Daddy's Arsenal Jinx takes Its torments to another level entirely.
In the back of my generally rational mind is a voice still screaming, "it's NOT you, it's them!", but, seriously, this is starting to freak me out now.
On the rare occasions when I have gone to watch the Arsenal live, our record has not been good - see below - but since the events of the past weekend, I'm starting to suspect my worst fears; that I might indeed be the hapless pawn in a demonic game played by an adversary I now know as The Jinx.
To recap my live matches watching the Arsenal so far:
8 Sept 1979: Derby County 3 Arsenal 2
My first ever game of football - - I know the date because of these fellas, ta! All I remember is the car journey which took the best part of a week (it seemed), and how dark it was, and the noise, and that I loved it, despite the sting of the defeat. No YouTube footage exists, for some reason.
[A whole load of games I don't remember from my childhood and early adulthood, but including Arsenal 1 Everton 0 on the day of the Poll Tax Riot...]
1995: Arsenal 1 The Agents of Satan 0
Somehow we got tickets, probably through a contact of my mate Paul - Bergkamp's early cushioned close-range dink past Schmeichel settled it for us. Not, as you will discover, a taste of things to come...
1996: The Agents of Satan 1 Arsenal 0
The same season, home and away: we even got late 'general sale' tickets for the away end, somehow, and drove up with Paul and some friends - Cantona spooned one in from distance, but it took 11 deflections inside a space-time vortex illegally created by United over Old Trafford that FIFA rightly banned shortly afterwards, and no fewer than TEN United players were clearly offside.
March 1999: Arsenal 3 Sheffield Wednesday 0
Three late goals - it being a rare visit for me, I went berserk to each of them, rather to the bemusement of the blase regulars around me.
April 14 1999: Arsenal 1 The Agents of Satan 2
Feeling good about the team that season - on course for the title, playing well - we travelled up for the FA Cup Semi-final at Villa Park in 1999. This is probably the best game of football involving the Arsenal I have seen, even though, well, read the score. The atmosphere and the drama, and the skill, but settled by Bergkamp's timid last-minute penalty and Giggs' grotesquely jammy meander and mis-hit cross...
For the record, the best game of football I have ever seen is unquestonably Sparta Rotterdam 4 Fortuna Sittard 3, my last game in Rotterdam before moving back to England, watched with all my mates, with a last-minute winner from 0-3 down.
11 May 1999: L**ds United 1 Arsenal 0
Less than a month after the FA Cup Semi calamity, here is where my presence started to seem portentous, as 'The Jinx' played a cruel, cruel trick. With just three games to go, we needed to win to keep pace with The Agents of Satan in the title race. My best mate Dom and I watched it in the home end. Elland Road is not a place that welcomes 'infidels' sat among them, so when Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink scored for L**ds in the 86th minute and I sank into my seat in despair, Dom suggested that, in lieu of being surrounded by baying Leeds fans, I might want to stand up and warmly congratulate them on their late winner. That is, if I wanted to live...
October 2000: Lazio 1 Arsenal 1
With tickets courtesy of my sister-in-law's Lazio-supprting husband, Dom and I got in and out of the Stadio Olimpico alive, despite being surrounded by Laziale who registered their disgust for Bobby Pires' late equaliser with the most obscene hand gesture so far recorded by Anthropology.
March 2001: Bayern Munich 1 Arsenal 0
Flights out to Munich with friends Andy and Kat on the day of the game, we hit the bierkellers - where I took one of the best pictures of Andy and Kat as a couple armed with gigantic beer glasses - before watching the game in the old stadium in a relentless drizzle. We conceded an early goal and lost, but results elsewhere went our way and we had a top meal somewhere before heading home the next morning - £300 or so, all in for a rubbish 1-0 defeat.
December 2001: Arsenal 1 Newcastle United 3
Yep, I was there the evening the Toon broke their infamous London Curse, having failed to win in the capital since the miners' strike or some equally vast expanse of time. Worse, I was in the away end with a Toon mate, and had to 'heartily acknowledge' Shearer's late penalty to settle it. I think it was this match when I sensed The Jinx might be real...
[A TWO-YEAR INTERLUDE IN ROTTERDAM...]
May 2006: Sunderland 0 Arsenal 3
Liam's first ever game of football - covered here - which, in hindsight, might have persuaded The Jinx to let me off this one. That said, we did lose the then-promising Abou Diaby to long-term injury, The Jinx's way of letting me know It was watching, and waiting.
December 2007: Middlesbrough 2 Arsenal 1
A trip to the Riverside with my Durham University colleague Tom Redman, we were in the home end, again, for me to suffer the ignominy of a sound beating from the Smoggies. I sensed that The Jinx was getting warmed up now...
September 2010: Sunderland 1 Arsenal 1
My mate from University, [Big] Liam suggested he come up for this one, and make a weekend of it. Again, we were in the bloody home end, from where we watched in silence as Fabregas fluked an opener, then Song got sent off, and with a picosecond left of the 90 - a picosecond is one trillionth of a second (The Guardian clocks it in the 95th minute in the report) - Darren Bent scored an equaliser. High above the stormclouds over Wearside, The Jinx let out a booming "Mwah hah hah hah!" that only I could hear. 'It' had formally declared hostilities, and invited me to come and have a go...
So I did.
February 2011: Newcastle United 4 Arsenal 4 (the highlights; Phil Thompson's reactions - worth watching)
If you're thinking, "surely you weren't at that one?!", and this diary is now starting to creep out of 'mildly amusing' territory into 'actually quite unsettling', then imagine how I felt. This was the game when I announced to several mates that I was going, and that there may be some sort of Jinx on me, and to get a bet on... I texted in jest; The Jinx made a mental note.
In - yep, you've guessed it - the bloody home end, I had to watch our four first half goals (at the other end of the ground) in a kind of sullen despondency, but I texted a few mates over my half-time Guinness that surely, at 0-4, this was the end of The Jinx; it had been vanquished in emphatic fashion...
Well, 'It' does not know when It is beaten, and It came back with a great vengeance and fuuuuuurious anger. When Newcastle's third went in, the fat bloke next to me grabbed me in a sweaty, blubbery bear hug, which of course I had not merely to endure, but actively endorse! And when Tiote's cracker of an equaliser went in, it was proper bedlam. "4-0, and you rather made a mess of it", as the home fans sang - I paraphrase - all around the ground...
Remember - I had only gone to two games that season, and only 3 since coming back to the UK. And this utterly preposterous outcome was one of them. Coincidence?
The day after, I travelled down to London for my mate Stuart's 40th, and met Mark and his wife travelling back down from the game. Both Gooners, we discussed the possibility of My Jinx being real and they persuaded me, calmly and patiently, that it was the team, the manager, maybe even the entire club, but not me. Which, as I said above, I knew - but didn't quite believe.
Well, Mark said he could get me some tickets for games he couldn't make, and so in the lull of the summer, I suggested I'd be quite keen on The Agents of Satan away...
August 2011: The Agents of Satan 8 Arsenal 2.
I travelled over fully expecting to watch a defeat because of the depth of our squad, but the main reason for going over was to see Dom and his family. And we had a brilliant weekend, with some beer and pool and darts in Helmshore the night before, playing with his two lads in the morning. We got into Manchester for lunchtime and, with me being a tourist, we headed for Rusholme's Curry Mile. After some great Guinness and a good laugh with David and Jim, two friends (one City, one United), in The Albert Inn, and a tasty enough tuna bhuna (I'm not kidding - a first for me, and it worked) in the Sangam curry house, we taxi-ed over to OT for one last pint, and got into to the away end. Yes, we were among our own people this time. My own brethren and sistren.
The scoreline says it all, and I'm not going to expand on my gradual drift from 'In Arsene We Trust' to 'With Arsene We Rust' [or is it the Board's fault?], but this is what happens when I tempt and provoke The Jinx. 'It' cannot claim credit for the defeat, but It has Its grubby fingers all over the score, and the fact that this was our biggest league defeat since 1896.
Perversely, though, Dom and I had a 'good' time. Not least because for fully 30 minutes from the start of the 2nd half the Arsenal supporters sang, relentlessly and passionately, "We love you Arsenal, we do" - even as their goals went in. Literally, within seconds of them scoring, we simply started up again: same song, more volume. We just ignored the goals. It was like something out of the film '300': proud and perverse defiance in the face of superior numbers and brutal oppression. The crowd dynamics were compelling; I think after a couple of minutes or so, we all knew, collectively, that we couldn't, and shouldn't, stop. There was nobody leading it, nobody orchestrating it, it just emerged and sustained itself, and it was a proud moment. As the man from the fine Arseblog blog says, "my lungs ache". Many of us hoped, too, that the impact of just keeping on going would resonate around the ground, not only among the home fans but in the away dugout, too. And Robin van Persie at least heard us and appreciated us.
And it did seem to annoy the home supporters, who really are as deafeningly quiet as the 'prawn sandwich brigade' stereotype has it. Barely a single chant, and even the ones they managed were truly pathetic for a crowd of 72,000. Which made our hearty support all the more powerful - especially as, let's be honest, it's rare for the Arsenal to be associated with "sing-yer-hearts-out-for-the-lads"-type support.
So - a genuine Jinx, or a series of rather unfortunate occasions linked only tangentially by my active presence?
On the rare occasions when I have gone to watch the Arsenal live, our record has not been good - see below - but since the events of the past weekend, I'm starting to suspect my worst fears; that I might indeed be the hapless pawn in a demonic game played by an adversary I now know as The Jinx.
To recap my live matches watching the Arsenal so far:
8 Sept 1979: Derby County 3 Arsenal 2
My first ever game of football - - I know the date because of these fellas, ta! All I remember is the car journey which took the best part of a week (it seemed), and how dark it was, and the noise, and that I loved it, despite the sting of the defeat. No YouTube footage exists, for some reason.
[A whole load of games I don't remember from my childhood and early adulthood, but including Arsenal 1 Everton 0 on the day of the Poll Tax Riot...]
1995: Arsenal 1 The Agents of Satan 0
Somehow we got tickets, probably through a contact of my mate Paul - Bergkamp's early cushioned close-range dink past Schmeichel settled it for us. Not, as you will discover, a taste of things to come...
1996: The Agents of Satan 1 Arsenal 0
The same season, home and away: we even got late 'general sale' tickets for the away end, somehow, and drove up with Paul and some friends - Cantona spooned one in from distance, but it took 11 deflections inside a space-time vortex illegally created by United over Old Trafford that FIFA rightly banned shortly afterwards, and no fewer than TEN United players were clearly offside.
March 1999: Arsenal 3 Sheffield Wednesday 0
Three late goals - it being a rare visit for me, I went berserk to each of them, rather to the bemusement of the blase regulars around me.
April 14 1999: Arsenal 1 The Agents of Satan 2
Feeling good about the team that season - on course for the title, playing well - we travelled up for the FA Cup Semi-final at Villa Park in 1999. This is probably the best game of football involving the Arsenal I have seen, even though, well, read the score. The atmosphere and the drama, and the skill, but settled by Bergkamp's timid last-minute penalty and Giggs' grotesquely jammy meander and mis-hit cross...
For the record, the best game of football I have ever seen is unquestonably Sparta Rotterdam 4 Fortuna Sittard 3, my last game in Rotterdam before moving back to England, watched with all my mates, with a last-minute winner from 0-3 down.
11 May 1999: L**ds United 1 Arsenal 0
Less than a month after the FA Cup Semi calamity, here is where my presence started to seem portentous, as 'The Jinx' played a cruel, cruel trick. With just three games to go, we needed to win to keep pace with The Agents of Satan in the title race. My best mate Dom and I watched it in the home end. Elland Road is not a place that welcomes 'infidels' sat among them, so when Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink scored for L**ds in the 86th minute and I sank into my seat in despair, Dom suggested that, in lieu of being surrounded by baying Leeds fans, I might want to stand up and warmly congratulate them on their late winner. That is, if I wanted to live...
October 2000: Lazio 1 Arsenal 1
With tickets courtesy of my sister-in-law's Lazio-supprting husband, Dom and I got in and out of the Stadio Olimpico alive, despite being surrounded by Laziale who registered their disgust for Bobby Pires' late equaliser with the most obscene hand gesture so far recorded by Anthropology.
March 2001: Bayern Munich 1 Arsenal 0
Flights out to Munich with friends Andy and Kat on the day of the game, we hit the bierkellers - where I took one of the best pictures of Andy and Kat as a couple armed with gigantic beer glasses - before watching the game in the old stadium in a relentless drizzle. We conceded an early goal and lost, but results elsewhere went our way and we had a top meal somewhere before heading home the next morning - £300 or so, all in for a rubbish 1-0 defeat.
December 2001: Arsenal 1 Newcastle United 3
Yep, I was there the evening the Toon broke their infamous London Curse, having failed to win in the capital since the miners' strike or some equally vast expanse of time. Worse, I was in the away end with a Toon mate, and had to 'heartily acknowledge' Shearer's late penalty to settle it. I think it was this match when I sensed The Jinx might be real...
[A TWO-YEAR INTERLUDE IN ROTTERDAM...]
May 2006: Sunderland 0 Arsenal 3
Liam's first ever game of football - covered here - which, in hindsight, might have persuaded The Jinx to let me off this one. That said, we did lose the then-promising Abou Diaby to long-term injury, The Jinx's way of letting me know It was watching, and waiting.
December 2007: Middlesbrough 2 Arsenal 1
A trip to the Riverside with my Durham University colleague Tom Redman, we were in the home end, again, for me to suffer the ignominy of a sound beating from the Smoggies. I sensed that The Jinx was getting warmed up now...
September 2010: Sunderland 1 Arsenal 1
My mate from University, [Big] Liam suggested he come up for this one, and make a weekend of it. Again, we were in the bloody home end, from where we watched in silence as Fabregas fluked an opener, then Song got sent off, and with a picosecond left of the 90 - a picosecond is one trillionth of a second (The Guardian clocks it in the 95th minute in the report) - Darren Bent scored an equaliser. High above the stormclouds over Wearside, The Jinx let out a booming "Mwah hah hah hah!" that only I could hear. 'It' had formally declared hostilities, and invited me to come and have a go...
So I did.
February 2011: Newcastle United 4 Arsenal 4 (the highlights; Phil Thompson's reactions - worth watching)
If you're thinking, "surely you weren't at that one?!", and this diary is now starting to creep out of 'mildly amusing' territory into 'actually quite unsettling', then imagine how I felt. This was the game when I announced to several mates that I was going, and that there may be some sort of Jinx on me, and to get a bet on... I texted in jest; The Jinx made a mental note.
In - yep, you've guessed it - the bloody home end, I had to watch our four first half goals (at the other end of the ground) in a kind of sullen despondency, but I texted a few mates over my half-time Guinness that surely, at 0-4, this was the end of The Jinx; it had been vanquished in emphatic fashion...
Well, 'It' does not know when It is beaten, and It came back with a great vengeance and fuuuuuurious anger. When Newcastle's third went in, the fat bloke next to me grabbed me in a sweaty, blubbery bear hug, which of course I had not merely to endure, but actively endorse! And when Tiote's cracker of an equaliser went in, it was proper bedlam. "4-0, and you rather made a mess of it", as the home fans sang - I paraphrase - all around the ground...
Remember - I had only gone to two games that season, and only 3 since coming back to the UK. And this utterly preposterous outcome was one of them. Coincidence?
The day after, I travelled down to London for my mate Stuart's 40th, and met Mark and his wife travelling back down from the game. Both Gooners, we discussed the possibility of My Jinx being real and they persuaded me, calmly and patiently, that it was the team, the manager, maybe even the entire club, but not me. Which, as I said above, I knew - but didn't quite believe.
Well, Mark said he could get me some tickets for games he couldn't make, and so in the lull of the summer, I suggested I'd be quite keen on The Agents of Satan away...
August 2011: The Agents of Satan 8 Arsenal 2.
I travelled over fully expecting to watch a defeat because of the depth of our squad, but the main reason for going over was to see Dom and his family. And we had a brilliant weekend, with some beer and pool and darts in Helmshore the night before, playing with his two lads in the morning. We got into Manchester for lunchtime and, with me being a tourist, we headed for Rusholme's Curry Mile. After some great Guinness and a good laugh with David and Jim, two friends (one City, one United), in The Albert Inn, and a tasty enough tuna bhuna (I'm not kidding - a first for me, and it worked) in the Sangam curry house, we taxi-ed over to OT for one last pint, and got into to the away end. Yes, we were among our own people this time. My own brethren and sistren.
The scoreline says it all, and I'm not going to expand on my gradual drift from 'In Arsene We Trust' to 'With Arsene We Rust' [or is it the Board's fault?], but this is what happens when I tempt and provoke The Jinx. 'It' cannot claim credit for the defeat, but It has Its grubby fingers all over the score, and the fact that this was our biggest league defeat since 1896.
Perversely, though, Dom and I had a 'good' time. Not least because for fully 30 minutes from the start of the 2nd half the Arsenal supporters sang, relentlessly and passionately, "We love you Arsenal, we do" - even as their goals went in. Literally, within seconds of them scoring, we simply started up again: same song, more volume. We just ignored the goals. It was like something out of the film '300': proud and perverse defiance in the face of superior numbers and brutal oppression. The crowd dynamics were compelling; I think after a couple of minutes or so, we all knew, collectively, that we couldn't, and shouldn't, stop. There was nobody leading it, nobody orchestrating it, it just emerged and sustained itself, and it was a proud moment. As the man from the fine Arseblog blog says, "my lungs ache". Many of us hoped, too, that the impact of just keeping on going would resonate around the ground, not only among the home fans but in the away dugout, too. And Robin van Persie at least heard us and appreciated us.
And it did seem to annoy the home supporters, who really are as deafeningly quiet as the 'prawn sandwich brigade' stereotype has it. Barely a single chant, and even the ones they managed were truly pathetic for a crowd of 72,000. Which made our hearty support all the more powerful - especially as, let's be honest, it's rare for the Arsenal to be associated with "sing-yer-hearts-out-for-the-lads"-type support.
So - a genuine Jinx, or a series of rather unfortunate occasions linked only tangentially by my active presence?
Labels: football
posted by Graham at 11:20 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home