Guest Post by Russ
I’m not one for writing articles, preferring to read and comment on the works of others better at it than me. However, having watched and been quite moved by the BT Sport Farewell To Upton Park video I thought I would share with you the comments made to me about the experience of coming to the Boleyn by my friend who is a lifelong Liverpool fan and had his first visit to our stadium on Saturday.
Like most of you I’m sure, I have several friends that support other clubs and are either season ticket holders or regular visitors to those grounds, none of them attend away games, except this guy. He regularly goes to Liverpool home games and has watched them away at City, Man U, Arsenal, Chelsea and Spurs. He likes the big matches against the top teams and has never really considered us in that league. However, he saw us beat Liverpool 3-0 earlier in the season and was really impressed, immediately asking me if I could get him a ticket for the return game on Saturday, especially because it would be our last game against Liverpool at the Boleyn.
He’s of a similar age to me and a bit of a traditionalist at heart so I was wondering how the experience would compare to what he’s used too, he wanted to get to the ground really early and take everything in so that’s what we did.
Here goes…
I drove to the game as always and we arrived around 10.15 and in plenty of time. The pubs weren’t open yet so we wandered down and circled the ground before going round to the club store. He loved the feel of it as soon as we got out of the car and walked the local streets, fans were already starting to gather and as we entered Green Street he said he could already feel the buzz. He loved the smell of the burgers and ribs and the program and Over Land and Sea sellers could be heard along the road.
We picked up a burger and wandered down to the stadium and stood outside the store exit next to the car park steps to take it all in. We stood there for five minutes and David Sullivan turned up, walking from his car he bade us good morning. My mate couldn’t believe it, one of the owners actually spoke to us!! He was most impressed, apparently it would just never happen at any of the big clubs and certainly not Liverpool. We wandered into the Club Store which was bigger than he expected and had a much larger range of clothing (non football kit). As we came out of the shop back to the bottom of the car park steps David Gold wandered over from his car, he asked how we were and hoped we would have a good day. By this time he was shaking his head in disbelief and then to top it all Trevor Brooking arrived (in my mates eyes the best West Ham player of all time), and he also came over and spoke to us, shook hands and had a selfie as he passed. At this point I know its starting to sound like a Forrest Gump story and its never happened to me before, however the timing was great and my mate was almost speechless.
He was taking pictures of everything, the architecture of the buildings, the view down Green Street with the growing numbers of fans and of course we had to visit the statue (not to fight). Into the Boleyn Pub for a couple a pints he was delighted at the friendly, easy atmosphere, he chatted to a couple of fans standing next to us telling them who he had met (didn’t tell them he was red scouse).
So, into the stadium for the match, I couldn’t get him a ticket in the East Stand with me so he was on his own in the Bobby Moore Upper. He had a great view and loved the tightness of the ground. He had obviously heard Bubbles watching games on the TV but thought it was unbelievable to hear it ring around the ground live and he was staggered by the reception for Payet, said he had never witnessed anything like that in all the years he had been going to games. Seems he chatted to the people in the seats next to him and was very impressed with the friendliness and openness of the people he met.
In a nutshell, he absolutely loved it, in his words, the best match day experience he has had in 20 years. He didn’t stop talking about it the whole way home, the fact they lost was almost irrelevant, he thought we deserved to win but he viewed it over the whole day and not just the 90 minutes of football and it was totally memorable.
At the end of the day I felt really proud, of the club, the team, the fans, the owners everything about us. We can all get excited about becoming a big club and everything that includes, but don’t disregard the quality of what we have and who we are now. I think it’s a good lesson to us all not to take what we have for granted, to understand the uniqueness of it and cherish every opportunity we have to take it in before its gone forever, I know I will.