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scored Forest’s first, four minutes after the restart, we all knew our duty. As they rejoiced over their goal, we continued to celebrate the magnificence of supporting the most wonderful football club in the world. Billy Bonds’ claret and blue army! No one faltered.
    The goals kept coming, but we never missed a beat. Billy Bonds’ claret and blue army! Louder. And louder. And louder still. By now, we weren’t just standing – we were standing on our seats. When Stuart Pearce scored Forest’s third after seventy minutes we saw their supporters leap to their feet, arms aloft. But we couldn’t hear their cheers: the noise in the West Ham stands was so great we simply drowned them out. It was truly bizarre to watch a large group of grown men and women jumping for joy, while not havingto listen to a single decibel from them. With no sound to accompany their celebration, they looked faintly ridiculous – and the pain that always comes with an opposition goal just wasn’t there for once. It was as if their fourth and final goal never happened in our part of the ground.
    In many ways, it is deeply worrying how you can so easily surrender your individuality to a crowd in the way we all did in response to such incitement. Frightening, but empowering. We may have been losing on the pitch, but we were victorious in the stands.
    When the final whistle went, many seemed slightly baffled about what to do next. We saluted our team, gave the referee one last volley of abuse and considered the options. As we shuffled out I heard one guy ask his mate if they should go on into the city centre for a tear-up. ‘Nah, let’s go home,’ was the simple reply.
    The journey up to Birmingham had been full of hope – scarves out the window, sausage sandwiches on the motorway, Peter Frampton on the tape deck. Oh baby, I love your way.
    Coming back was a different story – more a case of Leonard Cohen than stadium rock. We’d lost, and our Wembley dream was over. Even the gallows humour that inevitably follows on such occasions wasn’t enough to lift the sombre mood. It wasn’t until later that we realised we had been part of something special.
    After the cream of the British cavalry were slaughtered at the Battle of Balaclava, the French general who oversaw the massacre famously remarked that the Charge of the Light Brigade was magnificent, but not war as he understood it. We got a similar response from people who had watched the game on TV. ‘If that’s West Ham when you’re losing, what’s it like when you win?’ a colleague asked me some days later. He missed the point, of course.
    In historical terms this was less Balaclava and more the equivalent of Dunkirk, which in truth was a desperate retreat from a rampant enemy, but came to be regarded as a triumph for the never-say-die spirit that is one of humanity’s greatest qualities.
    I’m certain there will never be a show of support like that again by the followers of any club, win or lose. What the West Ham supporters did at Villa Park was unique but, as I say, we never stopped to think that our display of defiance was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. That’s the trouble with making history. At the time, you have no idea you are actually doing it.

Chapter 2
Home sweet home
    A NYONE WITH THE slightest interest in English football will undoubtedly know that West Ham are moving to the Olympic Stadium in time for the 2016/17 season. Apparently, a new bright shiny stadium will herald a bright shiny future for the club. But, to be perfectly honest, I don’t want to go.
    We are told that what’s needed is a ground more accessible for supporters, allowing bigger crowds to watch the games and enabling the club to become a major force in the land. The funny thing is the case being put forward to justify uprooting to Stratford sounds remarkably like the one that took us to the Boleyn Ground more than 100 years ago.
    At the turn of the twentieth century, impressively whiskered directors