It's not right is it? A new season kicking off on a Friday night. It's bollocks but it's to be expected. Football sold its soul so long ago I struggle to recall when it still had one. If a Friday night kick off keeps the bean counters happy then so be it and as for the fans who have to make nightmare arrangements to get to North London, people in football stopped caring about them yonks ago.
But for all the faffing around imposed by the TV companies there is still something special about the first game of the season. The excitement of seeing any new signings, what will the new season's programme be like, meet your mates again in the usual places, perhaps even the smell of paint lingering on the crash barriers. And of course the game was played on an immaculate pitch swathed in sunshine as Match of the Day faithfully recorded. Oh yes, and we were unbeaten of course What was not to love. Up and down the country there were people setting out for the first game with the same thoughts whether they were Arsenal, Hartlepool or Plymouth fans. The season returns.
In 1987 I missed all that much like I am missing all that in 2017. But 1987 was my first year away and, I thought at the time, my only year away. Exciting things were afoot at the Arsenal with George Graham delivering a trophy in his first season and the promise of better things around the corner. New players were coming in like Alan Smith, Nigel Winterburn and Perry Groves while youngsters like Tony Adams, Martin Hayes and David Rocastle were coming through the ranks and making their mark. Why would anyone want to leave the country?
Fact is I had had this urge to visit Australia for several years and I knew if I didn't do it in my early 20s I would never do. When the company I worked for in Guildford decided they wanted to relocate to the west country, offering staff like myself favourable mortgage rates, this seemed the best time. Early 20s, what the fuck did I want a mortgage for and why the hell did I wanna live out there in Wurzel land?
So I left in June 1987 and after a month in South East Asia landed in Sydney wondering how the hell I would be able to keep up with the football from back home. No internet you see and we used pigeons to send letters around the world and a mobile phone was a landline you threw at someone. Luckily there was this wonderful little weekly newspaper called British Soccer Weekly that would prove a lifeline to me and no doubt thousands of other homesick pommies pining for the round ball game in a land of tight shorts and Midnight Oil. The problem was BSW came out on a Monday if I was in Sydney. It could take a few more days if I was further north and come the first game of the 1987/88 season I was in Brisbane and we were playing Liverpool at Highbury.
It promised to be a massive game. We had fucked Rushie's record up at Wembley in April thanks to Bonnie Prince Charlie and like I said we were buzzing about a new era at the Arsenal. Liverpool weren't bad either, manager Kenny Dalglish had signed Peter Beardsley, John Barnes and John Aldridge. In the run up to the game I wondered more than once whether I had made the right decision to leave but I was stuck working at a department store the centre of Brisbane developing a taste for getting pissed even more often than I had in England. Nope, I was stuck and I had to get used to it.
Come the first day of the season and there were more than 57,000 descending on Highbury including my match going mates. Fans were climbing in walls to get a decent view some even on the roof of the North Bank. With a nine hour time difference between London and Brisbane the game kicked off midnight our time. No internet, no world service, no pub showing the game, me and a Liverpool fan who had tagged along were in the dark about events thousands of miles away. What the fuck was going on? We drunk quickly and drunk nervously. We had to, beer was served in oversized thimbles which may have been good for inner city Aussies but no use to the generation which had invented binge drinking to get us through lunch time before returning to the office.
The game finished before two am our time and we staggered home wondering how the fuck we would find out the score. Finally Liverpool fan had a wheeze, found a few coins and rang home. I forget the names but remember the conversation which went something like this;
Brisbane - Hey sister is mam there? Mam?
Liverpool -
Brisbane - Mam, mam, it's me, John. What was the score?
Liverpool -
Brisbane - Yeay, thanks mam, bye.
Brisbane - Take that you cockney twat
I am now approaching my 31st season as an exiled Gooner. Thanks to the wall to wall coverage, the internet, cable TV, I am better informed now about my club than I was when I lived in England and used to go to the games. But spare a though eh as you head out on Friday to the game, as you go for that pre game pint, buy your programme and fanzine, moan about Wenger during the game and call the ref a wanker when we lose and face a long journey home with nothing to show but some betting slips and the makings of a hangover. I will probably wake up five minutes before the game starts, swear at an empty house before venting my rage on Twitter and going to bed before the ref's pea has barely finished rolling around his whistle unable to sleep as I rerun the game in my mind. All the while I will be wishing I was inside the stadium.
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