Teams I Hate (Part III)

West Ham

West Ham are thought of as being such a nice team. They are a real family club. They are followed by good ol’ Eastenders. Not the pampered actors who appear on the tv mind, the good ol’ boys that live in London’s East End.

I hate all that. I should explain that I grew up in Essex, and that was the Hammers Manor. Oh yes, that was their patch all right. The fact that in those days - late seventies, early eighties – Essex was full of Liverpool replica shirts just like it is full of Man Utd shirts today, didn’t detract from the fact that the West Ham boys ran that manor like the Krays. More of them later.

The bullying (and I use the word loosely here) I suffered as a Charlton Athletic fan (“who are they?”) was never going to endear them to me. But that is not the reason I hate them so much.

You see, until the Biscuit King bought into West Ham they were not a big club. I know you could argue the same about Chelsea, but West Ham had not had a much more illustrious past than Charlton had. Not that you could ever explain that to the ‘Essex Boys’ who’s knuckles dragged along the floor as they approached me telling me that they were part of the ICF before giving me a lesson in how five boys can easily push one around.

No. West Ham were not a big club in real terms and if fact if you looked at them closely since their relegation in 1978 they have spent seven of the last thirty seasons (over 23%) out of the top division. Never mind being a top club, they’re not even a top flight club. I know you could make the same argument about Charlton, but I’ve never claimed we are as big as Chelsea, Spurs and Arsenal, West Ham fans do! Shortly after taking over at Upton Park Curbishley made a comment about West Ham being as big as they want to be. It sounded like just the sort of rubbish that I had heard for years while the Mighty Hammers had been in the Second Division.

I just can’t stand it every time the World Cup comes ‘round and the 1966 and all that acts like a calling for all West Ham fans to tell you that they won England the World Cup, and that hat-trick hero Hurst was a Hammer through and through just like Bobby Moore. Now I respect these players, and would never speak ill of the dead but I’ve heard Bobby Moore interviewed long after he retired from football where he said that the biggest regret of his whole life was that he didn’t leave West Ham and sign for Tottenham! Hammer through and through?

However, what really gets me is that link with the Krays who were apparently really good boys and always looked after their mum. They only ever maimed, tortured and killed their own, and they always looked after their mum. Now I don’t know much about the Krays that I haven’t read in a book or newspaper, or seen on the tele, but I’m going to bet that they had a large number of friends and associates. This doesn’t, however, make it in the slightest bit credible that every West Ham fan I have ever met knew them, drank in their clubs or had a relative that lived next door to their mum. Old Mother Kray must have had close to ten thousand houses literally sharing her back alleyway.