Only the most churlish football fan – and there is a lot of them around these days – would deny West Ham supporters their moment in the sun after last night’s impressive triumph in the bizarrely named Europa Conference League, their first trophy for 43 years.
As a Spurs fan growing up in in the West Ham stronghold of Ilford, and having attended the same secondary school as Trevor Brooking, former Hammers manager John Lyall and the infant school that later produced Paul Ince, it was hard to avoid the Claret and Blue hordes.
For a while in the 60s, when both clubs were at their peak, Bobby Moore lived nearby, in the same road as Terry Venables as it happens. As kids, we would bump into him in Gants Hill.
This was a period when West Ham won the FA Cup, the European Cup Winners Cup and, yawn, the World Cup. It even persuaded my younger brother to support them despite coming from a diehard Spurs family.
Last night was West Ham’s cup final and they won it, an achievement Spurs have not been able to boast about for nigh on two decades
At school, a majority of the boys were West Ham supporters. It was hard to escape and, if truth be told, a lot of us developed a soft spot for the Upton Park mob who played attractive, free flowing football and developed teams packed with homegrown talent. It was a ‘proper’ local team for the East End where most of our families had moved from.
They also had a remarkable record of holding on to managers with just five of them over a period of around 80 years of the last century.
Of course in the heady, violent days of the 70s and 80s there was the occasional friction between the two sets of fans at games. Straying into the Chicken Run and North Bank at the Boleyn Ground, the West Ham ground before they moved to the soulless Olympic stadium, was a bit like going to Compton wearing the wrong gang colours.
But away from that, and when supporters largely came from areas close to the clubs they followed, every Spurs fan had friends – even siblings or parents – who supported West Ham (and even Arsenal) and vice versa.
It was uplifting to see West Ham beat Arsenal in the FA Cup final of 1980, with a goal by ex-Ilford County boy Trevor Brooking, while Spurs fans could then celebrate winning the trophy in the following two years. Happy days.
Recent years have seen a largely manufactured rivalry between the two clubs that has led to the taunt from North London that matches between us are ‘your cup final’, on the basis that while Spurs were competing for higher things, these games were the most important in any season for West Ham.
Not any longer. Last night was West Ham’s cup final and they won it, an achievement Spurs have not been able to boast about for nigh on two decades. Hopefully, it will stop all this nonsense about ‘your cup final’ when our two sides meet.
The reaction from Spurs fans on social media has been less about congratulating the cockney upstarts and more about using the occasion to bemoan our own lack of trophies under the stewardship of Daniel Levy. These supporters point out how, unlike Tottenham, West Ham won by fielding a strong side in what ‘big’ clubs denigrate as a minor trophy, one in which we played a second string XI without success.
It is a lesson which, no doubt, will be heeded by the new generation of clubs competing in Europe such as Brighton and Aston Villa. These sides are not backed by the blood money of sportswashing owners, have genuine local support and are happy to be there rather than looking down their noses at these competitions or the lame old ‘we’re concentrating on the league’ as an excuse for fielding a weakened team.
And so, taking a deep breath and putting aside childish rivalry, well done West Ham. And to the legions of their supporters who I call my friends, lap it up. Take it from a frustrated Spurs fan, it may be a further 43 years before you win another trophy.
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