Mike Francis
It’s been a pretty wet day in London and for anyone who had a seat in the front eight rows of the away stand at Craven Cottage, you have my respect although I suspect you’d rather have had an umbrella. I hope you’ve dried out!
My designated seat was in row five, but I didn’t stay there long as the rain soon had me scampering to look for a seat further back in the stand which would enable me to stay dry. I know. I’m a wimp.
The conversation about the rain at half-time reminded me of an article we ran in issue 77 of The Gooner back in 1997. We’d already determined in the previous issue that the coldest game (at the time) had been Oldham away in the League Cup in November 1989, but we then wondered whether being cold at football was as bad as being wet, so the challenge was set to find out, by means of a knock-out competition, which was the wettest Arsenal game we could recall. Here’s what we decided…
Sitting or standing in saturated clothing with no prospect of drying out for another four hours is a horrible experience, but one I’m sure we’ve all suffered at some stage.
The downpour before our recent encounter with Manchester United was as heavy a burst as I can ever remember, but it didn’t really last long enough to compare to say Portsmouth on New Years Day 1988 when the heavens poured for the whole day.
For the last couple of weeks our esteemed panel of judges have been sifting through your nominations and deliberating over highly scientific equations to determine which match is most deserving of the title “The Wettest Game Ever”.
The only two home games to survive the preliminaries were paired in the first round and the general consensus was that although the weather was truly atrocious for the visit of Spurs last November, it was that much worse for the Sheffield Wednesday fixture in 1993. It’s open to some debate as to whether this result was influenced by the fact that one of the judges had spent an hour before the game wandering round a graveyard in Hendon trying to find Herbert Chapman’s final resting place, and was therefore soaked to the skin before he even reached Highbury.
The FA Cup tie at Shrewsbury stood out as a wet one for the fact that we had to wade through what basically amounted to a lake which had materialised in the car park outside the away supporters entrance. However, it’s still a first round casualty because if there’s one thing guaranteed to make you feel less wet, it’s an Arsenal victory to get you singing in the rain.
According to legend, it’s always raining in Manchester, so we shouldn’t have been surprised when it bucketed down for our game at Old Trafford in the spring of 1989. Memorable for the fact that it was the day George unveiled his sweeper system and Tony Adams scored for both sides, but not enough for a semi-final place though. Out.
The judges were unable to reach a majority verdict on the final first round tie between Portsmouth and Stoke, so we once again had to turn to a incredibly knowledgeable statistician of our acquaintance. “I distinctly remember consulting my dipstick at both games and can therefore confirm that whilst the rain fell at a faster rate during the first half of the game at Stoke, the overall rainfall was higher at Fratton Park by 0.02mm.” Conclusive I think.
However, in the semi-finals, Pompey got put firmly in their place by the match at Ipswich on the opening day of the 1977/78 season because as far as our judges can recall, this was the last time the players were actually taken off the pitch because of a drop of rain (and you thought today’s stars were overpaid pansies) and we lost!
In the other half of the draw, Barnsley got the nod over Sheffield Wednesday at Highbury for their valiant effort to protect Arsenal fans from the weather by providing them with stylish (sic) anoraks. Unfortunately, by the time we got them, we were so wet already there didn’t seem to be much point.
So to the final. What’s the first thing you do when the rain comes down? Look for cover normally, right? Well you wouldn’t have had to look very far at Portman Road, but Oakwell was a different matter altogether unless you count holding a programme over your head as adequate protection. I wonder how many people missed work with flu symptons in the days following this game?
There you have it then, we gathered together what was felt to be the wettest collection of games imaginable, but everyone agreed that Barnsley still came out on top by some margin.
What games have there been since this article was published which would now come into the reckoning? Was today just a shower? Let us know in the comments.
