Nearly Reach the Sky (12 page)

Maybe, in the light of Bob’s account of events that grim day, Gould’s winning goal was even more important than it seemed at the time.

The victory put us level with QPR and Man Utd at the top of the table, separated only by goal average
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and with a game in hand on the other two. Normally I would have been ecstatic at beating my mate’s team and being in such a dizzyingly high League position, but for once I didn’t rub it in. Not after what we had just seen.

Instead, we listened to the reports of what we’d witnessed on the car radio as we headed for home. ‘Talk about uninformed gibberish,’ says Bob.

For anyone thinking of taking up a career in journalism, can I just say that is better advice than anything Bob and I were ever given in Cardiff.

History hasn’t been kind to the ’70s, and after days like that you can see why. But it wasn’t all football hooliganism and industrial unrest. Unlike now, people didn’t fear for their jobs, the cost of housing was affordable for the vast majority and there was a general feeling life would improve for everyone. Much of the fashion was a bit ropey, but some of the music will live on for ever (including ‘Lady Marmalade’). And what about the food? Prawn cocktail and duck à l’orange – it doesn’t get much better than that. Not to mention the Black Forest gateau to follow. Like the decade itself, that never got its just desserts either. For all its faults I still look back on 1975 with fondness. Let’s face it, any year’s a good year when you’re nineteen and you’ve still got your entire life in front of you.

I
F YOU'VE NEVER
been to a chilli festival, put that right the next time there's one in your neck of the woods. You'll be hard-pressed to find anywhere else you can have as much fun while still fully clothed.

The highlight of these events is the chilli-eating contest, in which a group of brave souls, encouraged by their so-called ‘friends', take to the stage and set about a number of chilli peppers ranging in strength from something you'd happily give your granny to a thermonuclear variant that could take out half of Doncaster.

There is a strange pleasure to be had watching people voluntarily torturing themselves in such a way. Unless there is a complete wimp up there they all generally manage to negotiate the first round, which is when you get the initial indication of form. That
fella in the studded leather jacket, who's 6 ft 3 and chiselled out of granite, looked curiously troubled by the basic pimiento, while the unassuming guy in the lamb's wool sweater at the other end of the table dispatched it without blinking. He could well be the one to watch here.

By the time you've got up to the jalapeños some of the contestants are starting to look distinctly nervous; one or two may even be running up the white flag at this stage. There will certainly be casualties on the cayenne leg, and when they start bringing out the Jamaican hots and Scotch bonnets the body count really begins to rise. Judging by the way Leather Jacket Bloke left the stage clutching his stomach, the chances are he won't be going to work tomorrow. Still, at least he wasn't struck down by the dreaded ‘chilli claw' in which the body goes into spasm and certain muscles contract to temporarily leave the unfortunate victim with a hook instead of a hand. He'd never be able to ride his motorbike like that.

The relative strength of chillies is measured on the Scoville scale. Devised in 1912 by an American called Wilbur Scoville, the basic idea is to take the substance that puts the fire into chillies – capsaicin – and dilute it in sweetened water until it is no longer detectable. The more sugar water you need, the hotter the chilli. So a basic red pepper scores zero, while the innocent-sounding Dorset Naga requires a million parts water to one part capsaicin – and thus rates 1,000,000 on the scale. (Should you ever have the misfortune to be on the wrong end of police pepper spray you will be looking at well over 2,000,000 Scoville units, but I suggest you keep this knowledge to yourself or you're likely to get another squirt for being a clever-clogs.)

As a system of measurement it's all a bit imprecise, but I believe
it has something to offer the game of football. What we need is a similar method to judge decisions made by referees, so I have written to FIFA suggesting that, now it has got to grips with goalline technology and found something useful to do with a can of shaving foam, it adopts the Hackett scale – named after the man whose memory will forever burn with a white heat of anger more fiery than the hottest habanero in the hearts of all those who follow West Ham.

It was Keith Hackett, you will recall, who gave Tony Gale a straight red card for an innocuous challenge in an FA Cup semi and effectively ended our chances of reaching the 1991 final. Ironically, the roots of this awful decision can be traced back to a previous Cup final involving West Ham, and the birth of the ‘professional foul'.

In 1980, against Arsenal, West Ham's Paul Allen was clear through on goal and had every chance of being the youngest ever scorer in a Wembley Cup final when he was unceremoniously upended by Willie Young, a man who truly put the Goon in Gooner, in what was seen as a blatantly cynical foul even by the more physical standards of the time. Referee George Courtney felt, under the laws of the game, he could do no more than award a free kick and Young stayed on the field. I witnessed this from the press box at Wembley and even seasoned hacks were outraged. It was one of those rare moments when the entire footballing world came together and agreed that something had to be done! Trouble was, they couldn't agree on precisely what.

So, in the best traditions of these things, a sub-committee including some of the most famous names in football was set up to make a few recommendations – which they duly did. And, in exactly the same traditions, those recommendations were rejected. However, we now had the concept of the professional foul which, unlike your
common-or-garden foul, is ‘an act of foul play, usually to deny a goalscoring opportunity'.

In England, the Football League instructed the referees to start sending off players considered to have committed a professional foul in the early '80s on the basis that the perpetrator was guilty of serious foul play, which merited a straight red card under the existing laws of the game.

FIFA, on the other hand, took a rather more leisurely approach to the tricky question of what to do about players who deliberately kick their opponents up in the air rather than stand back and applaud sportingly as they score the goal that gets their manager the sack and ensures they themselves will be playing non-League football for the rest of their careers.

The world's governing body waited until Italia '90 before it decreed that refs should send off players for a professional foul. The following year, FIFA's position was endorsed by the IFAB, the guardian of football's laws. And, according to Mr Hackett, there was to be no leniency for offenders.

He has been quoted as saying:

The massed ranks of West Ham supporters certainly didn't know about that particular meeting as we looked on in astonishment
while he brandished the red card at Villa Park three days later. ‘My decision dramatically affected the game and ruined a lot of people's day out,' he concedes. Well, you've got that one right, mate.

Gale feels hard done by to this day. He told me: ‘I still can't believe the sending-off. I've got pictures of it at home, and whenever I look at them I get the right hump. It was the only time I was sent off in my career.' This was a man who made more than 700 senior appearances throughout his career and, by his reckoning, he was only ever booked seven times. ‘I wasn't a dirty player,' he insists.

According to Gale, his manager emphasised the point about where he felt they could and couldn't go with some rather robust industrial language but we needn't quote that verbatim here.

‘The best thing was the response of the fans,' Gale goes on. ‘They didn't stop singing for the rest of the game.

‘I've never forgiven Hackett. I'm convinced to this day he wanted
to be the first person to implement the new ruling that had come out that week.'

So you haven't kept in touch then? ‘Funnily enough, I got a call from him recently. It was the first time we'd spoken since the incident. He asked me if I'd like to appear with him in a video about refereeing. He wasn't joking either!' As with Bonzo's reply to the FA official all those years ago, Tony Gale's response to Mr Hackett's invitation is best left unreported in full. (Clearly Gale's bark is worse than his bite because he and Hackett did go on to make a short film together. Very watchable it was too.)

Martin Allen, cousin of the baby-faced Paul who had been hacked down at Wembley all those years before, hasn't forgotten that day either. According to one newspaper interview with Mad Dog:

The point about Mr Hackett wanting to be the first person to apply the new ruling is an interesting one. Looking back on the game, it was as if he wanted to be the star of the show – which is just about the worst offence a referee can commit, I reckon. So, on the new scale, Gale's dismissal rates the maximum one million Hacketts – not just for the decision itself but also because the man who
ruined one of the most important games of the season shrugged it off with barely a hint of an apology.

It's curious how many former West Ham players have been involved in incidents that would register on the Hackett scale if it had been introduced earlier.

Freddie Sears never fully recovered from the diabolical decision that robbed him of a perfectly good goal for Crystal Palace at Ashton Gate during a loan spell in 2009. His shot clearly hit the back of the Bristol City goal, but he'd struck the ball so sweetly it came flying back out. Referee Rob Shoebridge disallowed the effort and Sears seemed to lose all self-confidence after that. For the damage it did to young Freddie's career, Shoebridge gets 400,000 Hacketts for that clanger.

Something strangely similar had happened to another member of the Allen clan. In truth, Clive is Tottenham through and through. But he did score the goal that secured our promotion at the end of the 1992/93 season, so for the purposes of this discussion he is one of our own. (There is a bonus point on offer here for anyone who can remember who scored the other goal in that 2–0 win over Cambridge. Right then, you sir – the man in the Dagenham Motors shirt with his hand up. No, it wasn't Trevor Morley; the answer I'm looking for is David Speedie. Better luck in the music round.)

Just like Sears, Allen also scored a perfectly good goal for Palace that the referee missed. This was back in 1980, against Coventry. His free-kick hit the right-hand stanchion inside the goal, only for the ball to bounce back out of the net. Referee Derek Webb consulted his linesman – and then ruled no goal. I'd rate that 300,000 on the Hackett scale.

As a rule, any decision that goes against Frank Lampard Jnr would be Hackett-free. But as he was playing for England against Germany when he had a legitimate goal chalked off, the blunder by Uruguayan referee Jorge Larrionda does register this time. Lampard's effort, of course, was in the 2010 World Cup in Bloemfontein and would have been the equaliser had the ref or his assistant Mauricio Espinosa seen the ball cross the line after it ricocheted off the bar. I'd rate that at 200,000 on the scale. The Germans argued that this merely evened things up for Sir Geoff Hurst's controversial goal in the 1966 World Cup final, which they still maintain never crossed the line. Please don't think there's any bias involved here on my part, but I'm sorry, my friends – you are wrong about this. Check the record books: I'll think you'll find that it did.

Roy Carroll stumbled around between the sticks in West Ham colours from 2005 to 2007. Before that he had plied his trade at Manchester United. Sir Alex Ferguson's decision to move him on was no doubt hastened by a horrible fumble in the dying moments of a game against Spurs in which it appeared Pedro Mendes had scored a shock winner with a long-range shot he had unleashed from a different postcode. At least it appeared that way to everyone except referee Mark Clattenburg and lino Rob Lewis, who both failed to notice that the ball had crossed the line. Normally an error of that magnitude would merit 150,000 Hacketts, but as it denied Tottenham three points the sentence will be halved on this occasion.

Curiously, Mr Hackett himself was at Old Trafford that night. ‘From my seat in the stand I could see what the match officials couldn't. I had the advantage of elevation. The match officials at ground level had no chance. I felt sick about what happened. Sick to
the stomach, in fact. I was frustrated that I couldn't help.' Thanks, but no thanks, Mr Hackett. You've done enough already.

Paul Gascoigne, of course, never played for West Ham, but he is that rare breed of player who somehow seems to belong to all of us. His booking at the hands of referee Dougie Smith shows precisely why we need a system that measures the stupidity of officials. When Mr Smith dropped his yellow card, Gascoigne picked it up. And, Gascoigne being Gascoigne, he couldn't resist the temptation of brandishing it as if booking the ref before handing it back. Everyone saw the funny side – except the ref, who immediately booked Gazza for attempting to make people smile. In my book that rates 999,999 Hacketts.

The worst decision at Upton Park in recent years – worse even than the sending off of Carlton Cole by the hopeless buffoon Anthony Taylor in the game against Everton three days before Christmas in 2012 – was the red card shown to Andy Carroll by Howard Webb in a controversial encounter with Swansea in January 2014.

Despite what the rest of the football world felt about the decision, Webb was right according to his former colleague Graham Poll. Apparently the people who judge such things reckon Poll is one of the best refs this country has ever produced. In fact, he was in line to take charge of the 2006 World Cup final until he made a slight error in a crucial qualifying game and booked the same Croatian player three times before sending him off. Nice one, Graham. Why don't you and Mr Webb both take a wheelbarrow full of Hacketts and sling your hook before I get cross again. Oh, and you can take Anthony Taylor with you.