40 years later and still waiting for the big trophy.
It must have been roughly 40 Easters ago - give or take a year or so. If memory serves me correctly it was a Good Friday morning at Upton Park. West Ham were at home to Birmingham City and from what I can remember there was little to play for. There was nothing at stake, both teams were probably languishing in old First Division mid table safety and the avuncular Jim Callaghan was desperately trying to hold it all together as British Prime Minister when the unions were doing their utmost to destabilise his leadership and kick him out of 10 Downing Street.
Now let's see. I can only imagine that the prolific and hugely talented forward Trevor Francis was deep into one of his last seasons at Birmingham and West Ham were just pottering around in the lower half of the Division One table treading water as they were to do for only one more season before the dreadful relegation trapdoor opened the following season. It was never easy for my emotionally draining Hammers and, after another season of struggle, hardship, Chinese water torture and sheer privation that Good Friday of 1977 seemed to perfectly crystallise the club's misfortunes.
I think I'd just started going to West Ham during that wobbly, deeply taxing season but the scars are still painful and raw. I've no idea what possessed me to go to Upton Park on that morning although I can only assume that I'd been a glutton for punishment for so long that maybe it seemed a good idea at the time.
The morning was bright and sunny if springtime breezy and I can still recall standing at West Ham's South Bank end in an almost philosophical mood. The vocal Upton Park crowd were at their wise-cracking, jovial best and there was nothing to suggest that either side were about to play like world beaters. Birmingham were never likely to trouble the top half of the table at any stage of any season but they were good and entertaining visitors so there was a holiday time atmosphere within the ground.
There was a kind of fatalistic mood among the West Ham faithful, an acceptance of an almost laughable mediocrity and then an almost moody resignation to the club's fate. West Ham had long recognised that perhaps the club would never win anything in any of their generation's lifetime. So we settled down to a pre- Easter battle of wits against our Brummie friends with few expectations and even fewer hopes. We knew what we were going to get. We had a premonition, a haunting premonition, almost a sixth sense that the game was up for West Ham as soon as the game had begun. It was truly weird but there was something about the players body language that told me everything I needed to know. It was devastating defeat or the most frighteningly boring 0-0 draw.
The game finished in a 2-2 draw and will never remembered by any football supporter. West Ham occasionally suggested something good but then faltered and fizzled out. The football was pure and, from time to time, almost mesmerising but then when the team reached their opponents 18 yard box it all seemed to crumble into an embarrassing pile of ashes. There was a poise on the ball but no penetrative punch or indeed any semblance of a lethal goal scoring finish.
It was all, quite literally, style but no substance at all. In fact it was all very concrete and laboured. And yet somehow this was to be expected. But you had to support the club because the quality of football was remarkably superior to the rest of the other teams in the old First Division. Or so you thought. And yet as soon as the visitors had arrived at Upton Park they knew that although West Ham may have been technically proficient they were almost totally exposed to the defensive fragilities that had so often bedevilled them.
I think Birmingham scored first and West Ham promptly equalised but it would never ever improve so a majority of the West Ham supporters launched into a low grumbling sound of disapproval every time a West Ham player lost possession. Of course their short passing was both very flashy and ostentatious but ultimately the ball was lost in vital areas and Birmingham regained the lead before the Hammers scored once again. It was all very typical, very West Ham, all very promising and auspicious but rather like the club's anthem the bubbles always flew but never seemed to get any further than that point.
You see that's the lot of any supporter when you know your team will rarely bring any long lasting joy, stunning success and regular excursions into big European competitions. At times my support of West Ham could rightly be compared to large passages of Nick Hornby's brilliantly perceptive book and film Fever Pitch. Hornby seemed to make all of the most pertinent observations about the whole nature of football fandom.
Throughout my teenage years at least there was the kind of gnashing of teeth and profound personal grief that so often accompanies any football supporter. Hornby was almost spot on with his witty summations and grievances about supporting a football club. At times you almost internalise that grief and blame yourself for the team's losing run, its pathological refusal to win and then you sulk for ages because you think it's your fault. At times you almost feel torn and traumatised because there can be nothing that you can personally do to change the score-line.
I think I've lost count of the number of times when hours before a game at West Ham's Upton Park a sense of fear and foreboding would send the most unpleasant shiver down my spine. Billy Bonds, that noble, whole- hearted, totally committed captain, had formed a tremendous centre back partnership with a clumsy and cumbersome Tommy Taylor. This was never Taylor's fault but whenever Taylor attempted to defend a cross, some of us could barely watch. Both though, had built the most impenetrable and forbidding of defensive walls at the heart of the West Ham defence. Then Taylor horrendously fumbled his defensive clearances and we all closed our eyes.
And yet my loyalty to the Hammers has frequently been tested if only because you never knew which team would turn up on the day of the match. Hornby made frequent references in Fever Pitch to his relationships, his girlfriends, the suffering he'd endured while following Arsenal, those tempestuous years of failure and near misses before Arsenal's ultimately triumphant old First Divsion title winning match at Anfield in 1989.
Hornby tells us at great length and in wonderfully lyrical detail about those lonely days of adolescence when he felt he'd done something terribly wrong. He discusses all of the hurt and rejection he'd felt was indirectly impacting on his life at home, at school, and his private life. In moments of self doubt and morbid introspection Hornby beats himself up because he simply can't understand why, because something was missing in his life his mood at home was having the most destructive effect on his Arsenal team.
Of course there's an element of truth about our natural feelings for the football team we almost inherited from birth. Every August we illustrate a kind of emotional map in our minds which takes us on the most gruelling of nine month journey. For the best part of Saturday and now Sunday and even more absurdly Monday, we take a deep breath and hope that come the following May that something miraculous might just happen. But it doesn't so you just bear and grin it all, longing for the season to end at this point and then hoping against hope that things might make the most modest of improvements for next season. Oh such sweet delusion. But then you never know.
Now I have to tell you as a West Ham follower of over 40 years the psychological torment, the soul searching and the gut wrenching anxieties visit us almost every August. We seem to begin the whole Premier League season from an almost default position. None of us can even remotely begin to fantasise about winning the Premier League because the reality is that the Hammers will never ever come close to winning anything let alone the Premier League. There is a gracious surrender to the worst case scenario and that worse case scenario becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
I don't think this is a reflection on the team itself but however much you prepare yourself during the summer you can only approach August with a sheer terror of what might happen again and again. There is a demoralising hollowness about West Ham at this time of the season. Without any shadow of a doubt it has been another wretchedly awful season for the club. In a sense it almost feels like normality has been restored after the wildly inflated standards set by the team last season. In a way last season's seventh place was another optical illusion designed to infuriate all West Ham supporters but then it wouldn't be a proper season without that compulsory nervousness and fear.
But here we are again dangerously close to the bottom half of the season once again. West Ham need only perhaps one point or another win to make absolute sure of Premier League survival. Once again I'm beginning to feel the same feeling of anti- climax that accompanied me out of the ground after that Good Friday 2-2 draw against Birmingham.
West Ham. I knew, could, on their day, sweep teams aside with some of the most decorative, flowing and fluent football in the country. They were the original stylists, a side of flair and flamboyance, a side of pretty embroideries and sparkling one touch football. When Trevor Brooking, Alan Devonshire, Pat Holland and Geoff Pike were in full flight, the goals would flow like claret and blue wine and when the club won the FA Cup in 1980 it almost felt too good to be true.
After today's 2-2 draw against a seemingly doomed Sunderland, West Ham now require only a win to hold onto their exalted Premier League status. I continue to listen to the team's fortunes on our radio with clenched hands and white knuckles. At times it seems an unbearably uncomfortable fairground ride but then you never know West Ham may well undergo a radical transformation next season and this season will seem like a temporary nightmare.
The first season at the London Stadium has been fraught with problems for West Ham and after seven defeats at the ground this season there may well be those who will be relieved to see the back of what seems like the most painful season of initiation at the new Olympic Stadium. But I have to be honest with you. I will puff out my cheeks, look at the bountiful bright blossom of summer and thank goodness that August and the new season is four months away. Oh West Ham, what a team. Those bubbles will always fly regardless of the direction.
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