David Rocastle and me

On the 15th anniversary of his untimely passing, @WestStandTone remembers David Rocastle.

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Today marks 15 years since we lost David Rocastle at the ridiculously young age of 33. David was born one year and one day earlier than me, on 2nd May 1967, at the Clock End of London to my North Bank. It still seems odd for me to say it, but our lives became unexpectedly linked by that centre of the universe that has bound me to so many of the favourite people in my life – The Arsenal.

I watched Arsenal, week-in, week-out, from the early 70s; spent every other Saturday with my best mates from school during the latter part of that decade at the green gates of the players’ car park from 11:00am, waiting for the same players’ autographs time and time again. Arsenal, and other people who loved Arsenal, became my extended family from the age of four. Looking back I suspect this was all linked to the loss of my father at that age but having found the love of my life, a short distance from my broken home, there could be no other.

I had some awkward teenage years. These had coincided with the end of the Terry Neill era and the unforgettable Don Howe years. I left home at fifteen, a couple of months before my O-Levels (that’s like GCSEs now, I think), and moved out of London to live with a woman four or five years older than me. I’d given up on the school thing and had decided to move on and start a family with the woman whose name I’d had tattooed on my arm.

I’d stopped communicating with my Mum and taken up a job in a shoe shop in order to support my prospective new family. However, I still had my Arsenal season ticket and I still made a 200 mile trip every other Saturday to go to see The Arsenal. Things came and went, the woman ran off with some skinhead who would sniff glue with her and I came back home, passed my O-Levels and A-Levels with flying colours, and went off to university, just as George Graham became Arsenal manager and David Rocastle became a regular in the Arsenal team.

It wasn’t easy. I ran out of money and I had to take a year off uni, working at M&S in Brent Cross, and the high life with fancy people in a fancy town had come back to earth with a huge bump. My 19th birthday was 3rd May 1987 and I was back living in London and working like a dog, from 5am to 2pm (sometimes any hours to 10pm) every day in the M&S warehouse.

However, life was not without its bright points. On 4th March 1987 we’d beaten Totteringham HoThurs (1961, never again), 2-1 in a replay of the Littlewood’s Cup semi-final with David Rocastle defying the odds (and a half-time final ticket details announcement from the Spuds) to win us a place in the final. We won our first trophy in eight years on 5th April that year and it was a pretty good time to be an Arsenal fan.

I’d been working on my 19th birthday and my girlfriend at the time made me leave my car at work, and picked me up to take me out for the afternoon. We had to stop at Mill Hill Broadway so she could pick-up something she’d ordered from a shop. She was a massive Arsenal fan (surprise, surprise, from a family of Arsenal fans) and she recognised David Rocastle as soon as she saw him outside WH Smith’s. She asked him to sign my birthday card and I sat in her car, open mouthed, as I saw him converse with her and then look toward me as she pointed to me through the window.

David walked over, opened the driver’s door and said “Hello, Tony, Happy Birthday! It was mine yesterday”. I’m not sure what I said but the reply was “Let me buy you a beer!” and, within a couple of minutes, I was at The Railway propping up the bar with David Rocastle. It might only have been twenty minutes in total, but I had spent some of the best quality time of my life so far talking to a bloke whose star was on the rise of all rises whilst mine was in a trough. There was talk of Shite Hart Lame. There was talk about Wembley. There was hugging. You wouldn’t have known it though, it was just two blokes having a drink in a very unremarkable pub. One of those blokes was down to earth for a reason, the other was a complete superstar.

Fast-forward nine years and I’ve been through another traumatic time in life and had to change career due to circumstances beyond my control. I’ve found myself in TGI Friday’s in Covent Garden and I’m taking a client out for drinks and dinner in a situation that is completely alien to me. I’m in a huge crush at the bar and a familiar face smiles at me, “Hello, Tony” he says, “do you want a beer?”

It’s David Rocastle, on the Chelsea Christmas Party (when’s the last time a Premiership footballer went somewhere as humble as TGI Fridays?!). He remembered our previous meeting in Mill Hill, my name, our proximate birthdays and that I was a massive Arsenal fan. He tapped Dennis Wise on the shoulder and he made him buy me a beer out of Mark Hughes, Gianluca Vialli and Rudd Gullit’s whip. We stood there in that crowd and had a conversation about how fucked his knee was, Arsenal and football in general.

One of my clients was a massive Chelsea fan (long-suffering to be fair to her) and she was introduced to all of her heroes in what became a perfect evening for her. She still has a picture of her between me and (the at least a foot shorter that me) Dennis Wise. We were, apparently, her dream men at that time. She has been a confirmed lesbian for twenty years.

Times change and things move on – I went from being a season ticket holder in the school boy’s enclosure to a box holder at Highbury in the early 2000s, complete with a space beneath in the player’s carpark. Parking my car there every other week and for the evening games, I was still only ever on nodding terms with the likes of Vieira, Henry, Bergkamp, and Ljungberg, and as exciting as that was, they were still aloof and separate. They kept themselves to themselves and never ventured a word beyond ‘Hello’.

I do have a point to this story. I have felt, in my own mind, that I have owed David Rocastle two beers for the last twenty years or so. Sadly, I have never had the chance to repay him. This isn’t a pessimistic reflection on the state of modern football (though not seeing the Chelsea team in the local TGI Friday’s is always a positive), this is just a personal reflection on the tragic untimely passing of a really great footballer and a fabulous human being. A story about somebody who should be remembered by all of us as an outstanding sportsman, a winner, a fighter and one of the thousands of us who love The Arsenal.

I saw David Rocastle do some tremendous things on a football pitch. He will live with me forever as a brilliant footballer, but most of all a thoroughly decent chap and a bloke who I wish I had the opportunity to take past Mac and Liz and into the pub today to buy him those beers.