Goodbye Highbury - Time to say farewell to 93 years of memories
 | | Snow-ball: Arsenal and Manchester United's captains prepare to kick off at a snowbound Highbury in 1926. |
SO, finally, the day itself has arrived. Sunday, May 7, 2006 and Arsenal's final game at Highbury.
By around 6pm on Sunday evening, the last fans will have poured out of those famous stands and will make their way either up the hill to Highbury Barn or down the back streets to Blackstock Road, Holloway Road, Finsbury Park and beyond.
For 93 years Arsenal fans have trodden the same path, but they will never do so again. In just over a month's time the builders will move in and Highbury's days as 'the home of football' will be at an end.
Who would have thought back in 1913 that a small division two club would become one of the most famous in the world?
And who would have thought in those distant pre-war days that one of England's most iconic football stadiums would stand on this site?
Mercifully not all of the stadium will be knocked down to accommodate more than 700 flats in the Highbury Square development, on which work will start later this year.
The famous East Stand facade on Avenell Road is Grade II listed and will remain for future generations to admire, as will the marble halls inside it and the bust of one of Arsenal's great pioneers, former manager Herbert Chapman.
The art-deco west stand facade will also remain, but the the rest of this fine stadium will disappear.
It is an undeniably sad day. Arsene Wenger remarked recently that the stadium has 'a special soul' and one of my favourite stories about Highbury is the Frenchman's first visit here.
Wenger recounted that he was in a taxi and was convinced that the driver had gone the wrong way, until he glimpsed the Avenell Road stand through a side-street.
He could not believe it, that here, nestled tightly among the houses of north London was one of the most famous stadiums in the world.
"For me Arsenal has always been special because it has felt like the stadium is one that is among the people, one that belongs to the people," said Wenger recently.
"It is a special place with a special soul and for me one where I have experienced the greatest moments in my sporting career."
There will be many players both past and present who feel the same way as Wenger, but of course, those who feel it even more than them are all of you - the fans.
Like many Arsenal fans, I have grown up on the terraces of this ground, and a world without High-bury is unimaginable.
Some of you have been coming for fifty or sixty years and can remember the days of George Allison's team, the likes of Cliff Bastin and Ted Drake.
Some have been coming for their whole adult lives, their earliest memories being of Bertie Mee's Double side, or maybe George Graham's heroes of 1989 and 1991.
So many others, like those in the picture above, will be dead and gone, the victories and defeats they rejoiced and cried over remem-bered only by history books.
Now Highbury's history is also coming to an end, and a new dawn for the club is beginning in nearby Ashburton Grove.
The Gazette was there the first day Arsenal moved to Islington back in 1913, and we will still be there on Sunday, and next season at the new Emirates Stadium.
In this special souvenir issue we trace the growth of Highbury from those first days after the move from Woolwich, right through to the present, and final, years.
Early on the new stadium may not feel quite the same to some of us but chances are, in a few years, everybody will get used to it.
However, Highbury will always be known as the true home of Arsenal.
And it will never be forgotten.
PAUL CHRONNELL
SPORTS EDITOR
ISLINGTON GAZETTE
BUY THIS WEEK'S ISLINGTON GAZETTE FOR YOUR FREE 20-PAGE 'GOODBYE HIGHBURY'
SOUVENIR
|
|
|
|
|
|