Fanzone

REDaction

REDaction

Tribute to Bally

In these days of technicolour boots it is hard to remember what a stir the sight of a pair of white boots caused in the early 1970s. In those days we had just about got colour television and you could have any shade of football boots as long as it was a shade of black.

Then there was Alan Ball, resplendent in white boots and even more importantly he played for the Arsenal and England. All over the country in the playgrounds, on the football pitches, and no doubt in the pubs all the talk was of those white boots.

Over the last few days there have been many tributes to the man who played 217 games for Arsenal and won 72 England caps during his career and we have a suggestion for a tribute that we hope will bring a smile to many faces not least the man himself if he is looking down.

Let’s recreate those heady days of the 1970s and get your white trainers out or even your white disco shoes if you feel like going wild and wear them to Emirates Stadium on Sunday.

There will no doubt be a period of appreciation for the great man before kick-off but we feel this slightly tongue-in-cheek idea will be a suitable additional way of showing our regard for the contribution Alan Ball made to Arsenal and England.

Of course we will also remember the late Arthur Milton; with his connections to cricket the white boots idea seemed apt as well.

Two great Arsenal men, let's remember the great moments they provided for the supporters during their time, many of whom will be at Emirates Stadium this weekend, and send them off accordingly.

As we sang to the Everton fans all those years ago "Thank you very much for Alan Ball, thank you very much, thank you very very very much!"

Victory Through Harmony

REDaction

If you would like to get involved in REDaction or find out more about us why not drop us a line at redaction@btinternet.com

General information

REDaction consists of a cross section of Arsenal fans from Season Ticket holders, Club members, Fans Forum representatives, and Fanzine contributors.

We were formed after many, many discussions over the matchday atmosphere at Arsenal games, home games in particular, so we decided to try to make some improvements to this with a series of initiatives.

You may have heard of us before under our previous name of the 'Atmosphere Group', which was formed in November 2003 to try to make a difference. We worked on various things through last season including Fans day activities, Banners; - WHL '71, ANFIELD '89, OLD TRAFFORD '02, WHL '04 - You may have seen these on the front of the North Bank - these were created by our group, and also some other activities such as getting hundreds of Arsenal Fans to go the Fulham away game in May in Fancy Dress.

We also periodically run 'North Bank Knees Ups', which is basically a bunch of Gooners singing Arsenal songs on the North bank concourse pre-game, with the help of a couple of microphones and an amp.

We also hope to have a little something called the 'Great Moments Montage' running on the Jumbotrons just prior to kick off at home games for the coming season. This is a short film capturing Great moments from Arsenal's history - Great Goals, Important goals, and trophy celebrations from down the years. Feedback we've had so far on this has been very positive, so we hope you will all have the chance to see it. There is a brief snippet for GG and Rocky embracing on the pitch at WHL in '87 after our dramatic semi win. It brings a lump to the throat!

We are now trying to move on from last year, as we wanted to bring the atmosphere issues into the public domain, to try and make other Gooners aware we had a problem. We got some good publicity from some of our activities on website and in 'The Gooner' fanzine, so we have now decided to change the group's name but keep plugging away at the major issues.

We have had some great help from the Club on many of our ideas and activities and hope to continue this over the coming season. We now have a budget which has been allocated to us by the Club, so we hope that all Arsenal fans will see some benefit from this throughout the season.

[ Friday, November 18, 2005]

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