The Highbury Farewell

To round off the almost perfect weekend (Gilberto’s harsh sending-off apart) I sat down last night and put the dvd of the Highbury farewell on the box.

The memories came flooding back. On that remarkable day in May I was determined to take in as much of the day as possible. Getting to the ground in late morning I was staggered to see so many people had the same idea. There would be no mind numbing pre-match session in the pub today.

I negotiated the various barriers to walk all the way round the famous old stadium. I re-enacted the walk down from the top of Avenell Road I remembered from my childhood when dad used to park in Highbury Fields. That last view from the top of the hill is embedded in my mind (and thankfully the digital camera!) The snap of the East Stand in my profile was taken that day.

Who could believe that a mass of concrete and steel could be the cause of so many tears being shed long before kick-off? The gates opened one last time and I was in. I rushed to check out my seat in the East Lower, where for so many years dad had a season-ticket. There was my seat, row 1, ringside, and taped to it the farewell tee-shirt. What class Arsenal displayed that day.

I just stood there and looked around the place, clicked away like a lunatic. Time for one last Bovril and pie downstairs by the corner where as kids you could transfer from the schoolboys enclosure to the North Bank if you could persuade an adult to pretend to be your dad!

The emotions ebbed and flowed as news filtered through from Upton Park, and Arsenal gave us one last heart-fluttering roller coaster of a game. In the end we had won, Spurs had lost, and the Champions League place was secured.

Then the show I watched again transfixed last night. Constable Alex Morgan singing his lungs out, Over eighty players from past eras parading, Roger Daltrey singing ‘Highbury Highs’. Then the presentations with Thierry Henry joining the great and the good on the platform causing thirty-five thousand voices to chant in unison, ‘SIGN,SIGN,SIGN’. (Thank goodness he eventually did!)

Then it was over, and the time arrived for the farewell party to start in the Twelve Pins, after a slow walk up Blackstock road where it became apparent how many thousands, unable to get a ticket, had spent one last afternoon as close to the old lady as they could get.

Yes, we had to move. No, for us oldies the Grove will never have the unique character that just oozed out of Highbury’s walls. And yet for a whole new generation the new home of football will stand proud as the finest stadium around. The first step in building new memories is just around the corner, but our sixty thousand seater has some act to follow!