"August 1971, I was five, against Stoke at Highbury. We lost 10. I just remember a strange smell and having never seen so many people in my life. I realised years later it was cigarette and cigar smoke. For me, that was the smell of a football ground until I got into my teens and realised what cigarettes were. I remember trying an Embassy No.5 at a party, thinking, This is the smell of Highbury and White Hart Lane."
"My dad and my brother were Tottenham fans, but my mum got me an Arsenal shirt and sewed a No.5 on the back. I wanted to be Frank McLintock the captain. She also stitched the badge on the front. I've still got it. I used to be taken to White Hart Lane, but I wanted to go to Highbury. We'd just won the Double. My brother suggested I support Arsenal because he didn't want me to support his team. Worked out well for me."
"He was our best player when we won the FA Cup in '79. I was 13, going to matches, but couldn't get a ticket for the final. Decades later, he organised a reunion lunch for that '79 team and asked me to compere it. I was falling over myself. After the lunch, we went to a bar with Alan Sunderland, Frank Stapleton and others all legends of my childhood. They say, never meet your heroes but for me, it was a brilliant day."
Alan Davies attended his first Arsenal match at age five in August 1971 at Highbury and vividly remembers the crowd and the smell of cigarette and cigar smoke. He associated that smell with football grounds until his teens and once mistook an Embassy No.5 cigarette at a party for the smell of Highbury and White Hart Lane. His mother sewed him an Arsenal No.5 shirt with the badge and he wanted to be captain Frank McLintock; he still owns the shirt. Family connections exposed him to White Hart Lane, but he preferred Highbury after Arsenal won the Double. Liam Brady was his childhood hero and later organised a 1979-team reunion that Davies compèred and enjoyed meeting former players.
Read at www.fourfourtwo.com
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