Pete May - Goodbye to Boleyn: West Hams Final Season at Upton Park and the Big Kick-off at Stratford

THIS ISNT A BOOK ABOUT THE ECONOMICS OF STADIUM moves. Instead, what it hopefully captures is a sense of what it was like to be a fan at the Boleyn Ground for that final season and also at the first games at the sparkling new Olympic Stadium. Some chapters look back at my memories of attending games since the 1970s, while in the diary sections on 201516 Ive tried to acknowledge the seasonal rhythms of the football fan, the minutiae of football trivia, the banter, the lucky shirts, the cafs and pubs, the chants, and the unforgettable atmosphere of the final home game against Manchester United.

For West Ham fans, the Boleyn Ground was the only home they had ever known. When West Ham first bid in 2012 to move from the Boleyn to the Olympic Stadium in Stratford, it all seemed aeons away. The fans continued to visit Kens Caf, the Boleyn pub, the Central, the Ercan chip shop and myriad other pre- and post-match institutions.

Suddenly, however, it was the final season at the Boleyn, and the thirteen months from July 2015 to August 2016 saw massive changes as the Hammers swapped the tight, working-class streets of E13 for the shopping centre of Westfield and the concrete expanses of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

The club moved from the Memorial Grounds to the Boleyn Ground in 1904, the stadium taking its name from Green Street House, known as the Boleyn Castle because of its associations with Anne Boleyn, an early WAG of Henry VIII (a relationship that, like many a West Ham game, didnt end happily).

The ground became a central part of its community. Moore, Hurst and Peters had won the World Cup for England while at the Boleyn. Parades past the Boleyn pub marked the FA Cup wins of 1964, 1975 and 1980 and the European Cup Winners Cup win of 1965.

Most West Ham fans could see the commercial logic of moving to a bigger home, but for the traditionalists there was also the fear that in the cash-dominated era of the Premier League another link to the roots of football was being lost. Pubs, cafs and stalls would go out of business and wed no longer be close enough to the pitch for the players to hear our expletives. Would the new stadium ever be able to replicate the intimidating but intimate atmosphere of Upton Park? Football fans are by nature conservative, attached to routines. Relegation we can cope with; change is a little harder.

It would have been difficult for any owners to have turned down the Olympic Stadium, despite the fact that it was designed for athletics and not football. By the time the new roof had been built and retractable seating installed it had cost an estimated 701 million. West Ham would end up getting it for around 15 million, plus a 40 million loan from Newham Council and as a bonus greatly annoy Spurs, who had made a controversial late bid to move to Stratford.

Owners David Gold and David Sullivan had bought a club with massive debts in 2010 but now saw not just a bargain but an opportunity to rise to the fabled next level. West Ham could nearly double its capacity, from 35,000 to 60,000. With all that extra income, world-class players would be attracted. The new stadium was also much more accessible, having many more train and tube links than Upton Park, which is isolated on the District Line, and was still in the borough of Newham, just a couple of miles from the Boleyn.

Karren Brady, West Hams vice-chairman, negotiated hard, knowing the London Legacy Development Corporation were desperate not to be left with a rusting white elephant of a stadium. The club would have a 100-year lease and the rent would be a reasonable 2.5 million a year (and its halved if West Ham are relegated, which as an Irons fan you always have to consider a possibility). And we get free goalposts and corner flags.

Yet, for all the apparent benefits, leaving home still hurts. West Ham played at the Boleyn Ground for 112 years. Soon it will be a housing estate. Nevertheless, the club endures, and at a new stadium perhaps our dreams will nearly reach the sky. We might have said goodbye to Boleyn, but we wont forget.

P ETE M AY

London, September 2016