Ed Naylor (aka Yorkshire Gooner)
For the last five years, I have been accompanied to most Arsenal home and away games by a 6m x 2m flag bearing the legend “Yorkshire Gooner”. The flag was one of those slightly random purchases, prompted by an advert in “When Saturday Comes” by a business called Barmy Flags (I can recommend them highly). Due to a complete stuff-up by yours truly, the flag which I thought was going to be 6ft x 2ft actually ended up being a massive 6m x 2m. The cost was about £150 and it coincided with a period when we were supposedly saving up for a holiday. I’d hoped to keep the purchase secret from Mrs YG but the kids were excited at the arrival of the massive flag and spilled the beans. The end result was an all too familiar loss of brownie points…
The Barmy Flags website pretty much allows you to do anything, and I was probably a bit unadventurous in selecting a Cross of St George and just putting Yorkshire Gooner across the middle of it (to explain, I was born in bred in Barnsley but have lived in north London since 1985).
I’m sure a psychologist would identify some sort of attention seeking personality-disorder; my mates probably just see me as daft or eccentric - a 48 year old who behaves as if he were 18. I think my main motivation was to brighten up our new stadium which looked impressive if rather drab, lacking the banners and colour of stadia such as Anfield or even Stamford Bridge.
A rather bizarre ban on national flags hadn’t helped. I had liked seeing the flags of various overseas Gooner groups at Highbury but soon after we moved to the Emirates, there was a dispute involving a Northern Cypriot flag and as a result of this, the club introduced a ban on national flags. It seemed rather an overreaction to me and it resulted in the stadium looking even more soulless. In fairness, the club has since taken steps in the right direction, reversing the flag ban and undertaking the “Arsenalisation” programme of the last couple of seasons. Whilst we’re not exactly ablaze with colour at home games, it’s better than it was.
So why has the flag assumed such importance at YG Towers? Firstly, it is something we always watch out for on Match of the Day - we sit in the family enclosure towards the front of block 29 and press and TV have frequently featured goal celebrations right in front of us. When we go to televised away games, I often get texts telling me that the flag has been spotted - or someone has picked us out in the crowd near the flag. I’m not convinced this behaviour is so very odd- point a camera at any group of people and it’s fairly normal for them to wave or attempt to gain attention.
The flag has been a great ice-breaker at away matches. In Marseilles earlier this season, the steward helped me put it up and then proceeded to talk me step by step through our team and identify its weak links (it helped I spoke a bit of French). And pretty good he was too - right from the improvement in the goalkeeping situation to our dependency on RvP’s goals (thankfully his “if van Persie gets injured, you’re stuffed” prediction has failed to materialise (yet)). Proof of the French interest in our club and manager.
I can’t help feeling that the flag’s reception at away games gives something of an insight into the personality of the home club. Away games at Stoke - hostile fans and proceedings dominated by throw-ins - aren’t a bundle of laughs but the steward who spent 10 minutes helping me find the best place for a large flag and put it up couldn’t have been more obliging. In contrast, the petty Old Trafford bureaucrat who insisted on measuring the flag, condemned it as being too big for club rules and tried to confiscate it (I had to promise to put it in my bag and not remove it - it felt like being a schoolkid) probably typifies the arrogance of Manchester United (but then again we lost so it's probably just sour grapes).
I for one would like to see more Gooner flags, particularly at home games. It still seems odd that we have far more flags at Champions League away games than we do at our own stadium. Do European away game attendees not go to home games or do they just not take their flags with them?
