Buzz of being a West Ham fan is now silenced
Mark Sullivan, 45 and a lifelong fan, on how things have soured since the Hammers went to the London Stadium
THE SMELL of the pubs packed to the rafters along Green Street and the vans cooking gut-busting burgers and hotdogs.
The buzz as 3pm gets closer, as the supporters’ singing gets louder the more they drink, as the police horses parade up and down the road.
Fans coming from all angles down narrow roads, all leading to the Boleyn Ground. The anticipation as you walk into the ground, through the concourse and out into the stands.
It was a feeling that in the 30 years I went to Upton Park never faded and died.
But, sadly, everything that gave me the buzz of a matchday experience at West Ham has now gone.
No longer do I have a season ticket. I gave that up in the summer, having held it for 25 years.
I gave it a year to see what it would be like at the London Stadium but it is wrong, so wrong!
If you turn up at 2.30pm now, you are met with shoppers from Westfield and fans buying popcorn in the stadium like they are going to watch a Disney film.
Sorry, but I am old school and that is not the football experience I fell in love with as a young boy from the East End.
We were all sold a dream that moving to the London Stadium and selling the Boleyn Ground was a way forward for West Ham – but that could not be further from the truth.
We were promised by the club’s board that we could start competing with the big boys in the transfer market and in the Premier League.
Members of my family who have been season-ticket holders for many a year are also starting to wonder if it is all worth it now.
Friends who have met up for years and treat going to West Ham as a way of life are now only going for the social in the pub before and after games as a way of an event… and the football experience is coming a poor second. The 52,000 season-ticket holders seems a very good number and with the same amount of members on a waiting list, it all seems good for the club at the moment. But the more the fans feel dismay at the way the club is being run, the quicker the numbers will dwindle.
I can only speak from my experience but my son and I have tested ourselves to see if we miss being season-ticket holders.
We do not miss it one bit and that hurts me as a proud East End boy whose family have supported the Hammers all of their life and who will be West Ham until we die.
We have now decided to go to follow our local non-League side Phoenix Sports Club in Barnehurst, Kent, to experience football how it should be. Players earning peanuts but sweating blood for the shirt; a board of directors who are part of the fan base; cheap, proper football food; and standing up to watch the beautiful game.
It is how professional football used to be, it is what we now love and it would take something very special at the Hammers to ever get us back.
That is what really breaks my heart.