In case you had other things on your mind last Thursday and missed the earth-shattering announcement from Upton Park, I am going to enlighten you now. West Ham United are looking to bring out an updated version of Monopoly to commemorate our final season at the Boleyn Ground and are looking for ideas about what to include. Honestly. You could make this stuff up but, in this instance, I haven’t.
Given that Monopoly is based on the concept of acquiring property, I’m not entirely convinced this is quite the right game for us. We, of course, are divesting ourselves of bricks and mortar by selling the Boleyn Ground and renting instead. It’s been some years since the Williams family sat around that iconic board and squabbled over who should be the Top Hat and who would get the Boot, but if I remember correctly you can’t decide to knock down your hotel on the Old Kent Road and lease a luxury apartment on Mayfair instead.
There are some unlikely scenarios in Monopoly (I have never won a tenner by coming second in a beauty contest, for example) but renting rather than buying isn’t within the rules.
Apparently West Ham did produce its own version of Monopoly a few years ago, but I never felt the need to add it to the pile of unplayed board games in my loft. There was also a West Ham Cluedo. Rather than solving a murder as in the traditional game, the E13 mystery was: “Who stole the silverware and where have they hidden it?” I like to think this was someone’s idea of a joke, although marketing folk are not generally renowned for their sense of humour. Mind you, whoever decided this should retail at £29.99 in the club shop was clearly having a giraffe.
Well done to the commercial team, though, for avoiding the temptation to put a picture of Avram Grant on the front of the box and calling it Clueless.
I think the club should shelve the Monopoly idea and go for something more appropriate. Snakes and ladders seems an obvious choice, although supporters who travel to away games regularly may nominate Pointless. There was a time when Risk might have got a look in, but I realise those days are long gone and people like me just have to get over ourselves.
My suggestion for the game to mark our final season at Upton Park is Subbuteo, which is long overdue a serious revival.
My first set came with the two-dimensional players that collectors now refer to as “flats”. The kits were red and blue, with white shorts. For no good reason, I generally liked using the blue players. The trouble was, every game felt as if I was controlling an anorexic Everton taking on an equally under-nourished Charlton Athletic.
In 1967 – the year I first saw West Ham play in the flesh – Subbuteo introduced its so-called heavyweight figures, which were three-dimensional and came in different club colours. It was as if a prayer had been answered, and my subsequent letter to Santa in early December could not have been clearer. Unfortunately for me, it must have got lost in the post, because rather than getting my beloved Hammers on the 25th I ended up with Juventus. I think that was when I finally lost all faith in Father Christmas and his stunted workforce.
I begged my parents to help me put right this terrible wrong, but they seemed strangely unwilling to get involved. So I nicked my elder brother’s paints that he used on his pointless plastic Airfix aeroplanes and turned The Old Lady of Turin claret and blue. Well, claret-ish. It was more pillar box red to be honest, but it was certainly better than black and white stripes.
Encouraged by my success, I tried painting our plastic Homepride flour-grader in West Ham colours, too (don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Fred, the little man in a black suit with the bowler hat that unscrewed – what do they teach in schools these days?) but it didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped. My mum thought I’d done it as some form of protest about not getting the Subbuteo side I’d asked for, and my pocket money was withheld for several weeks as a result.
However, it takes more than that to discourage a true West Ham supporter and, once my income was restored, I saved hard to buy the team I loved. (There was no such thing as a leveraged buy-out in those days; you handed over your own money or there was no sale.) For the next five years, during my time at secondary school, I never looked back. If there was a Subbuteo game going, I’d be up for it. And – always playing as WHUFC – I won more than I lost (which is more than can be said for the full-sized WHUFC over the same period).
I had a particularly good home record, which probably had something to do with the fact I played on a top quality surface. The original idea, when Subbuteo was first sold in 1947, was for players to chalk out a pitch on an old army blanket – but my old man was having none of that. During the war he had been in the RAF, and he didn’t like the army or their blankets. So he bought a rather nice piece of green baize and persuaded my mum to get busy with her Singer sewing machine. The result was a beautifully embroidered pitch with permanent cotton lines that cried out for a passing game. (We’re West Ham United – we play on the floor.) Few opponents could live with it.
Those of you who recall how quickly the goalmouths at Upton Park became duckponds in the late sixties and early seventies will note that what I was playing on was somewhat different from the real thing. Still, there’s nothing wrong with striving for perfection.
Unlike many West Ham players, I probably retired too early. But, you know what it’s like when you’re coming to terms with puberty – there are so many other things a healthy lad wants to do with his index finger. I’m now ready to make a comeback, though.
If the club really wants to offer a game that is worthy of our forthcoming historic season it could do a deal with Subbuteo to produce a replica of the Boleyn Ground and the choice of teams in colours representing our 112 years there. Supporters would then buy a side wearing their preferred strip and challenge fellow fans to a game. Maybe the Miller’s Well could be persuaded to host matches on Saturday evenings.
I’d go for the classic Sixties look, but there are plenty of wonderful kits to choose from. The Avco shirt worn by the Boys of ’86; the ’76 Cup Winners’ Cup jersey; maybe even the Dagenham Motors “V” of the early ’90s. We could even stretch a point and include away strips to avoid colour clashes.
So, what’s your favourite shirt? And who fancies a game? West Ham may never be top of the table again any time soon, but that doesn’t mean there’s no place for tabletop football. It’s got to be more fun than Monopoly.
PS: I’ll be signing copies of Nearly Reach The Sky – A Farewell to Upton Park at the Newham Bookshop in the Barking Road from 1pm on Saturday. Do drop by and say hello. You can see for yourself why I’m still aggrieved that I never made the podium in a beauty contest…