Effra wrote this even before to the whole ‘halftime racism show‘ thing, which sort of sums up West Ham’s season really.
There are times when football’s capacity to astonish is simultaneously a terrible and wonderful thing.
A day that started off like West Ham’s Sunday when the newspapers hit the internet, indeed a week that had lurched from disaster to disaster through the whole gamut of West Ham’s problems this season, could not possibly have as its end that game and that last few minutes, could it?
Sunday lunchtime I wouldn’t have thought that West Ham could possibly find any new way this season to skin us emotionally, but by 6 o’clock I was wrong for the umpteenth time this season. There really are no limits to the way a football club can make you miserable, and nobody’s imagination is up to it, however many times you think that you’ve been there, done that.
And yet, twenty-four hours later, I am thinking it was a different kind of day. So we are going down, Tottenham of all clubs got the satisfaction of putting the final nail in the coffin, and Anton Ferdinand has found new ways to disgrace our club. But we were also part of a game of football that showed what the Premiership can be about rather than the overpriced predictability that is driving away fans who have made watching football part of their lives for decades. And just for a joyous, headless moment as Tevez and us became one, we got to remember just what an exhilarating feeling football can let loose.
It never lasts, not even if you support a team that hasn’t made the kind of pact with madness stitched up in E13 over the summer, but if you can’t take it even when it turns out not to make the slightest bit of difference, then there’s no point being a football fan at all.