Ray Parlour has opened up about growing up in a West Ham household – and how his dad reacted to him scoring at Upton Park.
Parlour turned out more than 450 times for Arsenal during a 13-year career in north London, winning the Premier League three times and adding four FA Cups, with his memorable opener in the 2002 FA Cup final win over Chelsea sealing a Double and going down in club folklore.
In 2004 Parlour, who also added 10 England caps to his CV, moved to Middlesbrough for two-and-a-half seasons, before closing out his career with a short spell at Hull City, meaning he never got the chance to turn out for his boyhood team.
Ray Parlour on his family West Ham background
“My dad was a big West Ham fan,” Parlour said, speaking to FourFourTwo. “We lived on the back of the West Ham training ground at Chadwell Heath, and I played my Sunday football just around the corner.
“We had lots of scouts coming to watch our games. I played for Fulham at nine years old but Steve Rowley, bless his soul, kept pestering my dad, saying, ‘Get him over to Arsenal’. I went over there and never looked back.”
Parlour’s Arsenal debut came as an 18-year-old in January 1992, soon becoming a first-team regular where he became a fans’ favourite in the heart of the club’s midfield. And Parlour – ranked at No.12 in FourFourTwo’s list of the best Arsenal players of the Premier League era – says he was never going to leave the Gunners during this period, even if West Ham had come calling.
“My dad would have loved it if I’d played for West Ham, but I was never going to leave Arsenal – I was trying to stay for as long as I could,” he continues.
“And, when I did leave, I was getting a little bit slower and I don’t think it would have been right; I wanted to move somewhere other than London, which is why I went to Middlesbrough.
“I never had an opportunity to play for West Ham, but I scored at Upton Park once. My dad was in the West Ham end. He was like, ‘What are you doing, son?’”
Parlour’s post-Arsenal career contained plenty of high points, with the ‘Romford Pele’ part of the Boro squad that reached the final of the 2006 UEFA Cup, while he was able to use his experience to prevent Hull City from dropping out of the Championship in the 2006-07 season before hanging up his boots.
But his West Ham roots will forever act as a ‘what if’ for Hammers fans, who would no have no doubt loved to have seen a local lad at the heart of their side, linking up with the likes of Tony Cottee, John Hartson and Paolo Di Canio during an era when they tended to float around the middle of the Premier League table before dropping out of the top tier in 2003.
