I can’t resist exposing some element of my past in order to share a heartwarming experience. Back in the day I delighted to have been employed on match days to supervise the players lounge, dressing rooms and (tiny )gym\warm up area. I also supervised away coaches and trains.
Some of you may recall that during the 90s a couple of days before we played Sunderland there was a terrible mining flood tragedy which caused the death of a number of miners (ashamed to say that I can’t remember the number of deaths)
I made a rash decision to announce to the football train by tannoy that we would be passing through the train to collect on behalf of the bereaved. Amazingly, we collected around £500+ .
On arrival at the train station the three of us decided to spend some of the money on a wreath. How fucking stupid were we? Overtly dressed in navy blazers with a West Ham stitched badge on the left outside pocket, white shirt and claret and blue tie we were sitting targets. The locals quickly gathered and were preparing for an assault. Luckily, a couple of astute cops bundled us three into the van.
I thought that they intended to arrest us for breach of the peace, but once I showed him the bag of cash and explained how we came by it he became Mr Softie. He even made an impromptu stop at a local flower type shop to enable us to buy a wreath.
Things then became a bit blurred. The police van dropped us off at the players/directors entrance. We three were greeted and ushered into the directors area where we were asked to lay our pathetic looking wreath on the centre of the pitch before the game. “Of course” I uttered ( probably stuttered rather than uttered) .
We are now in the tunnel minutes before kickoff and the Roker Roar is ear piercing . The Mackems were thirsting for cockney blood. The tannoy kicks in with an announcement that no fucker could hear and we were pushed towards the pitch.
I fucking shit myself when I realised that most if not all MacKem fans had spotted the three man claret and blue ‘invasion’ onto the sacred turf. No fencing, barely enough security….”we are completely fucked “ I shouted to my mate Tommy above the increasing noise. It was then that we realised that our arrival onto the pitch had not been announced. The cunt of a club announcer hadn’t announced the reason for this apparent ‘West Ham invasion’ until we had reached the centre circle.
Much to our relief, huge applause followed and we trundled back to the edge of the pitch and tunnel to be greeted with .“ you thick twats are you fucking stupid? The players are about to storm out through there. Fuck off to your right, pass both corner flags and exit the pitch through the St John’s camp”
Roker Park was very much akin to Upton Park and I swear we were that close you could smell the farts and breaths of the fans. we began to get a bit of a wriggle on. Probably twenty seconds into the ‘retreat’ I saw these hands being extended with no weapons. I heard : “ fucking hate you cockneys but love you today”; “nobody is normally welcome here but today you cockneys are part of our family” ; “cheers you cockney bastards” and so and so forth.
I have many more memories which you probably can’t be arsed to abide.
A call to all - were any of you on my coach which broke down on the way home from Cremona to Upton Park? If so please help me to take this to the next level
