Written by Su Lewis Friday, 16 April 2010 21:22

GunnerTalk Blog

By Su Lewis

When Lindsay first asked me to write a post for the Gunnertalk blog I said no. I didn’t think I could write about anything that others would want to read. She then reminded me of some of the stories I had told her over the years so I thought I’d give it a go. If you don’t like my ramblings then please complain to Lindsay not me!

I am a lifelong Arsenal supporter (no, I’m not telling you how long that is) and I also worked for them for over 10 years in the 80’s & early 90’s. During all my years of supporting and working for Arsenal I have been to hundreds of away games (yes, including Leicester). Some were memorable for the football, some for the results and some for things that happened before or after games.

I usually went to matches with my dad (Merv the Perv), my brother (Lol) and my cousins (the infamous Lindsay & Steve and occasionally their brother Danny). Sometimes friends came with and other times it was just me and dad. Dad by the way is an Arsenal convert as he originally supported Cardiff (sad) but since I used to get free tickets for matches he converted and is now as fanatical as the rest of us.

One occasion that I remember well is when we were on the way to Wolves for a midweek evening match. The weather was awful, very heavy rain and strong winds. We just got to the outskirts of Birmingham when it was announced on the radio that the roof at Molyneux had blown off, was sitting on the pitch and, therefore, the match may be called off! Obviously it was called off so we turned round, stopped at Watford Gap with all the other pissed off Arsenal supporters and then came home. Due to the weather this was a six hour round trip for sod all!

Another memory that still makes me laugh, altho it was probably about 20 years ago now, is when we went to Everton for a third round FA cup match. We’d had high hopes for this game as this was the first FA cup match Kenny Sansom played for us and he’d had a good record in the Cup for Palace. It was a pretty unremarkable match which we ended up losing. We left the ground really dejected – more so because we would be going up to Goodison again the following week for a league match.

I was at this particular match with Lol and Steve and as we walked out the Liverpool mounted police were in full force outside the ground. Lol was in front of us walking past one of the horses when suddenly he let out an almighty scream. The horse he’d just passed had turned its head and bit him on the shoulder! For some reason ever since then he’s avoided horses like the plague! Steve and I creased up to see my 6’3” brother running away from the poor little horsey!

Another memorable match saw us at Elland Road in the days when Leeds were a force to be reckoned with, but their fans were a force to be avoided. I had got us tickets in the stands but Lol and Steve moaned that they wanted to be on the terraces with the other lads. Being forewarned about what would happen I told them to sit in their seats and if they still wanted to stand at half-time then it was up to them.

In those days the away supporters at Elland Road had a smallish pen in front of the seats. A hard core bunch of Leeds supporters always sat behind but above the pen. Once the match started these supporters would stand up, unzip their jeans, get out their todgers and piss on the away supporters! They’d celebrate every time they got a direct hit – which was pretty frequent! Strangely enough once the boys saw this they decided to stay in the stands. Can’t understand why! 

Moral of these stories? Don’t go to an away match if you know I’m going to be there!