Do Not Sell My Personal Information
“You look terrible,” I’m told as I trudge up the stairs toward my locker at the start of the school day.
“Thanks,” I reply back dryly. My eyes are blood shot and sore, not to mention I have a bad headache. My closest friends would know why, but the others wouldn’t.
“Why?” I get asked while I try to remember the catalogued locker combination on my lock. With a final click of the lock, I yank it down and smile back, with a nod. “Oh, you were watching that soccer team.”
That originally happened on the warm morning of November 26th, 2003. Only about three and a half hours earlier I had successfully completed my one task of the evening (or is it morning?): stay awake all night to watch Arsenal attempt to win at the Giuseppe Meazza, in Milan, Italy against formidable opposition, Inter Milan.
What was I thinking? Honestly, even now, nearly twelve months on, I have no idea what I was thinking. Some people can’t fathom the idea of staying up all night just to watch eleven men run around a piece of grass trying to put a ball in a net against eleven other men, trying to do exactly the same as what the other lot are. This is passion, passion for sport, passion for the Arsenal Football Club – I have this passion.
To go back to where mine began, you’d have to look back to 1994. I was born in England, in a quaint little house in Hammersmith, London. My mother was born in Scotland, in 1950 – so she has seen it all football wise. Jinky Johnstone at Celtic, George Best at United, the great Liverpool teams of the 70s and 80s and Brian Clough steering dear old Nottingham Forest to a European Cup final or two. She’s an Edinburgh girl through and through, and still keeps a look out for Heart of Midlothian whenever she can.
Then there’s the old man. Shockingly enough, I am the son of a loyal and proud Tottenham Hotspur man. He grew up in Tottenham, used to be a season ticket holder at the ‘Lane’ and has always wanted a tattoo of that stupid bird they have on their emblem. He’s just too chicken to do it.
You have to be wondering, how could a Tottenham supporting father have an Arsenal supporting son? It’s rather simple really.
In 1992, my father obtained a job transfer from Heathrow Airport – he was working for British Airway’s as an Aircraft Maintenance Engineer at the time – to a company called National Jet, based in the small city of Adelaide, South Australia. Now, all I knew about Australia at the time was Crocodile Dundee so I assumed that everyone talked and acted the same way he did.
Having lived here for the last twelve years, I can safely say they don’t.
Before we (Mum, Dad, my two year old sister and my Grandparents – from Yorkshire and Edinburgh, respectively) moved to Australia, I was never into football. To be honest, I never understood it properly so I never bothered paying it the light of day.
But in April of 1993 (I think it was around), his beloved Tottenham had just been delivered a 4-1 home defeat by West Ham, a result which had them only sitting precariously above the relegation zone. Manchester City, Everton, Oldham Athletic, Sheffield United, Southampton and Swindon Town were all below Tottenham. As Dad sat in his chair mouthing “bollocks, they’re useless!” to the news report, I turned around from doing whatever I was doing and asked my Dad a question which would shape the rest of my life:
“Dad, which football team do you support?”
He smiled at me and I could tell this was one moment he had been waiting for, ever since the 30th of June, 1987. “Tottenham Hotspur, son,” he proudly told me.
“Who do they hate?” I asked back, for some ungodly reason interesting in the world of football.
“Arsenal,” Dad replied, almost spitting the name out. My reply wasn’t the one he had been hoping for. Instead of my reply of “I want to be a Tottenham fan too,” he received a heart breaking, “Cool, I’ll go for them!”
Dad was adament that I wasn’t serious, but on a holiday back to the ‘mother country’ in 1995 we went to London. He wanted to take me to White Hart Lane but the weekend we were in London Tottenham was away at The Dell, the old home of Southampton (Spurs lost that match 4-3). He had no choice to take me Highbury, to see Arsenal play Norwich City on April Fool’s Day. That was John Hartson’s debut, and we’d already put two or three passed the hapless Canaries in a few minutes.
I find that sort of fitting. April Fool’s Day, and a Tottenham supporting father takes his son to his first and so far only Arsenal match. Looks like I got you, hey, Dad?
Ever since that day I have been transfixed by Arsenal. It pained my father, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it. I was and still am a very stubborn person, and if my own child were to do the same thing as I did and support Manchester United, Chelsea or Liverpool, or one of those unimportant continental teams, I’d have no doubts about tormenting them.
Of course I’d respect their decision, but if they wished to watch a team other than Arsenal then they can pay for it themselves, and buy the merchandise themselves and can weep on their own if their team loses a Cup final.
Here we are, ten years on since my decision to support the mighty Gunners from North London, and nine years since I made the trek and back from London to Adelaide, Australia.
Following football in Australia is incredibly easy if you’re prepared to get up or stay up to ridiculous hours of the day (or should that be night?).
I demanded that my parents pay for Pay-TV and then another package which would allow me to watch the Champions League, on ESPN.
I’m glad my Dad was transferred to Australia rather than America or Canada, mainly because you could call Australia “Little Europe” – there are that many different European nationalities here. In my ‘group’ of my friends there are a few Brits, a Serb, a Pole, a Belarusian, an Irishman and a Ukrainian.
Discussing football at lunch breaks is more common than Aussie Rules amongst us Europeans.
Most of my friends understand my commitment and passion, for they are equally as loyal to Chelsea, Manchester United, Dynamo Kiev, Red Star Belgrade, or whoever. Although I haven’t been anywhere near my home country for ten years, you can’t doubt the passion of this seventeen year old Gooner, from Hammersmith.
At no matter what hour of the day, I will be supporting Arsenal, some ten thousand miles away just as tense, nervous and delirious as a forty something male sitting in his freezing seat in the East Stand.
