Andy Thompson
It was a pleasure to visit the Emirates recently – and for the right one of the two Bayern games. It was only my second time watching Arsenal live since the move from Highbury and in the company of my friend Ian, a lifelong fan now in his fifth decade of support for the Gunners. My own team, Doncaster Rovers, has never scaled the heady heights of the Premiership - gallingly that’s been the fortune of our version of Spurs, Barnsley. We do, however, take comfort in the fact that, unlike the clay-footed Tykes, we’ve always had a reputation for football purism, (Arsenal fans at this point may laugh at our acquisition of the label The Arsenal of League One as we passed our way to promotion in a style you will have become familiar with under M. Wenger). A five-year illumination of the Championship followed and our chairman John Ryan (if you don’t know how Rovers were funded by their one-time saviour, just google Melinda Messenger and all will be revealed) was talking Champions League football to our wonder boss Sean O’Driscoll. In fact, you may also recall your last gasp equaliser and penalty victory over us in the last eight of the League Cup, tenth anniversary with us soon.
While we have our own new(ish) ground, the Keepmoat, I was struck by the fact that we can’t boast the array of murals and statues of sparkling stars of yesteryear that you so visibly do. The sheer volume of legends is testimony to Arsenal’s illustrious past but, at the same time, the mischief in me found voice, so I asked Ian, ‘Where’s Gus Caesar’?
But I’m not being nasty. When you watch lower league football, there is a reverence reserved for those players who have, albeit briefly, played at the highest level - although fans can be very cruel, funny and generous and often at the same time. I once attended a Scarborough v Leigh RMI thriller where the visiting keeper had the most appalling things shouted at him by east Yorkshire ‘wits’. In the goalmouth quiet, during one of the many periods when the ball was stuck in a dense midfield battle, it was suggested to him that he might be better off retiring from football and dedicating himself to the performance of anatomical acts of mindboggling dexterity and depravity on his own person, to which he replied ‘I really wouldn’t mind what he says, but that’s me dad!’ The home crowd was won over and a strange hero was born. All is audible away from the Emirates – this is what you miss.
So our two worlds collide in the figure of Gus Caesar, whom you saw on the hopeful way up, and I saw on the, in Gus’s case, dignified way down. He came to Belle Vue (our old ground) some 20 years ago in deep December in a Colchester shirt and, at that level, was a virtual Bobby Moore, a colossus of a figure, controlling the game, making sense of the messes that clutter Division 4/League 2 games at the back, elegantly dispatching the ball to a midfield that grew in confidence and composure - all emanated from the former Arsenal star that night, and they walked away with all three points. So, maybe not statue time at the Emirates for Gus just yet, but proof that you have to be capable of an awful lot on the green to get anywhere near wearing your red and white shirt. Ours is just a little easier to come by.
