Tag Archives: FA Cup

The Arsenal and Me – Herbert’s Story

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When She Wore gave me the task of writing why I love The Arsenal, I had a long search through the memory banks. It’s a question the majority of fans ask each other. Why that particular team? Many cite family loyalties, ‘I come from an Arsenal family’ or ‘I did it to spite my dad/brother, etc’. Others are down to geographic location, ’it’s my hometown club’. For me, I blame Panini.

I’m a provincial. A child of the countryside. An idyllic upbringing among the orchards of Kent. When I was a kid ‘out in the boonies’, the nearest town was 5 miles away and trips to a sports shop were infrequent and replica kits were virtually non-existent. I had an interest in football but only from what I had read in my Grandfather’s newspaper or saw on World of Sport. I had no allegiance to any one team. Panini solved my problem. I was given this album and about 10 packs of stickers just before the 1977-78 season, and being a bit of a pedantic child, I sorted them out in numeric order without looking at the pictures on the front. Oddly I remember working backwards – no I don’t know why either –and dutifully stuck them in, a touch lopsided.

The final sticker I had was right at the front of the book. It was what kids now call, a shiny. A club crest. Red and white with a big gun on it and the word ARSENAL in that font we all know and love. Below the crest read the words:

VICTORIA CONCORDIA CRESCIT

I didn’t know what it meant but it must mean something to someone.
So who were this Arsenal? The double page was covered with empty boxes but with names underneath. Pat Jennings, Pat Rice, David O’Leary, Liam Brady, Malcolm McDonald to name a few. Who were they all? I looked at the honours board noting that this club and I had something in common. They’d won the Division One championship and FA Cup the year I was born a few years before. Fate surely? In that moment, my footballing destiny had been sown and I devoured every scrap of news to do with the team that I could find.

Luckily for me, the team reached the FA Cup final three years in a row, Roger Osborne upsetting me in ’78, Alan Sunderland sending me delirious in ’79 and Trevor Brooking making me cry in ’80. I’ve told Trevor that since in the car park at The Boleyn. A lovely man. Hand on my shoulder, he apologised for making me cry all those years ago but not for the goal. Then again, I didn’t expect him to.

My debut at Highbury, or any Arsenal game for that matter, was in 1991. The 4-0 win over Palace. I stood on The North Bank. I went with some older work colleagues. Pre-match build up started in The Gunners pub on Elwood Street. A couple of ‘sherberts’, then the walk. At the end of the road there was the end of the East Stand and the North Bank turnstiles, what seemed to be thousands of people milling around, the whisperings of the ticket touts, the programme seller on the corner, the diversity of people in the street, young and old, black and white. Heart thudding in my chest, sweaty palms and a dry mouth. I’d only ever seen it on the television. I remember it as if it were yesterday.
£4.00 – those were the days! – at the turnstile and up the concrete steps. At the top, I stopped. Laid out before me was my field of dreams. The hallowed turf I’d been waiting over a decade to see. An overwhelming moment. That shiny sticker that had captivated me all those years ago had brought me to this. I’d waited all my life for this moment and I fell even more truly, madly and deeply in love with what I considered to be my club. I couldn’t get enough and went home and away for the next four years.

I haven’t been to a competitive league game since 1996 but I’ve lucky to witness the FA Cup finals, good and bad, but like a lot of supporters, it’s down to the cost. What does upset me is that I cannot afford to take my two daughters to experience a game at The Arsenal. My parents weren’t interested in sport at all so I missed out on the matchday experience that I read and hear so much about, and because of the way football is these days, my kids are missing out too. Our love affair with The Arsenal is now sadly from afar.

Throughout the years I’ve been supporting The Arsenal, it’s become to mean more than just the team on the pitch. Of course I’m immensely happy with the success that we’ve enjoyed, the players we’ve had the pleasure to see or read about but one of the key things for me is that we, as a club, have been known for our class and style. We are world-renowned for it. We do things the ‘right way’. We are a club that other clubs aspire to be. Not just now in the present climate with FFP. We’ve always been the benchmark and that’s something to be rightly proud of.

Highbury, the marble halls, Art Deco, the Bank of England club, Herbert Chapman. This may all be history, but it’s ours. Yours and mine. The DNA, where we’ve come from, it’s made our club what it is today. The Arsenal have been innovators, pioneers of what we’ve come to take for granted in this modern football world. As a supporter, I’m incredibly proud that we have a rich tapestry of history, not just from on the field successes and world class players. Not many clubs can boast about the achievements that we can. The first live radio broadcast of a league match, first live television broadcast of a match, first team featured on MOTD, under-soil heating, floodlights, our own Underground station. Our current manager has been rightly lauded as being the catalyst for change in English football. We’ve featured heavily in popular culture whether that be in film, comedy, literature and the theatre. It’s these little things that I love about my club.

The Arsenal plays an important part in my life. It dictates my moods, it elates and deflates me but no matter what it does, I love it. Painfully so at times, to the detriment of everything else.

Every time I pull on a shirt, I feel pride. The shirt and the name on it is my identity.
I’ll end on a quote from our former goalkeeper, the Double-winning legend, Bob Wilson:
‘It was this feeling you were wearing this big gun on your chest and everywhere you went, my word, you felt proud to be wearing it’
No matter what has happened in the last few years and what may happen in the future, that sums it all up. Thanks Panini.

Herbert

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The Arsenal and Me – Mo’s Story

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I have lots of memories: the good ,the bad ,the ugly and the downright scary from my 40 years of following Arsenal! There is just too much to cram into one blog, so I will recall the 70s and the start of the 80s, my formative years at Arsenal!

For those of today’s generation,eight years and all that without a trophy, well that was “de rigour” in the 70s. I was a junior schoolboy in 71 and older brothers plonked me down at the front of the north bank in the double winning run. I remember the 1-0 wins at home to the Geordie’s and the last home game 1-0 against Stoke! I watched the FA Cup Final around an affluent family friends house who had colour TV.We were still radio rentalliing a black and white when we won our next trophy in 79! Yes an eight year gap!

I was free of older brothers guardianship and could head down on my own in the mid 70s. The team had gone downhill,a double team broken up far too soon! But,I had the misfortune of going to games,a bare teen, a quiet one in a maelstrom of an era of football violence.

Excited to see Arsenal in a FA Cup QF at home against West Ham in 1975 I entered the North Bank on a day of horrendous rain to hear “Bubbles” from the back of the North Bank,as West Ham took over that day!I was at angry at what happened off the pitch as the losing 2-0 on the pitch.

Next season, we beat West Ham 6-1, but that day was equally naughty! And as for Tottenham Hotspur…things weren’t much better. I still have a mental picture of a typical y** as being much older ,wearing a donkey jacket and a peak cap! We were bad on the pitch, but they were worse and we saw them relegated in 76!!

By 77/78,things were stirring at Highbury. The team were improving ,the mercurial Liam Brady was emerging as a world class player,O’Leary at the back and the signing of Pat Jennings, the Tottenham keeper, proved a cute bit of business!

We had a team to have a go in the Cups. Off the pitch things were also stirring. A young generation, ages 14-16 emerged in the Clockend, a kind of football intifada was emerging. The lads had enough of getting bullied by older Chas and Daves and Garnets! The young ones would cut their in the mayhem of 70s away games. I went to Ipswich, Norwich and Bristol City that season. I was a quiet bystander in mayhem at every turn,

In 78,we reached a league cup semi over two legs against Liverpool.Liverpool were in their pomp. Dalglish at his peak as a player. My oldest brother took me to the first leg at Anfield.

To be continued…

Mo

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The Arsenal and Me – Fingers’ Story

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Now being a young lad from the leafy suburbs of the East End of the district line I grew up surrounded by all things West Ham in the late 70’s. However, my uncle born and breed Islington man had the foresight of introducing me to a club called The Arsenal. He told me about the history, the badge, showed me old and current programmes talked about the 71 double year (the year before I was born) and by the age of six I was hooked listing to the radio for scores on a Saturday and waiting for the final scores, and of course pestering my uncle to take me to a game who used to reply “when your old man says you can come I will take you”

May 1978 Arsenal played Ipswich in an FA Cup final (again asked about going cried when I was not allowed). However, I was allowed to decorate the front window in Arsenal Yellow and Blue rosette and pictures of Brady etc. Day of the game, I woke up early put my Arsenal scarf on and took every minute of the build up on TV. in those days the FAC final was a massive event and one of the only live sporting events you could see on TV. Well at 5pm I was devastated and knew when I went to school on Monday I would have all the Alf Garnets giving it to me. However, my love for The Arsenal was not dampened.

1979 we got to the final again same routine same answers but what made it worse was my dad went with my uncle, in later life I would discover my oldman was a Manc !!!!! This time we won I was dancing around the front room singing songs and felt 10 feet tall on Monday at school.

1980 we got to the final again but was playing a division 2 team called West Ham!!!! For what seemed ages every lunch time I was sent to the Headmaster for fighting. You guessed it, I was sticking up for my team, my obsession, my Arsenal. I knew I would not be allowed to go as got told at the semi final stage but when I asked my mum if I could do the front window in yellow and blue like the last two years seeing their faces was a picture, in the end it was half as the other half had to be claret and blue or my brothers.

My dad tells me know that every night our house was budded (for the younger generation this is where you pick a rose bud throw it at a window and run). Well we lost, more fights at school and Wednesday we lost in another cup final, my world was falling apart.

In 1982 after years of nagging and, aged 10, I was taken to my first Arsenal game at Highbury. The opposition that day was West Ham United. Now for a first game it was so exciting I remember approaching the ground seeing the large crowds, the smell of burgers stools selling Arsenal scarves, etc, being told to stay close to my uncle and then going to our seats in the East upper, seeing the pitch, the crowds the noise. I think Fever Pitch really did capture that moment very well, oh and then an orange smoke bomb with all hell breaking lose in the North Bank with people being carried out or arrested for about 20 mins. I was hooked, I asked my uncle was it like this every week.

I then went on the odd occasion but by the time I was 13 I was travelling into Highbury for every home game using all my paper round money to get there and in (I earned £7 a week) and I still had change when I came home, I was hooked and just coming into a George Graham years. My favourite years of following Arsenal so many firsts for me, seeing us win a trophy Littlewoods cup 1987, first league title 1989 (I was lucky enough to be at Anfield), first FAC Sheffield Wednesday, first time in Europe Standard Leige away (now that’s a story in itself) the list goes on.

I have seen us lose cup finals in this country and foreign lands, win doubles and as an Arsenal fan have probably seen there greatest moments in their history live and all because my uncle has the foresight to teach me that once The Arsenal is in you it will never be the same.

I don’t go as much now (I still do the Euro away’s, with my son) as the club I fell in love with and spent tens of thousands following has changed. I no longer feel part of it, although I still meet my mates that I have made through Arsenal and that bond will never die. Its true The Arsenal will never truly leave me, it’s on my skin, its in my heart, and has shaped so much of my life. So I end this piece with these words “thank you uncle Tom for showing me The Arsenal roll out that red carpet.”

Fingers

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