Guest Post by Mike Ireson
It clung to me like a drunken bridesmaid during the five to midnight slow dance.
No I’m not about to embark on a Southend beano story, this is my best description of what was one of the best presents I ever received. It was my first West Ham shirt.
I shall instantly give away my vintage when I tell you it was the iconic Adidas shirt debuted in the 1976 European Cup Winners Cup final and worn until the end of the 1979-80 season. The one with claret ‘V’ on the chest with 4 claret stripes in the same ‘V’ shape.
It was the shirt we should have worn in the 1980 cup final. I wanted it to be. It was my shirt. I digress.
I got mine for a birthday or Christmas present sometime around 1979. I would have been about 10. The elation of getting my own kit was out of this world. I don’t think I took the strip off for a fortnight. Day or night.
Kids today, yes I know I sound old, don’t understand that preciousness. Now when the newest Trevor, Billy, Geoff or Bobby is born they are showered with claret and blue from the time their little mouths utter their first cry.
The uberstore supplies them with bibs, baby grows, dummies, blankets, I could go on and on. And kits? 6 months and up. Little Alvin will have gone through 3 different kits by the time they are 5 and have any idea what it all means.
They won’t remember their first kit. They’ll have grown out of it before they can walk.
Not me. I remember that first kit like it was a suit of gold. The club store at that time was not mega. It wasn’t even a shop. It was a porta cabin outside the West Stand. The most exotic thing you could buy was an enamel badge. If you wanted anything beyond that, old programmes or a scarf you were out of luck.
Most items you were given as a child that were club related would come from the market. Intellectual property back then was a house a professor lived in. The markets thrived on dodgy claret and blue gear, but if it said ‘West Ham’ on it and had something resembling the club badge you loved it.
The first front door key I was entrusted with was attached to a Romford market special key ring. The leatherette backing has long since disintegrated but the metal and enamel fob, battered, bruised and chipped still hangs from my front door keys and has done on every set for the last 35 years or so.
Back to the shirt. I’d like to tell you what sort of material it was made out of. I can’t because I’m pretty sure that type of material was not of this world. It was the most unforgiving, absorbent, non-stretching, itchy and clingy garment you can imagine.
I remember wearing it for P.E at school. Running proudly round the fields like I was Alan Devonshire. I glided. I floated.
Then it started to rain. As the shirt absorbed what seemed like every drop of rain that fell, it contorted around me. Some weird science fiction body suit. Like a boa constrictor squeezing the life from a deer.
On returning to the changing rooms I discovered I couldn’t get it off. So tight had it woven itself to me. It took two of my friends to help wrestle it over my head.
From then on I was always careful to choose when I wore it. A rainy day would see it consigned to the drawer. Buy a replica shirt now and it is a technological masterpiece of breathing, aerodynamic design. My first shirt? More a wearable barbed wire fence.
But you know what? I adored that shirt. Loved it. Was so proud of it. I miss it. Alas an overzealous mother gave it to a jumble sale when I first left home. “Well it doesn’t fit you any more”. I’d do anything to have it back.
It may have clung to me like the drunken bridesmaid but it will forever be special to me.