This Saturday marks the 31st anniversary of West Ham’s record victory, the 10-0 shellacking of Bury in a cup tie sponsored by the Milk Marketing Board but which couldn’t have been improved had it been created by Carlsberg.
October 25th, 1983 was also the occasion of my 10th birthday and, to celebrate, my dad took me and my school friend Richard to the game that night.The treat was twofold. First, there was the trip to the Boleyn itself and secondly there was the company.
Despite owning and running a rather successful sports shop situated amid the hustle and bustle of Leytonstone High Street, my dad wasn’t really into football. Snooker was more his thing and it’s not embellishing matters to say Monarch Sports was the premier outlet for those beloved of the baize in London’s East End during the ‘80s and ‘90s. Indeed, my old man still recalls with no small degree of pride the time he sold local lad Ronald O’Sullivan a starter table for his small boy Ronnie.
In my dad’s defence, market forces also meant he worked Saturdays and so wouldn’t have been able to take me to matches even if he’d wanted to – which, given this was the ‘80s, when there was often more intense action on the terraces than the pitch, he didn’t.
Most of my early experiences in E13 were actually in the company of the family of his friend Phil – a supplier of moon boots and supporter of West Bromwich Albion. So much so, in fact, that I thought for a while West Ham only ever played the Baggies. And invariably lost 1-0.
My dad also deserves credit for at least feigning an interest in football when it became clear this wasn’t a temporary fad like Rubik’s Cubes or BMX bikes. He made a deliberate decision to follow a different team to me in order to keep things interesting and, as he’d had some business dealings in Luton before, threw his lot in with the Hatters.
That decision backfired somewhat a few years later when their plastic pitch helped bring an end to our League Cup final aspirations. Still, I’m sure as a teenager I took the two-leg defeat with grace and humility…
Perhaps as a result of this I chose to take no such risks with my own children, bestowing upon my firstborn the middle name Moore – an act that might uncharitably be considered entrapment, but one that I considered to be a masterstroke of forward planning.
It was perhaps also an attempt to drag destiny into my son’s life as a West Ham supporter, in the same way that it had so unexpectedly entered mine on that cold October night.
As it happened, fate didn’t need my help. You might recall the calamitous start to the 2006/07 season when newly arrived Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano watched on in bemusement as the club staggered around with an FA Cup Final-sized hangover.
After a deceptive 3-1 win against Charlton on the opening day, West Ham spent the next eight game doing football’s equivalent of skiving off from work and instead slumping on the sofa with its head in its hands mumbling never again, drawing two and losing six – the last five of which came consecutively.
On the day my eldest entered the world West Ham beat Blackburn 2-1 – thanks to goals from Hayden Mullins and Teddy Sheringham, in case you were wondering. It wouldn’t prove enough to preserve Alan Pardew’s position as manager, but it did provide my son with his own mythological moment of Hammers history to help in those inevitable times when we supporters search our souls for answers as to why we support who we do.
In truth, every fan has their own unique connection with the club they love, the bond that keeps them coming back through thin and thin. But for both me and my son, supporting West Ham literally seems to be a birthright. It genuinely was written in our stars.
And when we put 41 goals past the champions on Saturday tea time, you now know who to thank.