I REMEMBER that London had that slightly fetid
air it has after a day of constant sun. I’d gone to a party with some
friends and the host had been miffed, obviously, that we wanted to
watch the television. But you had to watch the match, even if it did
seem like a lost cause.
Afterwards a few of us ran a couple of miles to Highbury and partied
outside the ground. I was on the bonnet of a car singing songs when a
kindly policeman, smiling and indulgent, suggested I might like to get
down.
Jason Cowley’s new book about the Football League title-deciding
match in 1989 between Liverpool and Arsenal at Anfield certainly stirs
the memories, but The Last Game is not an exercise in nostalgia.
For Liverpool fans, that period remains all too bitter. As we’ve
been reminded recently, 1989 was also the year of the Hillsborough
tragedy. And Liverpool were soon to be overtaken by Manchester United
as the pre-eminent force in British football.
Margaret Thatcher was celebrating ten years in Downing Street
blissfully unaware that within 18 months she, too, would be deposed
from the top. It was also the year that Rupert Murdoch launched Sky TV,
the success of which was built on the millions of pounds it poured into
buying football television rights. That torrent of cash, along with the
Taylor report, utterly changed the game. Football is now consumed
rather than enjoyed.
If you are looking for a period of change – for football and for
politics – then 1989 is a pretty good year to pick. For Cowley, as for
most fans, football is a very personal love affair and this is the
third element of his book – The Last Game is also an honest and moving
memoir about Cowley’s relationship with his West Ham-supporting working
class dad.
Any book about Arsenal and the nature of men will, of course, be
compared with Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch. But The Last Game has a much
more ambitious scope. As a former editor of The Observer’s excellent
Sport Monthly (Cowley is now editor of the New Statesman) you would
expect the passages about the footie to be the strongest parts. But it
is in fact the personal story which stands out.
The political elements say little new and Cowley gives Thatcher far
too easy a time although this might be because the young Cowley was
more interested in the apolitical rave scene when he wasn’t on the
terraces.
As for the football, well, Cowley’s telling of the game itself is
masterful and his pen portraits of the Arsenal players involved are
well drawn. His Liverpool material is weaker. Cowley quotes
footballer-turned-pundit Jamie Redknapp for his opinion on John Barnes.
Personally, there is a very, very long queue of people in front of
Jamie Redknapp whose views I would be more interested in. The
interviews are hardly revelatory and the final chapter on the state of
football today says little of surprise to any football fan.
There are too few books which attempt to put our national obsession
into a political context and, despite these reservations, The Last Game
is a highly readable and at times very moving exploration of a period
of football that has now gone forever.