Bigger Than Barcelona
The last time Leyton Orient played Arsenal, I was a year old. The last time Leyton Orient beat Arsenal... well, it was so long ago that I don't think anyone who was at the match is still alive. Therefore, Sunday's FA cup fifth round match at Brisbane Road was the most momentous football match I've ever been to. I was so excited the night before that I could barely sleep and sat up till 2am reading previews on the internet. It was like Christmas.
Being on St John Ambulance duty (there was no way I would have got a ticket otherwise - they were going for £250 on ebay!) I had to be at the ground 2 hours before kick off and spent a very cold and boring two hours sitting on a stretcher at the side of the pitch watching the sell out crowd file in and trying to spot rogue Arsenal fans in the Orient area. They weren't very intelligent, asking a steward "Which is the west stand?" and "Do you have any toilets?" at a match where tickets were supposed to be for season ticket holders and regular attenders only is bound to arouse suspicion. As is wearing an Arsenal shirt. The ground was completely full, and everyone was singing "Orient, Orient, Orient!" I have never seen it so alive there.
Finally the clock ticked round to 4pm and the players were on the pitch. Usually we line up against someone like Huddersfield or Tranmere and our opponents are tubby misfits with names like Smith and Bloggs. This time we had Bentner, Rosicky, Song, Sagna, Squillaci and Arshavin. Proper hardcore famous multimillion pound footballers side by side with my little Orient. And then the game kicked off and all I could think was "bloody hell this lot are good". I mean, of course they're good, they're Arsenal, but it doesn't really come across how good they are when you watch them on TV against another premier league team. It's only when you're ten feet away watching poor old Tiny Cox and podgy, 37-year-old Scotty McGleish scrambling around them that you realise that the Arsenal players are like hardcore, streamlined, expressionless robots designed to have small league one football teams for dinner. As I watched poor 5'4" Cox get sandwiched between Song and Sagna (two hulking six foot something black guys with terrifying blond hair that makes them look like negatives, or zombies) I could only think "ok, how bad is this going to be? 7-0? 8-0?"
But then slowly something amazing was happening. Despite Arsenal's obvious superiority on the pitch, they just weren't scoring. Against all odds, Orient were keeping their nerves, sitting back and defending and not taking any chances. The ball was spending most of the time in the middle of the pitch and whenever Arsenal came close to scoring, Jamie Jones (the scouser) was there, effortlessly scooping the ball up. The clock was ticking down and suddenly we were at half time and it was still 0-0. Orient left the pitch to rapturous applause.
By the time they returned, it was dark, I couldn't feel my toes and a thick fog was starting to descend over the pitch. The crowd were still screaming, banging drums and wielding effigies of the FA Cup. But eight minutes after the restart, the inevitable happened. Rosicky scored for Arsenal.
Oh well, I told myself. You knew it was coming. They're in the premier league for a reason. They beat Barcelona four days ago. We've played well and not embarrassed ourselves. It's not going to be a crushing defeat. It's still a day to remember.
And the Os didn't give up the ghost or change their tactics, and for the next thirty-five minutes they continued to frustrate Arsenal and keep the ball away from the net.
And then it happened. The unthinkable. Jonathan Tehoue, an unfit Frenchman with a name like a bad scrabble rack, with a minute left on the clock, decided to attempt the impossible. Ball at his feet, he barged at two Arsenal defenders, hopping over their outstretched legs. Yards from goal with only Almunia the goalie in his path, he whacked the ball as hard as he could. It went straight under Almunia and unfalteringly into the back of the net.
ley11t5656
Uploaded by arsenalist
Tehoue's goal
On the TV they talked about "the roof coming off" but unless you were there you will never know what it was like. The stadium erupted. It was unmitigated chaos. Everyone was out of their seats, running around, screaming, hugging, throwing hotdogs and £5 souvenir programmes into the sky, punching the air, running on to the pitch, invading my little safe space between the stretcher and the corner flag. I was up on my feet screaming "YES YES YES" completely forgetting that as a first aider I was supposed to look neutral at all times. Trust me, there wasn't a neutral in the place. Even the police were cheering. The noise was loud enough to be heard from the Olympic stadium.
No one saw much of the four minutes of injury time. Conscious of the number of times Orient have been on top of a game and fucked it up in the last minutes, I could hardly bear to look. I was actually shaking. When the referee blew the final whistle the stadium erupted again, almost as loudly as the first time. We had done it! We had done what the mighty Barca had failed to do and held Arsenal to a draw! And now we had earned a replay at the Emirates, a match which will earn us around £700,000, enough to pay all our strikers' wage bills for a year or more importantly fund our legal fight to stop Wet Spam taking over the olympic stadium and potentially putting us out of business. That one goal, one brave chance from Tehoue, may have saved the Orient.
Since the match it's like anyone who gives a toss about football (and even some people who don't give a toss about football) are talking about the Orient. Tehoue's face was staring at me from the back of every Metro on the tube, the match was first on the highlights show and "Leyton Orient" was trending on Twitter. Just for a short while it feels like everyone gets it at last. People actually give a shit about my silly little football team. I can't tell you how good that feels.
Being on St John Ambulance duty (there was no way I would have got a ticket otherwise - they were going for £250 on ebay!) I had to be at the ground 2 hours before kick off and spent a very cold and boring two hours sitting on a stretcher at the side of the pitch watching the sell out crowd file in and trying to spot rogue Arsenal fans in the Orient area. They weren't very intelligent, asking a steward "Which is the west stand?" and "Do you have any toilets?" at a match where tickets were supposed to be for season ticket holders and regular attenders only is bound to arouse suspicion. As is wearing an Arsenal shirt. The ground was completely full, and everyone was singing "Orient, Orient, Orient!" I have never seen it so alive there.
Finally the clock ticked round to 4pm and the players were on the pitch. Usually we line up against someone like Huddersfield or Tranmere and our opponents are tubby misfits with names like Smith and Bloggs. This time we had Bentner, Rosicky, Song, Sagna, Squillaci and Arshavin. Proper hardcore famous multimillion pound footballers side by side with my little Orient. And then the game kicked off and all I could think was "bloody hell this lot are good". I mean, of course they're good, they're Arsenal, but it doesn't really come across how good they are when you watch them on TV against another premier league team. It's only when you're ten feet away watching poor old Tiny Cox and podgy, 37-year-old Scotty McGleish scrambling around them that you realise that the Arsenal players are like hardcore, streamlined, expressionless robots designed to have small league one football teams for dinner. As I watched poor 5'4" Cox get sandwiched between Song and Sagna (two hulking six foot something black guys with terrifying blond hair that makes them look like negatives, or zombies) I could only think "ok, how bad is this going to be? 7-0? 8-0?"
But then slowly something amazing was happening. Despite Arsenal's obvious superiority on the pitch, they just weren't scoring. Against all odds, Orient were keeping their nerves, sitting back and defending and not taking any chances. The ball was spending most of the time in the middle of the pitch and whenever Arsenal came close to scoring, Jamie Jones (the scouser) was there, effortlessly scooping the ball up. The clock was ticking down and suddenly we were at half time and it was still 0-0. Orient left the pitch to rapturous applause.
By the time they returned, it was dark, I couldn't feel my toes and a thick fog was starting to descend over the pitch. The crowd were still screaming, banging drums and wielding effigies of the FA Cup. But eight minutes after the restart, the inevitable happened. Rosicky scored for Arsenal.
Oh well, I told myself. You knew it was coming. They're in the premier league for a reason. They beat Barcelona four days ago. We've played well and not embarrassed ourselves. It's not going to be a crushing defeat. It's still a day to remember.
And the Os didn't give up the ghost or change their tactics, and for the next thirty-five minutes they continued to frustrate Arsenal and keep the ball away from the net.
And then it happened. The unthinkable. Jonathan Tehoue, an unfit Frenchman with a name like a bad scrabble rack, with a minute left on the clock, decided to attempt the impossible. Ball at his feet, he barged at two Arsenal defenders, hopping over their outstretched legs. Yards from goal with only Almunia the goalie in his path, he whacked the ball as hard as he could. It went straight under Almunia and unfalteringly into the back of the net.
ley11t5656
Uploaded by arsenalist
Tehoue's goal
On the TV they talked about "the roof coming off" but unless you were there you will never know what it was like. The stadium erupted. It was unmitigated chaos. Everyone was out of their seats, running around, screaming, hugging, throwing hotdogs and £5 souvenir programmes into the sky, punching the air, running on to the pitch, invading my little safe space between the stretcher and the corner flag. I was up on my feet screaming "YES YES YES" completely forgetting that as a first aider I was supposed to look neutral at all times. Trust me, there wasn't a neutral in the place. Even the police were cheering. The noise was loud enough to be heard from the Olympic stadium.
No one saw much of the four minutes of injury time. Conscious of the number of times Orient have been on top of a game and fucked it up in the last minutes, I could hardly bear to look. I was actually shaking. When the referee blew the final whistle the stadium erupted again, almost as loudly as the first time. We had done it! We had done what the mighty Barca had failed to do and held Arsenal to a draw! And now we had earned a replay at the Emirates, a match which will earn us around £700,000, enough to pay all our strikers' wage bills for a year or more importantly fund our legal fight to stop Wet Spam taking over the olympic stadium and potentially putting us out of business. That one goal, one brave chance from Tehoue, may have saved the Orient.
Since the match it's like anyone who gives a toss about football (and even some people who don't give a toss about football) are talking about the Orient. Tehoue's face was staring at me from the back of every Metro on the tube, the match was first on the highlights show and "Leyton Orient" was trending on Twitter. Just for a short while it feels like everyone gets it at last. People actually give a shit about my silly little football team. I can't tell you how good that feels.