Midweek Fixtures

Apart from the joys(?) of scuffling in the Fizzypop cup, midweek games are reserved for those glamorous European fixtures that West Ham haven't had since the long-ago glory days (if you omit the single tie against the pink-shirted Palermo which we lost with both Mascherano and Tevez in the side a few years ago).

So occasionally I am seduced by a Young Boys of Berne or aim for a Zenit on my front-room settee.

The Controller is banished to the back-room after the second most redundant question: "Is there football on?"  (the first most redundant question being, of course, "Will that be the full English breakfast, sir?") With dispassion and no hope or despair for the outcome, I can take an aesthetic pleasure in a match, rather than partisan joy or vitriol. 

But it's not the same.  Football demands grand passion, and you only get that when you're committed to the outcome for one team.  The players for my team can be heroes for all time in my recollection.  As well as Moore, Hurst and the other one who went to outer darkness at Shite Hart Lane, there are earlier loves.  Phil Woosnam was my Physics teacher in my first year at Grammar School before he became a full-time pro with West Ham.  Later Brooking and Devonshire were utter delight (and I've forgotten how many people thought Sir Trev lazy.  They're probably now having a go at Carlton).

And there were plenty of late career cameos such as Liam Brady to prompt thoughts of 'what if?'

Players could also be eternal, damned villains, even if (especially if?) they played for us.  No-one can hold a candle to Paul Ince, of course, but Fat Frank and Jermain Defoe come close.  Defoe was the focus of one of the most pithy, abusive chants I've ever heard that has since been repeated for other players but somehow not as tellingly as the first time I heard it from 20,000 plus voices: Jermain Defoe, he's a c**t (the asterisks were not in the original).  And some pension plans stick in the mind.  The non-scoring John Radford, Ian Wank-wank-wank?

Then there the ones you could not believe how they came to be with us.  Titi Camara?  Marco Boogers?  Gary Charles?  (All 'Appy 'Arry purchases by the way - no doubt bought to fuel his fund of loveable cockney boy stories; or his off-shore bank accounts  By the way, brief digression - there's a loving profile in The Independent of 'Arry at a charidee do for poor unfortunate youngsters .  Big-hearted and generous.  Perhaps if he and others paid their taxes, the poor unforutnates wouldn't need charidee because the state could afford to provide.  End of digression).

The ones we all love most are the ones who come up through the youth team and become outstanding footballers who are never ever anything else other than West Ham through and through, even if they go away to spend the twilight of their careers with other, less exalted teams.  Failing that we'll make do with those who come to us from elsewhere but who have the passion and commitment to make us believe that they care as much as we do.  It's why we loved Julian Dicks, Paolo Di Canio and now Super Scott (it also helped that the first of those two appeared, on plentiful occasions, to be certifably bonkers).

And I don't feel that way about other teams' players, even if they used to play for us.  Glen Johnson or Joe Cole don't make me feel for Liverpool. Rio, Michael Carrick can't make me hate Man U any less.  Fat Frank - uurrgghhhh.  I love Carlos to bits but not his team.  Jermain - well he's another reason to hope Spurs lose.

And there weren't any West Ham players in the Arsenal team (although great white hope and young offender Wilshere is a West Ham fan), but I took pleasure in their humbling by Barcelona.  They've done it to us enough times, I'm glad they recognsie what it's like.

And now I must go and practise my "Meeeelan" chants.  As The Controller points out, football brings out my nasty side.  But it's all synthetic, not deeply felt, because I don't really care.  But on Sunday, it'll be cranked up to 11 again.