ABSTRACT
In his critically acclaimed book Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby provides an intimate and witty account of his relationship with football and growing up as an obsessive Arsenal fan. Much of this is focused on his memories of attending live games and the humour, thrills and disappointments shared with thousands of others on the terraces and later in seated zones at home and away games. By 1989 his support had been tested almost to destruction but he recollects fully the moment when Arsenal beat Liverpool to win the English First Division championship, something he had doubted ever seeing again in his lifetime. He watched this decisive match at home on television, wearing his replica Arsenal team shirt. In added time at the end of the ninety minutes, Michael Thomas scored the goal that clinched the title for Hornby’s team. At this, ‘the greatest moment ever’, he recalls, ‘I was flat out on the floor and everybody in the living room jumped on top of me. Eighteen years, all forgotten in a second’ (Hornby, 1994: 229). The relationships and intensities involved in mediated moments like this and their powerful legacies in generational memory are the focus for what follows.
