There is an incredible geographical supporter mix on the WHTID site and with this in mind I thought I would revisit an article I wrote four years ago. We have regular bloggers that are season ticket holders but many of the rest are a mixed bunch and include people from all over the World. Even amongst our authors we have an American writing match reports, a German with a weekly column and of course myself writing nostalgia and a variety of other West Ham related topics from Australia. In 2013 Iain Dale had asked me to write an article to give a perspective of what it is like to be a Hammer living overseas and the following is an updated version.
My decision to emigrate from England to Australia in 1981 was the hardest in my life. To leave friends and family was hard to do but I knew that my opportunities in life would be greater if I made the move. The other heartache for me was discarding the fortnightly visit to my beloved Hammers. I had been supporting the club since the Moore, Hurst and Peters era, rarely missing home fixtures and often following them away from home as well. In the final two years of my life in England the Hammers had won the FA Cup final against Arsenal, made the League Cup final against Liverpool and had won promotion back to the top flight by winning the old second division. It was so hard to leave all this behind.
The first decade living in Australia was like living on a different planet football wise. Pay TV and the internet were a long way from their inception here and in fact the only chance to see English football was a half hour goal highlights show at 11.30pm on a Monday night. Australia was so far behind in the pre-communication World that even number one single tracks in the UK would only get into the charts here some 9 months later. In the first few years the only chance I had of following West Ham was the newspaper cuttings from the games that my mum would send me by post. These used to arrive about 3 weeks after the games but it was the best we could manage. Some years later the local TV station extended the football show to an hour, showing the highlights of one game and the goals from the rest of the division. However, the station was so biased to showing just one team that we renamed the program, “The Liverpool show”. Worse was to come though as the Hammers got relegated in the late eighties and again in the early nineties meaning that all TV coverage of West Ham disappeared. Back again to the wait for mum’s newspaper clippings.
From the mid eighties through to the mid nineties I had bought myself a short wave radio. At last I could tune into the BBC World Service as they gave a commentary of the second half of one game on a Saturday afternoon and also updated latest scores. That meant getting out of bed at 2am on a Sunday morning and trying to tune the radio station in, as the reception was at best fuzzy and more often very crackly! The constant need for retuning meant that you often got West Ham 1 Arsenal zszszszszsz. My wife was really doubting my sanity by now as I would climb back into bed at 4am, often only learning what the final score was for my nocturnal efforts. Then for a few years we had a 1300 phone number we could ring on any given morning for all overnight football results. It was pricey and you paid by the minute. It was a real rip off as you listened to minutes of drivel before they even started to give you any scores. It was unreliable too. I remember a Cup quarter final game in 1998 against Arsenal where they actually said we won the penalty shoot out when in fact we lost! For a few hours I thought we had made an FA Cup semi-final and I was already making enquiries about a quick return back home.
Finally in 1999 we had the introduction of Pay TV and at last PL games were shown on a regular basis, although watching all West Ham games was still not guaranteed. Only selected games were chosen for viewing but that was to change in the following years. Provided we paid for the Pay TV subscription we could watch any game we desired in the PL, just by pressing a select red button on the control. Unfortunately, last year Foxtel the Pay TV provider lost the Premier League contract to a telecommunications company and now Australians can only get the games streamed and in most areas the quality of picture is very inconsistent. It is a lot better than a short wave radio though! The 21st century also provides the internet where we can catch up with all the latest news and also blog on sites like these. Holidays back to the UK are always planned with the fixture list in mind and in recent years the trips back are even more special as meeting up with the ever growing WHTID “clique” makes match days even more enjoyable. Like the prolonged wait for Pay TV and internet, I am now waiting for the “beam me up Scotty” technology, that will mean getting to the Olympic Stadium and back before the missus gets out of bed on a Sunday morning.