It’s Wednesday 10th October and I take up my seat at the Cliffs Pavilion in Westcliff for the Hammers cup heroes show 75-81.
Being born in 1982 I have heard many stories and watched videos of the games but I don’t know too much about the players. The show was presented by Tony Gale and he is a face I see on sky regularly.
The players from the 75 cup run come onto stage, Alan Taylor, Billy Jennings, Keith Robson and Billy Bonds, the first thing that strikes me is that I would not recognise Taylor and Jennings if they walked past me in the street and I am pretty sure I could recognise any West ham player from the last 20 years.
It suddenly hit me that could you imagine the players of today doing this, what I know about Alan Taylor is that he scored 3 consecutive braces in the quarter final, semi-final and final and he now runs a newsagents. If a player in today’s game done that he probably would have been knighted, it’s another example of how the game has moved on financially.
After half time some there was a turnaround of players and David Cross, Geoff Pike and Alan Devonshire come out along with hammers legend Billy Bonds again who was wearing Jeans and a suit jacket compared to the rest who all wore perfect full suits (you would not expect anything else from him )
It first struck me that all of a sudden although 5 years later these players are all still involved in football, David cross work for Blackburn, Alan Devonshire is manager of Braintree in the conference and Geoff Pike works for the FA which was met with a humorous chorus of boos.
The evening was filled with funny antidotes and stories and was hosted superbly by Tony Gale who is a natural after dinner speaker if ever there was one.
One of the stories that stood out for me was that during a radio broadcast Tony Gale told Billy Bonds who was at a separate game that Alan Pardew has brought in a bubble machine to gee the players up and he then asked what Billy Bonds did to gee himself before a game and his response was “ I nutted the wall a few times”
He also went onto to say that the only times he ever wore shin pads was Leeds and Newcastle away, what a true warrior and what a Hammers legend!
