Brian Williams - Home From Home: A West Ham Supporters Struggle to Reach the Next Level

London Stadium

Sunday 7 August 2016

Kick-off: 1.00

Final score: West Ham 23 Juventus

Y OU DONT GET many clubs bigger than Juventus, yet here they were at West Hams new home in Stratford. What had started life as the Olympic Stadium had become the London Stadium, and the club I have supported all my life were now its tenants. The showpiece game I was about to witness heralded the move. It was a historic day for my beloved Hammers, but I wasnt happy. Not happy at all.

Before you say anything, let me be the first to admit that relocating from one football stadium to another is not the most serious crisis facing humankind in these worrying times. But it was something that had been troubling me from the moment the plan was first hatched.

It had to be done, we were told repeatedly. Our previous home the Boleyn Ground to the faithful and Upton Park to the rest of the world was no longer fit for purpose and if West Ham wanted to progress we simply could not pass up the gold-plated opportunity that had landed on our doorstep. (For those supporters of other clubs who are still confused about the Boleyn Ground/Upton Park thing, the stadium was officially the Boleyn Ground and Upton Park is the geographical area in which it was situated but dont worry, either will do fine.)

According to the clubs owners, moving was the only way to attain footballs equivalent of nirvana the fabled next level. So had West Ham really gone up in the world? I most certainly had. Rather than sitting in row K, as I had done at the Boleyn Ground, I was now in row seventy-three aka the back row. Not only was it higher up, it was also a lot further back. I only had myself to blame, I suppose.

We, the Williams family, had dithered about renewing our season tickets. Normally, supporters who wish to put themselves through another period of agony the following year renew towards the end of a season. What West Ham wanted us to do prior to the move to Stratford was to sign up for our tickets even before the final season at the Boleyn Ground had begun. To be honest, I thought that was a bit previous.

I suppose, looking back, we were always going to go. We should have just bitten the bullet and got on with it.

I am not a cockney by birth, but I have been going to watch football in London E13 since I was a kid. My wife, Di, is a true East Ender, having been brought up a five-minute walk away from the ground in East Ham. We, along with our son Geoff, were and still are season ticket holders. Geoff was perfectly sanguine about the move. However, Di and I, who between us had more than 100 years invested in the Boleyn Ground, were most displeased about leaving a stadium that held so many wonderful memories (and not-so-wonderful ones as well, if Im going to be brutally honest).

It wasnt just the football itself. We were also being asked to leave behind all the rituals that go with it. A pre-match pint in a proper East End pub, a hotdog outside the ground, an occasional trip to the wonderful Newham Bookshop. Newham is a residential area, with all the amenities that go with it. The same cannot be said of the Olympic Park, which surrounds our new stadium. No pubs, no chippies and certainly no mobile phone shops like the one in the Barking Road we regularly walked past that proudly announced it also sold baby chickens. All of this was to be replaced by corporate catering within the stadium, and not a baby chicken to be had for love nor money.

However, after much soul-searching (the full extent of which I wont bore you with here), we decided we would not be robbed of the dubious pleasure of watching our football team by owners who will be gone long before we are. Like most West Ham supporters, we do not know the meaning of the word defeat (there are lots of other words we dont know the meaning of either, but then we all went to comprehensive schools).

We bought our season tickets for the new stadium on Blue Monday the day in mid-January that is said to be the most depressing of the year due to a combination of miserable winter weather and Christmas credit card bills coming home to roost. This is not to be confused with claret and blue Mondays, which crop up regularly during the season and basically involve beating yourself up over West Hams failure to win at the weekend. When I was in my teens this would generally involve a Sunday in denial followed by an entire Monday of silent sulking, although Im much better now. As a man of some maturity, who has qualified for a senior railcard, I only need the Monday morning to get over the disappointment of defeat and rarely snarl at anyone after lunch.

The grandly named West Ham Reservation Centre, the Mecca for anyone wishing to purchase a ticket for the initial season at our new home, was in the Westfield shopping centre. Do not be fooled by Westfield. It may look like a concrete temple built to honour the God of Shopping (the nations one true god), but it is in fact a spiritual black hole which is gradually sucking every shred of goodness from the universe having started its feeding frenzy with the soul of my football club.

The Reservation Centre was a glass-fronted unit (aka shop) that was harder to find than either Di or I expected. Sitting behind the reception desk, perhaps unsurprisingly, was a receptionist. Above her was West Hams new crest redesigned without the castle that represented the ties with the old ground, and with the addition of the word London, presumably in case all the new supporters forget where they are.

Well, the club was keen to call them supporters. I beg to differ. Let me quote you these few words from the clubs vice-chair Karren Brady, and perhaps then you will understand my disquiet.

We are ambitious for our great club and aim to set the benchmark for visiting away and neutral supporters from across the globe to come and enjoy the iconic stadium and be part of our Premier League club experience.

What the hell is a neutral supporter? The whole point of going to a football match, as I understand it, is to put your heart and soul into supporting one side or the other. I do not want to find myself rubbing shoulders with someone who is ambivalent about the outcome of the game and is indeed more interested in taking a selfie outside the stadium beforehand. These people are football tourists and belong at grounds such as Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge, rather than at a proper club like West Ham.