Alex Steine
Highbury, with all its eminence, was playing to its last audiences. We, as Arsenal fans, were aware that something cataclysmic was about to take place; we were leaving home. Could we stand on our own two feet somewhere else? It may have been just across the road, but a new home all the same. A farewell to hearts. Human emotions are odd peculiarities in our species, some we cannot lay name to. In Orwell's '1984', Big Brother began taking words out of use in an action known as 'newspeak'. They rightly considered that if you take a word out of use soon people will be unable to express themselves. Take an emotive word and with it you perhaps take the emotion too. Don't use 'bad', use 'ungood'. It worked!
With this in mind, there is no manner of emotional description that doesn't have a resonance with me, and many others of kindred spirit, when we talk of that 'dear old lady', Highbury. Highbury was our home. How is it at all plausible though, that mature grown men and women could feel a binding connection with an inanimate object like a football stadium? Just bricks and mortar, the uninitiated might say, yet it was so much more than that. Like an offspring, we each had invested so much of ourselves into the place. The fabric of that old stadium had permeated us all. It pervades us still, it is a part of us.
From the exterior magnificence to the imagined interior, it was a thing of beauty to us, and a thing of immense pride. I was always so proud of our history as I grew from little boy to man, that craziness, that abstract feeling, is still there. Many people, disheartened by modern circumstances, have transferred their desires for a better world, a nicer existence - certainly something perceived as 'higher' - into something locked in yesterday. Yet, though generally described as nostalgia, I think it's part of the fact that we are sentient - we think; it is something held in store in all of us which I think is beneficial to the species. It can propel us forward and improve our lot.
In theory, we guide the young, explaining the benefits of something which is out of date or fashion. Now we compete with global consumerism in influencing the young, so we just have to shout our message louder. By this article alone, the young guns of Arsenal can read and see this incredible link that we, who knew Highbury, have an almost transcendental connection with the place. For Arsenal fans, many of the perceptions harboured in our minds to do with our current situation take an unreal hold on us. The new stadium, a beautiful edifice, becomes the scapegoat for those untranslatable feelings. Why? Because it isn't Highbury.
The splendour of the old stadium is in a class of its own, but as a straight comparison it is easily matched and often surpassed by our new home, though not in every department; but our new home, the Grove, doesn't yet have the history to compete, and in many respects it never will. There are tangible reasons for preferring either stadium. Too far away from the players at the Grove, personifying the distancing perceived by many, of the chasm between the players of today and us. Poor facilities at Highbury, clean hygienic toilet facilities at the Grove. Have to sit at the new place, when we stood, sang and danced out our joys at Highbury, though many had obstructed views at the old ground, and danger often stood beside us on those terraces. Ironic that a regular criticism of the new Arsenal Stadium is the nuisance value some spectators create. The entering and leaving of their seats to get food and drink. I say ironic because the ease with which people can find and leave their seats should be a cause for celebration; it is that convenience which allows visitors to come and go at will. At Highbury, if you needed to leave your seat before half-time, it was almost impossible. We are selective in our memories.
Still, I am not making a case for the new stadium. I don't need to. It is my new home, where the Arsenal play; that is enough. Yet, do I miss Highbury? With every ounce of my being. The uniqueness spoke to me, and I carried that message to anyone to whom I had the opportunity to explain its magnificence, or to just plain educate others. Those floodlights along the roof of the main stands, how classy was that? No ugly pylons announcing a football ground, just a discreet lighting system that was only evident once inside the ground. The glass wind-breakers, in their distinctive angled design, shielding the upper tier seats. The lovely yet quaint glass players’ tunnel and coaches’ seats. The stucco walls, cannon murals, and the flags flying.
Then there was the uniformed doorman, those marbled halls, and the mundanely but wonderfully functional underground heating. An actual marching band! As numbers on shirts were the brainchild of Herbert Chapman it is fair to say that that too is inexorably part of Highbury folklore. That clock! To remind anyone that Herbert Chapman was the man to propose the idea of a clock in stadia. Naturally, the powers of the day vetoed the idea, so we erected our own. Now it sits comfortably at the Grove. Football timing was given to the world's footballing public from a root of an idea which was born at Highbury. We were the trailblazers, the innovators, the pioneers, the first of most things and Highbury was our platform. You cannot, we will not, discard that vital aspect of what is Arsenal.
So is it reasonable to be connected to an aged building? Is it what adults do? Yes it is. And we should defend that feeling, those emotions, beyond most others, because this is what defines us, and makes each of us what we are. Highbury's memories belong to us, no one can take them away, and in an ever-changing, often threatening world they are our salvation. True, our memories of a past age are rose-tinted. We filter out the negative and factor the positive up a few notches. Of course, it can work the other way should we harbour a negative concept for something, but the essence of the remembered time or object is usually distilled in a way which is functionally accurate.
My thoughts of Highbury are very personal, generally matching other fans’. Yet I would want to give something to those who never knew the place. I want to bestow part of the heritage of this magnificent club which is Arsenal. Highbury stands as a word close to that of 'Arsenal'; no other word attains that distinction. Going back to that Orwellian theme, possibly that perhaps explains the reason for the sense of loss that moving to the Grove created within many of us. We cannot link the words Arsenal/Highbury in quite the same way anymore.
Life is about survival at a fundamental level. We as Arsenal supporters need to survive, or continue if you prefer. There is a natural grieving period with the loss of anything held dear, yet also a completely natural sense of releasing that thing of our affections, so we can go on. So too we set free our craving for a return for Highbury. Wistfully and with a sense of mature acceptance; it is not coming back. The younger fans reading this should take away one quiet and personal thought, that being that Highbury really did mean all and more besides to those who claim a part of Highbury as their own. The stories they've heard, and reflections of those who have bent their ears with regaled mutterings and musings of Highbury, were based in fact. Like much connected with our club, Highbury was unique. It built, with many other aspects, a belief that we are different. We shall continue, amongst all the ugly hype of today's football, and disenchantment it brings, to be just a little more special than the rest. We do it without Highbury as our home, but with it now taking on gigantic proportions as part of Arsenal Football Club's folklore.
