score a goal that year! Well, we had Raphael Meade and even tried out Chris Whyte up front!
We were poor, Boring ARSENAL was in! Off the field, the casual dress scene exploded!! The Gooners dressed like middle aged golf club members, diamond pringles, farrah slacks, polonecks, deer stalker hats. Others dressed like Wimbledon wannabies, fila bord, Tacchini, etc.
My best mate wore the legendary La Coste “ANDY PANDY” rain jacket through the winter!! The trouble at matches was getting nastier. We had paranoia about the newly promoted West Ham. For the away game in December 1981, as much for perceived self protection then anything else, a huge gathering met up at the Arsenal Tavern to go to East London. Many of whom lived out there,so had to go East to West and back again!!
There was the usual group paranoid about the police presence at the Arsenal Tavern. How did they know were here?eehh.. All they needed to do was look out the window of Highbury Vale police station!
The West Ham home game for those who were there was a day when the violence got out of hand, but a day when Arsenal would no longer roll over in the North Bank. Any sense of group pride that night was replaced by shock when the news came in that John Dickinson RIP was stabbed to death at Arsenal station after the game. The trouble that increasingly followed football at that time became something that was less abstract and much more serious!!
1982/83 was another lean season.We signed Woodcock which kind of worked and Lee Chapman who was like Bambi on stilts!! There was little patience with Lee and he got the Eboue treatment! We got to two semis, beaten in both by a much stronger physically Man U side. It was the year of the departure from the norm, the Green away kit!
I remember going to Leeds for an FA cup replay,where a young West Indian kid on the terraces sang all through the game. I still remember “Green is the new colour for me, green is the turf at Wembley and that is where the Arsenal will be in the FA cup in 83!”.
Even the casuals starrted wearing green hats to away games! We also got beat 5-0 at the lane!!
After that dour season,the club needed a lift, An Ozil type lift you might say!
Well the club did make the marquis signing in the summer, the best young talent in Scotland! He looked like Bono,could he play like Bono sang?
We had a new king,Charlie Nicholas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Most people to claim to have loved their club from day one, I do not. Don’t get me wrong I’ve always supported Arsenal there was no choice, from the day I was born my Dad would have it no other way. It’s all I knew. But at first I didn’t quite get it.
My earliest football memory is laying on my Nan’s living room floor watching the 98 Cup Final on TV. The image of Anelka and Overmars walking around the Wembley pitch with the FA Cup is not one I’ll ever forget. Good times, but at the age of 7 I still didn’t really get what it was all about.
Fast forward just under 3 years and I was to attend my first Arsenal game. Away to Man United. At Old Trafford in the HOME end of all places. Not ideal if I’m honest. 25th February 2001, I always remember the date as it was my sisters Birthday and she obviously was unimpressed that me and my Dad were disappearing to Manchester for the day.
We left early that morning and made the long car journey there. As you can imagine Old Trafford as a 10 year old is a quite a daunting place to watch your first ever football match especially surrounded by 60,000 Mancs. Like I said, not ideal. I remember it being bitterly cold and within two minutes we’re one nil’ down. Now the plan was to try to blend in within the home end so obviously we’re the only two sitting down two minutes in. Cover blown. Then, 14 minutes in. Henry equalises! My first experience of joy and excitement at an Arsenal game. My Dad trying to keep the celebrations low key, there wasn’t really any point as we were losing again almost instantly. It all went downhill from there and we got absolutely battered 6-1. I seem to remember Stephanovs running down the wing during that game and even at 10 years old even I knew he belonged nowhere near a team like Arsenal.
After the game we met the woman who sorted out the tickets. She asked in a thick Manchester accent if I was going to become a United fan now. I was slow to answer as I didn’t have a clue what she was saying so my Dad was quick to jump in. “No. No he isn’t”
I was a bit gutted after the game not as much as my Dad as clearly losing 6-1 at my first ever game was not what he imagined would happen.
So after that I’m still struggling to see what the fuss is about.
The next game I went two was Liverpool. Again away from home again absolutely freezing cold and again stuck in the home end! I’d won tickets so couldn’t really complain. 23rd December 2001 another date I remember strangely my Dads birthday this time. This time however everything went well we played well and won 2-1. I remember Freddie scoring and running off into the away fans and being insanely jealous of them. This time there we’re know muted celebrations, the full time whistle goes and we went for it! Swiftly leaving afterwards.
Now I had the taste for this ‘going to the football’ lark. I couldn’t wait for the next time.
The first home game I went to was against Blackburn the following season, I can’t remember the date (can’t have been anyones birthday). The whole family went this time. Me my Dad my Mum and my Sister. I was so buzzing for it. We got the tube to Arsenal and walked along Gillespie road. The first thing I noticed was the smell, burger vans/horse shit/beer, doesn’t sound nice but its a smell that I’m sure everyone recognises every time you go to football and it always reminds me of that day. We turned the corner on to Avenell Road and I saw Highbury up close for the very first time. A lot of people say they fell in love with Highbury instantly and this time I agree. What a place. Seeing the windows on the side of the North Bank and seeing people finding there seats gave me goosebumps and excited butterflies inside. I wanted to get inside quickly. When we found our spot on this North Bank I couldn’t stop looking all around at this amazing ground. As a young kid it is mesmerising you just try to take it all in.
The game kicked off and we were one nil down early on from a strange Edu own goal. But then later in the half he made it all right by scoring the equaliser. I’ll never forget that goal, the first time I celebrated an Arsenal goal at a game amongst the right fans! It was mental. The noise was deafening and I’m pretty sure I ended up a few seats along.
We went on to lose 2-1 I was disappointed but everything about that day bar the result was spot on. The smells, the sights, hearing the outbursts of chants from all around Highbury, joining in and finally being at a home game.
All of these things finally making me realise what it was all about and making me fall in love with The Arsenal. Something that I will never stop doing, I still get the same excited butterflies every time I go and I hope I always do and I hope when I have a son its exactly the same for him.
I think i’ll avoid United away for his first game though…
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 