I guarantee that the next time you meet someone and find out they are also a West Ham fan, you will apply some sort of test in your head to work out whether they are an actual fan and whether or not you should respect their level of West Ham fandom. I absolutely guarantee. You can’t help it. I do it all the time. Never had a season ticket? Not a true fan. Can’t name the 1980 winning cup final side? Not a true fan. Don’t have an opinion on Big Sam’s defensive buys in the last window? Not a true fan. Whatever criteria you use, both you and I need to remember that there are plenty of ways to love this club of ours. None of them wrong per se.
We’ve all got a West Ham fan criteria. That set of rules that we use to decide if someone is one of us. It can be part of a conversation with someone new, when they mention something only a true member of our club could know. It can be something visual, seeing a tattoo for example, some crossed hammers or something considerably less subtle. It can be going to someone’s house for the first time and seeing their framed collection of ticket stubs from the 70s and 80s. And yes that last one is a true story that happened to a friend of mine. She ended up marrying him.
Proving you’re a real West Ham fan all starts in primary school, or at least it did for me. Kids proudly displayed their new kits at PE and swapped stories of weekend trips to Upton Park at playtime. Then it was the sticker books. You were only really considered to be a true fan if you had all the West Ham players, the team shot and the shinys. Filling up the rest of the book was important but you had to get every one of our boys first before you were allowed to care about the other teams. I definitely have photos from this time with other little girls in claret and blue so I know I wasn’t the only one joining in.
As you get older, the boundaries change and people earn their West Ham stripes in a number of different ways. For some people it was the statistics, numbers and records. There was a kid in the year below me at senior school who could just spout it out like some robot Superfan. I think he spent every Sunday reading the sports sections of every paper and had some weird photographic memory. His predictions for the weekend were based on previous performance, probability and percentages. Needless to say he didn’t have a girlfriend until long into university.
There were other mates I had who used to hang around the training ground in Chadwell Heath with their disposable cameras and autograph books (I wonder how many kids nowadays have autograph books?!). They used to get the bus up there and back after their mums had dropped them off at school. Being able to recount your entire conversation with Stevie Potts was a definite game changer when it came to respect from your peers.
For other people it was about away games – how many you go to, how far you have to travel and what shenanigans you get up to on the trips. Even just going to another London ground for a local derby earned significant brownie points. I heard stories about hiring limos to go to Cardiff, new trainers for trips above Watford and being too drunk to get into St. James Park. Suddenly around the age of 12 and a half, being a West Ham fan takes on a whole new level of meaning, with more commitment and more energy. You start believing that you really will follow this team over land and sea and people who don’t fail the test. They just don’t make the cut as a true fan.
I remember reading an article by Russell Brand in the Guardian about being cornered in the Gents in the Dr Martens stand, and being made to prove his West Ham credentials by singing a song. “I opted not for the obvious “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” because that wouldn’t have been sufficient testimony to my commitment. I steeled myself, flung my arms skyward and retreated into the accent of my childhood. Going at least three octaves lower than my natural speaking voice I bellowed: “We all follow the West Ham over land and sea …” When I talked about the article with my Dad, there was a begrudging respect for the ridiculous-haired Dandy. With his choice of song Brand had shown that he understood the criteria and went up in our estimation because of it.
Since leaving East London I’ve met West Ham fans born in Honolulu, Christchurch, Barcelona and dozens of cities in between, all of whom have never had the chance to watch a game at Upton Park. I don’t think this affects their status as true fans but it does entirely demolish my criteria. If being an adult and meeting West Ham fans from all over the world has taught me anything, it’s that it’s ok not to have had a Bobby Moore lunchbox and still be a Hammer. If you don’t know all the verse to OLAS however, well that might be another story…