Goodbye Avenell Road

LIKE many long standing Gooners, I’ve had mixed feelings ever since the plans for our new stadium were announced. For those of us who’ve been attending Highbury for so many years, it’s hard to imagine that we will ever share quite the same emotional attachment with our new home of football.

No doubt after a glorious season, or two, and as I begin to build a bank of entirely new memories at the grandiose gaffe at the bottom of Aubert Park, I will soon get over it. Yet, as the clock ticks down towards tomorrow’s impending demise of a place that has played such an influential role for much of my 44 years, I may have come to accept the financial realities, though not without suffering some sentimental trauma.

As we approach that emotional last match, every time I exit the West Upper and share a comment, or merely a smile with the stewards, I am ever more acutely aware of this homely feeling that I have at Highbury. I can’t help but wonder whether it’ll ever be quite the same, as I fear that faceless anonymity amidst 60,000 fans, as just another punter with none of the habitual familiarity.

Doubtless everyone who’s Highbury memories are associated with a now departed friend or family member, is experiencing a similar emotional trepidation about the impending move and the fact that it will involve ditching many of their most precious recollections of their loved ones.

Almost every time I clunk my way through the ancient West Upper turnstiles, I’m reminded how my old man used to sneak me in, shuffling between his legs, hidden by the ample folds of his winter overcoat. The fact that I’ve never seen it mentioned elsewhere makes me wonder if I imagined it, but there’s a door to the left of the stairway as you enter the West Upper and I’ve some decidedly misty memories of steam and smoke filled restaurant, where we’d all squeeze in on a damp winter’s night for a pre-match snack before a midweek game.

I seem to recall my old man was on first name terms with the matronly manageress, no doubt doing his best, along with everyone else, to schmooze his way on to a table, in good time to be served and gobble down some grub before kick off.

I can recall a time when I was deemed far too delicate to stand for 90 minutes, amidst the sardines squeezed into the West Lower. If I’m not mistaken, back in the day, along with a rosette and a rattle, it was quite common for a youngster’s match day kit to include a small box to stand on, so they’d have some chance of seeing the action.

I can’t remember whether it was just the once, but I distinctly recall being picked up and passed over the heads of the lower tier throng, to sit with the St. Johns Ambulance men in front of the hoardings. I remember feeling very special, being able almost to reach out and touch the heroes whose faces were familiar to me from my Soccer Stars sticker book.

These days, if they can afford the extortionate prices, many celebrity Gooners sit in the Executive. As an impressionable child, my favourite uncle was the one who had two such prestigious pitches at the Arsenal. However while the old man might not have been loaded, he was a silver-tongued devil who could somehow wheedle his way absolutely anywhere.

Judging by the vast array of indistinguishable autographs I have on my match day programmes from that era, he must’ve wangled us in there on many occasions. Dad had this amazing ability to sidle up to absolutely anyone and become bosom buddies within the blink of an eye. Don’t ask me why, but of all the signatures I collected, the only famous face which stuck in my mind was the somewhat pockmarked phizog of DJ Pete Murray.

Back then, with my Jewish background, it would’ve been much easier to become a Spurs fan. The old man often alternated between either end of the Seven Sisters Road and in those days I would’ve endured a lot less stick from family and friends if I hadn’t opted for “boring, boring Arsenal”. Perhaps as a full-back myself from a very early age, my instinctive affinity with the Arsenal related to my appreciation of the defensive arts. Then again, aged only 9, the instance when we gave Ray Kennedy a lift back to his parents hotel from WHL on that magical night in ‘71, doubtless this assisted in cementing my affiliation to the Arsenal.

Yet I’d hate to think of myself as a mere glory-hunter and I’m almost certain my attachment begun earlier than that, as even to a young child, there was some special aura about Highbury’s palatial art-deco edifice, that just wasn’t present at White Hart Lane, or any other football ground for that matter.

It’s a feeling of history and tradition that fills the senses and has had many a player stating that they’ve decided to sign for the club from the first second they’ve stepped into the famous Marble Halls.

On the other hand, I might be an Arsenal fan merely because there were padded seats in the West Upper. Is it possible I might’ve enjoyed more than three decades of delicious Highbury delights, because my bony little bum couldn’t sit for 90 minutes on the nasty wooden seats at WHL.

*Bernard Azulay is author of ‘Arsenal on the Double’ and pens a weekly Gunners fans guide in Arena.