Hello and how are you?
Saturday the 14th of December sees the Mighty Cannon once again in action, this time at 3.00pm (western European time) against Everton FC at our Ashburton Grove HQ.
Over the course of my life I’m not sure how much I can truly say I’ve learnt, as often responses and considerations can fall apart as we are presented with new challenges? One day we can watch, read, eat things that we like and feel really inspired and excited, and the next day we can try the same formula and it just won’t work? This can be really frustrating, why we can’t repeat sensations exactly as they were? I have no explanation as to why, although all things are in a state of flux, often we can’t see it perhaps as daily life gets in the way, then we look around and the whole landscape has changed. Places gone, people gone, new places, new people.
Back in 1984 I had a small soft spot for Everton, I liked their kit, their players, I liked the city of Liverpool (but hadn’t been there) but not for one second ever Liverpool FC, but Everton seemed different? Don’t worry, I don’t expect anyone else to have such traitorous and daft a soft spots for other clubs and fully expect to be sent to the stocks!
My mates Dad was a milkman ( both hardcore Arsenal fans)and got free tickets for the Milk Cup final in 1984, as the League Cup was called that year.
Although spring was close it was cold,rainy and grey and horrible, I’d been to Wembley many times before, and had experienced being gobbed on by oddballs from Doncaster who ‘supported’ England and felt the urge to share and drench their fellow fans in spittle, witnessed a few internationals including watching a smart 1981 Brazil team, and going on the Wembley Stadium tour, coming out of the tunnel and lifting up a cup up just like dear old Pat Rice did back in ’79. But this game was something else. Speak false memory.
At that point I’d never been to Liverpool, to a little kid it seemed a mysterious place with unusual accents and here we were in the Everton (tunnel) end surrounded by a sea of blue scousers. Of course now perhaps such matters are normal and everyday, but back in them thar days critters didn’t travel much. I can recall the Specials talking about getting in a van to go down to London from Coventry was a major event like going to the end of the world.It seems a old timey joke now?
Back at the game: this match was a very big deal for them, first all Liverpudlian final, first Sunday final ever, high levels of unemployment and discontent in their city, Thatcher hating them and getting revenge on them as much as possible because they stood up to her, and somehow often disliked by the rest of the country; yet this was their day out, not just for regular fans but whole families with many members wearing both blue and red. I think many thought it would happen ever again.
Everyone around us seemed utterly assholed like they’d poured out from a Dickensian Gin house and into Wembley. The atmosphere was electric and every time Everton made an attack the sloshed-out Evertonians would come to life waiting for the moment of ecstasy as they hoped the ball would hit the back of the net. It didn’t come. It carried on raining. In my mind, I can still see Neville Southall making a save, I was right behind him, slightly to the right as I looked and about a block up. It all seemed in slow motion.
About a year ago the highlights of the game finally went up and I searched to see if I could see the moment, it wasn’t there or didn’t happen. Speak false memory! I would swear I saw it. So where did that come from? Grobbelaar? Some sort of compensation for not much action that day?
Chris Ware/John Kuramoto/Ira Glass examine this phenomena in the short animation ‘this American life animation from season 2’ in an articulate and more interesting detail than I can. Its on YT if you have any interest.
Anyway I don’t have any other pictures preserved in my mind (our memoires are singular images not films) of the game until after extra time the whistle had gone and both teams did a lap of honour, with the whole stadium, and I mean whole stadium united in a chorus of “Merseyside, Merseyside, Merseyside”, which made the hairs on your neck stand up. It was a remarkable moment in my footballing history.
As we shuffled back to the car I saw this kid talking to his Dad, now this kid wasn’t a scouser, but supported Everton and was explaining to his Dad that London clubs could never create such an atmosphere. Man, I got really irked by this and to this day don’t agree, as anyone whose been to a NLD knows.
At school on Monday we talked about the game with our mates and what is was like and recalled some of the songs we had heard, it was all a five minute wonder in the class room.
Everton lost the replay.Yet we still kept an eye out on that team for a while until like all sides they were eventually broken up. I saw both sides again (who got the tickets and why we even went I’m not sure) in the Charity shield at the beginning of the next season, this time down the bloody Liverpool end which wasn’t nearly as interesting and apart from the lap of honour, I have no memories of the game, which probably says it all?
Now? I have no relationship with Everton at all, I don’t like Goodison (old Archie Leitch again!) much anymore, although watching the drone footage of them building the new stadium has been interesting, if that’s yer kind of thing. How can this be? Affections fade? What was Everton in 1984 isn’t at all now, except in name? One day this works and the next day that? To sustain any kind of relationship needs small and attentive loving care? Zen and the art of football maintenance?
The Arsenal stayed always front and centre with me though, even in the barren, unhappy years before Mr Graham started the Arsenal revival.Is it still possible these days to have experiences that are bigger than us, that are really exciting, that stay with you throughout your life? A trip to Mars? It wasn’t Arsenal but it was a memorable, unrepeatable day- out.
Arsenal have a 77.8% chance of winning according to stat HQ and Everton only 7.2%. Arsenal proved last time out against Monaco that we can score in open play and also proved we can miss some sitters. But maybe if youre feeling more confident its easier to feel hungry and able to score and less susceptible to over thinking things? Everton are in 15th place.
I don’t expect us to lose this one, but a draw would be also another damaging result, so come on you Gunners!
Well that’s it, lots of bits and pieces that I’m sure have made you feel like going off and watching Ghost Theory on You Tube rather than reading this.
Even so, here’s to a great game for us and lucky horses!
COYG and keep on keepin’ on!
Mills