My first game at the Boleyn Ground was on the opening day of the  1969/70 season. It
was against Newcastle.
I was a couple of months short of my eighth birthday.
Bobby Moore , Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters were all playing. I can’t remember anything about the game itself apart from the fact West Ham won 1-0 with Hurst scoring the winner.
I stood where I would stand for the next decade or so above the exit at the South Bank end of the Chicken Run.
It was a good vantage point for a young kid. There were just two rows of terrace and I would stand in the front row leaning against ceiling balustrade of the exit arch. To get a better view I stood on top of a wooden stall my dad, a chippie, had made for me and another my friend from down the street Robert Townley.
The only problem was that it was a rather acute angle to take in the whole pitch and for a kid of that age the North Bank goal seemed miles away.
But it was ” our spot” and I loved it .
To get it for each game in the pre all-seater ticketed days me and the old man , Robert and his days , get to the ground by around 12.30 from where we lived in Gants Hill, queue up until the doors opened at 1pm for the 3pm kick off , as they always were on a Saturday.
It was then a dash up the stairs to make sure no one nicked “our spot.”
In time the little community that established around us would protect “our spot” if we we a bit late and were a bit too far back in in the queue which would sometimes stretch back to the Barking Road.It was then a two hour wait until kick off .
Can you imagine young kids these days  having the patience to wait that long ? It would seem most get bored after five minutes if they aren’t playing a game on their smart phone or “talking ” to their friends on social media.
But I was just happy to be there. Even on those winter days when it was bitter cold
I would read the pocket size programme from cover to cover devouring every word, noting every stat from the first team down to the youth team. And then the pen pitch of the opposition. Within a couple of years I knew the back story of every club and player in the league.
Then there would DJ Bill Remfry spinning the latest pop tunes … T Rex, Bowie, Sweet Slade , Rod Stewart ……but always kicking off with I was Kaiser Bills Batman by Whistling Jack Smith.
Then there would be the old ” nutter” ” Monty” dressed up as World War 2 hero Field Marshal Montgomery marching up and down the steps on the South Bank until it filled up playing his bugle.
Then there would be the Brass Band over by the West Side for the the last half an hour or so before the magic moment when the two teams would emerge from the tunnel to a raucous raw of anticipation.  The atmosphere was organic back then. It didn’t require orchestration or an MC,
And what atmospheres there would at some games especially those in midweek under the floodlights usually in Cup games.
Special occasions that spring to mind were beating Liverpool then Sheffield United in the League Cup run of 1971-72 or the Den Haag and Eintracht Frankfurt wins in 1976 in that Cup Winners Cup run that would end in defeat in the final a year after I had experienced the joy of watching The Irons lift the FA Cup.
By 1986 life had moved on. I was working as a fully fledged football writer for the now defunct Today newspaper. But the orientation of ground was pretty much  the same as it had been and the press box in the West Stand still felt the noise.
Many reporters from around the country agreed that The Boleyn or Upton Park was one of their favourite grounds. With good reason.
There was that electric atmosphere and there were some great games win lose or draw . A roller coaster ride of form. Success and failure. Cup wins, relegation , promotion .
Some great players and some duffers.
In our patch of East London it could be West End theatre or Billy Smarts circus and the compact Boleyn Ground where the terraces and pitch touched each other was the perfect stage.
For me that changed when the new Main  Stand was constructed and dwarfed the re developed North and South Banks  and the Chicken Run which back in the day was the newest stand had been dwarfed as as old relic.
The atmosphere just could not be generated with the same gusto or passion.
So in that respect , whilst in many ways I’m an old romantic , I have no qualms about leaving Green Street and moving to Stratford.
The deal for the Olympic Stadium is an offer too good to refuse for the future of the club. And actually,  providing it  can be filled on a regular basis then a great atmosphere could be generated there given that stadium is built in a homogenous scale. Oh and by the way there often days when attendances at the Boleyn were nowhere near capacity.
Yes it will be an end of an era but in so many ways it needs to be.
After all the terraces have long gone ….that killed atmosphere but made the ground as others a lot safer places .And so have the smells of Bovril  and beer belching blokes.
The Sounds too like the Percy Dalton vendor walking around the pitch before the game screeching :”Peanuts, ROASTED peanuts”.
Football exists in a different world. A lot is better  a lot it worse .
But as a life long West Ham fan of over 60 years Colin Hart, the great sports writer of the The Sun said in his wonderful eulogy for departed colleague John Sadler at a memorial service last week : ” Don’t cry because it over but smile because it happened”
That’s how it should be about leaving the Boleyn Ground.
With that in mind the time has come to stop keeping going on about this being the farewell season or focussing on the ” ramp up” to the move to the Olympic season.
There might well be commercial advantages to “monetising ” a ” Long Goodbye to the Boleyn”.
But I am starting to worry it  puts added pressure on the players if every home game this season is seen as some form of farewell party.
Or indeed the expectation of fans is too intense thus piling even more pressure on the players.
Could those factors have contributed to the home defeats to Leicester and Bournemouth ?
Perhaps so.
What I do know is , the most important things this season is for West Ham to begging their new future at the Olympic Stadium in the Premier League.
For that to happen the team needs to start winning at home , beginning with the Newcastle game, the team a I saw in my first game at Upton Park at those years ago.
And maybe a big help in that direction would be to cut out all the ” Farewell to the Boleyn ” razzmatazz . Cut out the Long Goodbye.
Surely it better to have a right old Claret and Blue knees up party day after the last home game when the objective of moving to the Olympic stadium still as a Premier League club has been achieved.
Because then all Hammers fans young and old can blows bubbles and not cry because it’s over but smile because it happened.