Highbury, May 1991

 

 

Let's swiftly whizz forward five seasons from yesterday's 'Highbury, August 1985' post. The final match of the Gunners' Championship winning 1990-91 season is over. Just over 41,000 fans packed out Highbury on Saturday 11th May 1991 to watch Arsenal thump Coventry City 6-1. 

The First Division trophy was already in the bag before the game, and I'd brought along my Olympus OM10 35mm camera to record some mementoes of the big day. Of course, the fans were proud to show off their colours - but what's so telling about these pictures, compared to those taken in the same location just 5 years earlier, is how much red and white there is: replica tops were now de rigueur, along with Arsenal scarves, and title-winning souvenir rosettes, hats and T-shirts...

V for Victory

Hey, now that's a ridiculous place to park up a Hot Dog & Burger stand

A cracking view of a jam-packed Avenell Road

Fans look up to the open windows of the players dressing room windows in the East Stand -  hoping to catch sight of their heroes...

...and some of them spot me too!

These joyful Arsenal fans are today twenty two years older. How many of them still go to the matches? And what, they wonder, will Season 2013-14 bring?

Highbury, August 1985

It's just a couple of days to go to the beginning of the new Premier League season, and supporters of the 20 competing teams are preparing for their emotions to be kicked up and down and around the field for yet another year.

So it's definitely appropriate to pull out of their paper wallet, a bunch of photographs that I took on August 24th 1985, with a Kodak Pocket Instamatic camera using 110 cartridge-based film. The match was Arsenal versus Manchester United, in the old First Divison, at the Gunners former ground, Highbury Stadium, Islington, London N5. It was Arsenal's second home match of the 1985-86 season.

These snaps were just taken for a bit of fun, but inevitably almost thirty years on, they have become an intriguing reminder of what our footballing past looked like.



The roasted peanut seller and his hand-sized white paper bags filled with nuts always stood around the stadium's main entrance in Avenell Road

 

A bright Summer's day on Avenell Road, a mum in pink, her punk-rock daughter and son, police on horseback, and fans passing an entrance to Highbury's 'Clock End' - which is to the right of the photo

The iconic East Stand in Avenell Road opened in 1936. It's facade is now incorporated into the block of luxury flats that was built on the site of Arsenal's first North London home.

What is so striking about this snapshot of ordinary football fans outside the stadium in 1985 is that not one of them is wearing a replica shirt. In fact there are no scarves, or anything that identifies these fans as Arsenal (or perhaps Man Utd) supporters.


Looking down on the East Stand's lower tier. Note that it was split - with the front half for standing in, while the back half was seated. Again, these fans are wearing clothes that look like they were bought in C&A, rather than these days where expensive replica tops are purchased in the Club Shop.

The Arsenal players emerge from the East Stand's dressing room, and head for the centre circle

8: Ian Allinson, 2: Viv Anderson, 6: Tommy Caton, 4: Steve Williams, 7: Stewart Robson, 1: John Lukic, 3: Kenny Sansom

The players salute the fans, and the TV cameras on the balcony of the West Stand (built in 1932)

The rest of the team that day was 5: David O'Leary, 9: Charlie Nicholas, 10: Tony Woodcock, 11: Graham Rix, and 12: Paul Davis. Only one substitute allowed back then!

For the record, Arsenal lost the match 1-2 , and were to end 7th in Division 1 that season, three places behind United who were 4th.

Tomorrow I will post another set of photos taken at Highbury. This time in Arsenal's Championship winning season of 1990-91. It will be fascinating to see what a difference five years will have on football fans fashions...

And All Leading Makes

I'll let this brief run of musical-themed posts come to an end with a set of three of my old transparencies that I've just run through the scanner. I've not seen them for ages, but they certainly must have sealed an impression on me, as whenever I've been stuck in the inevitable traffic-clogs along London's Holloway Road, I still think of the dilapidated remains of a music shop called Crossman's.

The billposters confirm the year, and an approximate month when I took the pictures: there's a black, red and white illustrated poster promoting 'The Dark Destroyer' Nigel Benn's boxing match at the Royal Albert Hall, which was on Saturday 28th May 1988. Other posters pasted on the boarded-up window panes announce the release of The Cure's John Peel Sessions, a gig by Linton Kwesi Johnson at Kentish Town's Town and Country Club, and another for Jerry Harrison, formerly of New York's Talking Heads.

93 Holloway Road, then (now it's an antiques shop)

I'm not too impressed with the main shopfront image, but at least I did get something. Shame that I can't make out how the wooden gate is actually connected to the rest of the building? Maybe it was just propped up, as it looks like this once-splendid looking shop became a repository for dumped rubbish.

However, I do prefer the two close-up images which highlight the period details in the signage and the lettering. Relics like this one were still peppered around the streets of the City at this time. Within a few years they'd all left us for good.

MAN 93 HIS

 

I've not discovered much information about the history of Crossman's Music and Radio although I note that around 1915, Crossman's actually published this postcard (below) of Islington's Central Library which is almost opposite the site of the shop. The Library was opened in 1907, and it continues to serve the area to this day...

 

a Crossman's product, pre-radio