Awoke this morning to see West Ham top of the Premier League. No particular cause for celebration there, but always mildly happy to see Leicester lose. I can see how they’ve become lots of people’s darlings, mixing it up and bloodying the noses of the ‘Big Clubs’ and agree that’s a healthy thing. However, for me they’ll always be the club for whom the usual rules of going into administration and paying your debtors and taxes didn’t apply. Just bitter that I wish it was us? Probably!
That said, I once had a friend/lodger, Buzzer, who was a home and away Leicester fan back in the darker days and you’ve got to feel a little bit pleased for the likes of anyone like him who’d been prepared to do the likes of a midweek game at Hartlepool in the Football League Trophy in 2008. I’ve also got a very brilliant and lovely work colleague who is a Leicester obsessive with Baby Squad connections. So, I take it all back. And Frank Worthington was great, his autobiography One Hump or Two, essentially Carry On Filbert Street, is terrific. Spoiler alert, Frank enjoyed a bawdy night with the woman from Knokke. Ooer, missus! Up the Foxes!
Also nice to see Forest player of the season 2015-16 Mikhail Antonio becoming the Hammers all time top scorer. Oh for someone of his pace and power now!
Any thoughts of West Ham always take me back to Upton Park, the 8th of October 1977, an afternoon deemed worthy of an entire chapter in Cass Pennant’s very readable Congratulations You Have Just Met the ICF. I’m not a big consumer of hooligan memoirs; they’re often very samey and full of bluster. This, however, always feels like the real-deal and what’s not to like in a book that also includes a pretty comprehensive biog and discography of the mighty Cockney Rejects. Music fans yet to discover the joys, check out War on the Terraces and West Side Boys.
To summarise – the chapter in Cass’s book, ‘Why Did You Leave at Ten To Three, Forest’, is well worth a look for the full gory details – this was an afternoon of sheer bedlam and terror. There had been ‘previous’ at, of all places, Orient in the Anglo-Scottish Cup the year before and this was compounded by newly-promoted, high-flying Forest taking a huge, possibly rather naïve, following down to East London for this one.
We entered the dingy confines of the South Bank, to be dropped on from above – West Ham fans dangling above us from the rafters. A nice start. Immediately, it was apparent that segregation was non-existent. West Ham had infiltrated the train escort anyway and found various other ways of ‘jibbing’ into the away section. Repeatedly, attacks from the enemy within brought chaos and spillage/escape onto the perimeter track. As kick-off approached, this turned into a full scale mob attack and much of the Forest support headed for the sanctuary (or so we thought) of the pitch. We thought wrong. As we headed onto the pitch, another huge group of West Ham, skinheads mostly, came out from the West Side to catch us in a pincer movement. With hindsight, I like to imagine that one of these would have been a young Stinky Turner of the Rejects and I can chalk this up as another glamorous brush with celebrity. Oi Oi!
Back to the action. There was only one way out. Bravely and heroically, my Dad, Dave B, Christine and me headed down the tunnel to be confronted with the teams as they set off for the pitch. Literally nose to nose with Trevor Brooking and Frank Lampard, neither of whom said a word. Maybe this was normal. We about turned and sprinted, successfully, for the away terrace where we watched a tense 0-0 draw play out without much further incident, but dreading full-time. We seemed to be surrounded by West Ham and the huge travelling support had largely evaporated. Where was everyone?
What had actually happened is that the Police had decided to evacuate all the visitors they could round up and escort them away. Before kick-off. Hence the title of the chapter. We stuck it out. Quietly.
This would be a good point to explain my Dad’s match-day dress sense. In an era when blending in was pretty important for self-preservation, he developed a shockingly horrible and bright collection of nylon rally jackets, almost exclusively the ‘prize’ for loyalty to a particular petrol or car manufacturer. The yellow Renault one and a neon blue Elf one stand out. Literally. The jacket of choice on this particular day was the Elf one. We’d begged him not to to wear it. We always begged him not to wear it. He never listened. Today felt like a particularly bad day to be wearing such a highly, erm, distinctive garment and so it proved at full time on the perilous walk back to the car. We were identified repeatedly, one young cockernee urchin even mentioning that he’d seen the Elf jacket on the pitch! Somehow we remained unscathed – tormented a bit, but unharmed. I suspect the ICF had bigger fish to fry than a fifty something fashion disaster, two soft looking teenagers and an attractive young woman. If so, thanks lads, very good of you!
Long live "The Appleseed!"...AKA Elf Jacket man!