West Ham United Walk on Water

OLAS 433 FEBRUARY 9TH 2008

The novelist Charles Dickens couldn’t stand them: “They are so filthy and bestial that no honest man would admit one into his house for a water-closet doormat.” Now you might be forgiven for thinking I’m talking about:
a) Man U supporters
b) Referees
c) Estate agents
or even
d) Politicians

Actually he was talking about newspapers. He’s not the only one enraged by them. Mayor Ken Livingstone, who knows a thing or two about the wicked ways of the press, said “Nothing prepares you for how bad Fleet Street really is until it craps on you from a great height.” and James G Watt certainly had at least a moral point when he moaned that “They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers”.

Everyone has a view on newspapers. In the last OLAS Dave Zieux mourned the death of the extraordinary chess champion Bobby Fischer. Now I am happy to come out here as a bit of a chess enthusiast (Essex juniors early1970s and an unlikely victory in 1975 over 4 times British Champion to be, Julian Hodgson). I admired Fischer’s talent on the chessboard as much as I detested his antisemitic conspiracy theories, but I noticed that he once asked the pertinent question: “Is it illegal to kill a reporter?”

I had an inkling of how Fischer felt the day after our injury-ridden squad had out thought, out-fought and deservedly dispatched Liverpool on a stupendous and wild Upton Park night.

Ex-president Lyndon B Johnson, once said: “If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: ‘President Can't Swim.’”

Well the other week West Ham were walking on the water, as surely as Trevor Brooking once did (well at least in the song he did), and Liverpool were sinking fast. At the end the Scousers were drowning but all the newspaper stories were about… Liverpool… how they were struggling…. how Benitez’s days were numbered… how even top players like Gerrard and Carragher were below their best…and hardly a word about who beat them, who made them look so ordinary, who snuffed out every threat and who capped a performance of total commitment and ultimately got the winner they deserved in the last seconds of injury time.

As a West Ham supporter you put up with a lot of disappointments, a lot of heartbreak on the field, and amateurish boardroom behaviour off it. You part with buckets of hard-earned dosh every year to see so many “almosts” and “maybes”. But every so often there are moments that tell you why you keep doing it. The moments when you know you are not just a masochist. You are a rational human being who is prepared to sink to the depths knowing that every so often there will be such brilliant highs.

Mark Noble stepped up to take that penalty in a cauldron of pressure. Reina guessed right and almost got it but the penalty was perfectly placed and he just couldn’t reach it. As it hit the net, Upton Park erupted. This wasn’t just another win against a big club, this was payback time for that cup final at Cardiff where we were mugged at the death. And we loved it!

The Liverpool bench probably cost nearly as much as our whole team but their team were beaten in the end by a penalty dispatched by a player who cost West Ham nothing – one of our own local boys who walks home after the game.

I have to admit feeling an extra joy in a Mystic Meg moment. The day before the game I sent an email to my mate Chris who was going to meet me there. It read: “Hi Chris, I'll be there probably nearer 7.30 than 7.20. See you tomorrow before we beat Liverpool 1-0. Dave”

But at West Ham you don’t get one emotion without a twinge of its opposite. I was gutted that I hadn’t got round to placing a correct score bet. William Hill, who I believe was a Liverpool lad himself, got off pretty lightly that night.

Everything that I had picked out as positive about our league performance at Citeh, in the last OLAS, was repeated against Liverpool. After a shaky start we got on top by playing excellent football on the ground with flair and without fear, winning every crucial challenge, and most importantly, with every player taking responsibility. Everyone wanted the ball and pushed forward once they got it. The running for each other, on and off the ball, was tremendous. In that first 45 minutes Mullins and Noble were outstanding. And Carlton Cole, deservedly benefiting from an extended run in the team at the expense of an increasingly surly Dean Ashton, was too hot for Liverpool to handle.

In the second half we began to tire and Liverpool had a good spell but having weathered the storm and with Greeny pulling off an amazing save with his plates, we made one last lunge forward, got the penalty and the rest is history.

Now I saw that, I found loads to write about, and there is much more I could have said, so why couldn’t the sports reporters have said something?

I like what Erwin Knoll

, an Austrian refugee to America, said about newspapers. He was the longtime editor of an American magazine called The Progressive and used that platform to expose government lies, especially in relation to foreign policy.

“Everything you read in newspapers,” he said, “is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge.” No doubt he would have agreed with the advice of the old-time comedian and radio broadcaster Goodman Ace who told people “keep reading between the lies.”

When West ham beat Liverpool there were 35,000 people with first-hand knowledge of what had happened and how it happened. Those people deserve better from the papers, and even more so, those who weren’t there. When we play crap , as we did quite predictably against Wigwam, write about it, scream it from the headlines if you like. But when we upset the applecart, when the underdog pulls off an unlikely victory, when all the odds are turned upside down, don’t ignore us, don’t patronize us, don’t treat us as second class citizens, but tell it like it is.

My friend Leon, who has been writing and performing songs for donkeys years, has a verse in one of his songs:

Whoever invented the Daily Mail/Ought to be cut down to size/Pulped and reduced to a nauseous juice/And dried out and flattened till ready for use/And covered with newsprint and lies/Because who’d do that to a tree…?

Well, when I came down to Earth again, I carried on in Mystic Meg mode, assuring all my friends that however brilliantly we played against Liverpool we were bound to slip up against a team of tiddlers, either Wigwam at the weekend or the Crossroads Motel lot the following one. So West Ham, and so utterly predictable. Mind you, there aren’t many times that Curbishley makes me laugh, but he came out with a gem after the Wigwam game which set me off just when I was crying into my beer. He was droning on about how he knew it would be decided by a goal from a set piece. (Is he Mystic Meg too?)

"It was so frustrating,” he said, “because when we see it again we have probably got our smallest player on one of their biggest players."

Now how would that have happened then? Did God make it happen? Who could have possibly made that tactical decision?

But whatever the result in Pieland, and whatever is lurking behind Deano’s bad attitude, I’m not going to let it stop me still grinning from ear to ear about what we did to Liverpool. I make that three home wins in a row in the league. Let’s make it four today, not that anyone will write about it though…