Highbury then was a grand old stadium with wooden fold-down seats, the Metropolitan Police Band marching round the pitch at half-time (the leader had a kind of mace that he would hurl into the dark winter sky and catch with an 'oooh' from the crowd, 20,000 sould willing him to drop it. yes, I said 20,000). I sat with my uncle in the Lower West stand, usually, though one time we were in the Upper West. We got there early: lunch was ham sandwiches from a box, tannin tea from a flask, and a long, long perusal of the matchday programme while we waited for the stadium to fill up. The image I hold in my memory from this match is Jimmy Rimmer standing around about the penalty spot, trying to keep warm, while the action took place up at the other end.
I was there on the opening home match in 1976, when Bristol City beat us 0-1. A lovely August afternoon. We left early to get the Picadilly line train from the Arsenal Underground station before the crush. The Arsenal station had long tunnels, divided down the middle by mesh, that wound up and down to the platforms. In later years, my friends and I always walked down to Finsbury Park station to avoid the crowds.
My uncle never took me to big or glamorous games, such as Liverpool or Manchester United, or London derbies. Threatened with slow, painful death by my dad if anything happened to me, Uncle Allan always took me to Burnley, or Bolton, or Bristol City. The last time he took me was to see Aston Villa, in the early 1980s. When we arrived back at my Nan and Jim's house in Laindon, the evening was suffused with a golden glow I remember much more than a game. (Rix did score a cracker, I remember.) We ran across the road, and I felt grown up.
We got the 400 bus that travelled along the A13 from Southend to Kings Cross, and ended in the underground coach station there that seemed, at the time, as alien and intimidating as a space station. A green Eastern National bus, the 400, more modern looking than the local Bristols with their concertina doors. It looked as though it was designed to go fast. We sat at the front of the top deck if we could.
In 1975, 1976, Arsenal were rubbish. They finished 17th in 1976; 17th! The player I remember most from that time was Terry Mancini, a bald, uncomplicated, cheery centre-half, who, as Nick Hornby once wrote, seemed to be bought for the next year's promotion campaign in Division 2. Pat Rice and George Armstrong were still there from the '71 double side, but otherwise it was a long way from the glory days of Ray Kennedy's headed winner at the Lane, or Charlie George's flat-on-your-back celebration of the Double winning goal at Wembley. Dog days, in fact.
I'm not a slave to footballing nostalgia. Arsene's Arsenal are so far beyond what the mid-70s team were capable of, even on their worst day, that you might as well call it a different sport. But my love for the Arsenal has been diminishing lately. In the 80s and 90s, the result on Saturday, if bad, was enough to cast a pall over the entire week. Monday morning's report in the paper would make me physically nauseous. Now, my heart sinks even when I watch. I take no pleasure in their scintillating football.
I've entered the endgame of giving up the Arsenal. I trained myself not to care so much. Now, perhaps, I don't want to care at all.
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