Amy Lawrence with then-Arsenal manager George Graham
Amy Lawrence started her writing career with The Gooner fanzine and after many years with the Guardian and the Observer, covering the game from grassroots to World Cup finals, she joined The Athletic in 2019.
When did you start supporting Arsenal and why?
My father is from West London and our household was Queens Park Rangers as my brother took after our dad. As a girl in the 1970s, football wasn’t exactly thrown at me as a sport.
The way I started supporting Arsenal was sort of an accident. The father of my best friend at the time, Jo, had three season tickets in the West Stand Upper and he wanted to take his daughter to a game. He thought it would be sensible to take a friend with her in case she got bored - I was the chosen friend.
I was intoxicated by it and promptly went home and announced I was an Arsenal fan. It was our nearest ground and it had the added benefit that I supported my local club. I had to rely on someone nice enough to take me - barring family trips to QPR v Arsenal at Loftus Road - until I was old enough to go on my own, when I reached about 12/13. I could tell a little white lie and go with my pocket money, just jump on the bus and pay at the turnstiles to get in the North Bank.
There was a big moment when my stepdad gave me ticket his ticket for the Littlewoods Cup final in 1987. I went with three of his friends….I’m not sure they were happy about a teenager trailing along instead but they were kind enough to take me!
A big part of the Arsenal kinship is about passing it on. There have been times when three generations of us have gone to matches together and it’s a unique kind of bond.
What was your first Arsenal match?
That game with Jo was Arsenal against Nottingham Forest in September 1977 and we won 3-0.
It was love at first sight and it was only when I watched Fever Pitch years later that it really resonated how the first impression can reel other people in so completely, as it did for me.
I remember being assailed by the sensory experiences at once, the colours were brighter, the noises louder, the smells were more pungent and everything felt notched up from normal life.
I was just thrown into it all, being part of the crowd and a big event and feeling all this stuff wash over me as we celebrated a goal…I thought it was phenomenal.
Who was your first Arsenal hero and why?
In the earliest days Liam Brady was obviously the best but in many ways my first real hero was David Rocastle because he encapsulated what everyone on the terraces felt. He wasn’t much older than us and the connection was very strong.
There was something about his London grit and determination, he showed how much he cared, allied to being so outrageously gifted. It made for a very compelling mix which made it almost impossible not to love him.
There are not many ex-players who I have met who have talked about the club with the affection he did…. I was blessed to know him and talk to him about that.
David Dein once said that he had found a Brazilian playing in South London and that sums up how we all felt.
Who is your favourite ever Arsenal player and why?
Of course it should be Dennis Bergkamp or Thierry Henry but my heart always pulls me back to Ian Wright.
The explosive way he came into the club and that full-powered, heart-on-his-sleeve energy was part of everything he did for every minute he was there.
He blew us away….it felt like it was his destiny to break the goalscoring record that had stood since the 1930s.
There was something amazing about having a player who you felt would score every time he played and it’s very rare to have that confidence in your player as we had in Wrighty.
He also shook up the image of the club, the Boring Boring Arsenal, old-fashioned traditions and Marble Halls and Arsenal class ideals and set his own traditions at the club.
He had a different personality and charisma and like Rocky, he also embodies that fan-like love now.
What’s your biggest Arsenal regret/disappointment?
The 2006 Champions League Final 2006 is a very deep cut.
I will always remember waking up in a hotel room in Villareal. It is a small place, when most people were staying in Valencia, about half an hour away, which had a lot more going on.
Somehow I had one of the few hotel rooms in Villarreal and I remember waking up the next morning feeling like I was floating, not really walking on the floor.
There was some signage to do with the Champions League and I was staring at it and saying to myself “We are in the Final!”
I couldn’t quite believe it.
I grew up watching the European Cup Final in awe, with epic legendary European teams like AC Milan and Ajax, that I never really felt Arsenal was….
I was so proud and it was so exciting and the fact that it was in Paris, Arsene Wenger’s home felt like it was meant to be.
I remember walking away from the ground after the game and my best mate, who has had a season ticket with me since 1989, was in tears and said “That’s it, it will never happen again.”
The other overwhelming disappointment was leaving Highbury, which was the heart and soul of the Arsenal we grew up with.
Highbury was a place where I loved every single nook and cranny, it was unique and you could feel the history within the walls.
You could feel previous managerial decisions; previous players’ footsteps; previous fans adventures on the terraces, from famous tales in black and white to some of the best football played by a multi-cultural team from a more modern league of nations.
I felt the whole club story lived in Highbury and we were so lucky to see some amazing chapters in our lifetime.
I believe that there is a real difference between a ground and a stadium and I really miss grounds.
Stadiums are bigger and more comfortable and I understand financially why they’re important for expanding the game.
But nothing will replicate that feeling of turning down Avenell Road and seeing the throng outside the Marble Halls frontage. The best view in the world.
It really annoys me that the Emirates Stadium doesn’t have an entrance so we’ve gone from having the greatest entrance in world football to not having an entrance at all. I would have loved to have had a word with the architect to insist, “Please have an entrance”
I will never prefer the atmosphere of a bowl compared to a ground with ends… when you’re either playing or defending your end and there’s an energy where the ball feels like it gets sucked in or pushed out by the crowd.
What is your favourite Arsenal memory (away from the pitch) and why?
I loved being in the Clock End at Highbury, the routine of going in, going to our place where our mates were, seeing the same old characters around you, sharing all the things we shared together.
Away from that when Arsenal won double in 1998, I was in the mixed zone by the Wembley tunnel.
It was a bit dark in there and you could see the sunshine on the grass at the end. I was imagining how amazing it must have been with tunnel at old Wembley walking out and seeing that.
The crowd had gone, the stadium was more or less empty and only a few people were milling around so my colleague and I snuck out of the tunnel and went onto the pitch and found the Charlie George spot and did his celebration from 1971.
It was a bit cheeky but it felt poignant and I was grinning like an idiot.
I was born in 1971, I grew up hearing stories of the legend of the Double and Arsenal had done the Double again.
What is your favourite ever Arsenal match?
It has to be Anfield in 1989.
It was my last day of school so I bunked off and was on one of the coaches in the convoy that spent an infernal amount of time on the M1 and M6 due to a strange traffic jam.
I missed kick-off but we made it in and some people didn’t even do that. I know people who realised they weren’t going to make it and have unused tickets who diverted to find a pub somewhere in Cheshire because they weren’t going to see the game.
It was like an out of body experience. Every time I see the goal, which is now not far off billions of times, I get transported back to that moment. I am never unaffected by seeing that goal and all that it meant and continues to mean.
I felt like it changed my life.
It taught me a life lesson that you can do anything, that things people tell you are impossible are possible. I’ve always been an optimistic and ‘89 has a lot to do with that.
It was surreal on coach back down and we lost all track of time. Unlike today’s world, no one had a mobile phone so while today you would spend the whole time looking at Twitter, messaging mates and videoing things, everything happened in real time.
Hardly anyone had a camera and so few fans even have photos from the game.
The opportunity to make the film was such a blessing, to be able to spend so much time going over the minutiae that was so momentous with the protagonists and try and introduce it to a new audience as well, to find that perspective for people who hadn’t lived through it and why it was so important.
There is so much context with Hillsborough and it being 18 years since we had won the title, with Liverpool being a superpower and us being a young team that hadn’t achieved.
It really was David v Goliath.
Before the film came out we did a small screening and we had Lee Dixon with his children, David Rocastle’s kids and the daughter of Michael Thomas all there as well.
They all knew what had happened, it wasn’t exactly a family secret, but they said it was first time they understood why people went on about Anfield ‘89 in the way they did…