Chelsea autograph anyone.....who's in your book?

Article by John Hannam

A couple of weeks ago I took my two sons to the Chelsea v Fulham game. My eldest son is nine and has been to half a dozen games or so, my youngest is only 5 and although I knew he'd lose interest before the end he finally nagged me into taking him as well. He has shown a sudden and surprisingly knowledgeable interest in all things Chelsea recently and I thought this would be a great way of encouraging him.

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Anyway, as we came up the steps from Fulham Broadway station, there just in front of us, strolling towards the ground with a couple of mates was a surprisingly trim looking Ray Wilkins. Now to all Chelsea fans from the mid 70's (which is when I first started going) Ray is something of a hero. He and his brothers all played for us in the mid/late 70's and in the post Osgood side decline Ray was about the best player we produced for many years. He went to Man Utd, Milan and also won many many England caps, as well as being one of the youngest ever captains at only 18. My eldest son and even my wife (yep she came as well) recognised Ray and were all egging me on to stop him, get a photo and maybe an autograph. However despite their urging, I didn't do it......why?

Well the poor sod was already being stopped by a number of people and I didn't want to further intrude on his afternoon. A current player at his place of work ie a football ground or training pitch is one thing, but a guy on an afternoon off or in a pub/Restaurant is another, it's not right. Also I'm a bit anti autograph. To me it almost implies that you see that person as someone special, in a way better than you, and I don't buy into that at all, about anyone, or almost anyone. So despite my sons nudging me I left Ray to make his way to the ground and didn't get either an autograph or a photo.

It did get my thinking though. Who's autograph's would I want? After all I'm a Chelsea fanatic, my whole family support the club and always have so which players would make the grade. My conclusion was very few, if any. At the end of the day they are just footballers. I have a shirt personally signed by Frank Lampard to my sons which I won in a competitions and Ii'm immensely proud of it, but I don't really count that as I didn't bend my knee and ask for it. If I somehow managed to acquire some artefacts with Godfranco Zola or Didier Drogba's scribble on them I'd also be pretty pleased, but again I'm not going to ask for them. So who would you fight your granny to get the signature of? Who really rocks your boat when it comes to the big names, or even the unheralded hero's who's name you want on your wall? I'd be interested to hear what other people think?

To show myself up to be a complete Hyprocrite, I must admit that I have broken my autograph rule once in my life. My all time sporting hero and the only person I have ever queued up to get the signature of is Muhammad Ali. He was doing a book signing in London around 20 years ago and literally thousands of people turned up. I queued for around 3 hours for him to sign my book and I got to shake his hand. To be honest it broke my heart. His Parkinson's disease had set in with a vengeance and he was a shadow of the man I idolised. I've still go the book though. I explain it to myself by saying that he truly is a Sporting Great. Arguably the most famous sportsman there has even been and certainly the one that had the greatest effect across the planet, so all in all, not a bad reason to break my vow.

As a footnote, the Chelsea v Fulham game nearly had the opposite effect to what I wanted. The first 45 minutes were worse than watching paint dry and by 60 mins my 5 year old wanted to head for home. Luckily we played much better in the 2nd half, scored two goals and his first experience wasn't a complete disappointment.

Cheers
John

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