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I had a bloody good cry last Christmas morning and I’m likely to do the same, tomorrow morning, as I remember my mate @TheGoonerholic Dave Faber. Over fourteen or fifteen years we shared some great days and great memories following The Arsenal, home and away...
Because all of my memories of Dave when he was with us are happy ones, I’m going to honour him by remembering a really funny moment from 16th August 2008, at a home game, against West Bromwich Albion. A game we won 1-0.
A very good, mutual friend organised a brilliant day out for us and invited us to watch the game in the paddock area, just behind Arsene and the subs, and treated us to a personal tour around the dressing rooms after the game...
We’d had some supper and a drink directly after the game so it was quite a while after that we did our tour and we bumped into Pat Rice on the way through, just near the baths and showers, who stopped for a chat on our way around...
As we were talking to Pat, Kolo Toure walked out of the showers as naked as the day he was born. There was a moment of silence (and a gasp, I’m sure) before Pat, apologetically, explained that Kolo had been awaiting a drugs test after the game and was late getting changed...
We carried on our walk around but we did look at each other with open eyes and mouths as we walked away from the changing rooms as what we’d seen had rather impressed us both and quite changed how we looked at one of the Invincibles for one very big reason...
As we continued around the stadium we came to the media areas and, as the interviews had all finished, Dave sat in for Arsene in the press conference and interview areas...
As we were in the post-match interview area I shot a “who was your Man of the Match?” at Dave. Quick as a flash he bellowed: “Kolo Toure!”...
And that is how I will always remember Dave. A really funny man who was fun to be with. He was a real gentleman, who was generous to a fault, and I know that he left something of himself with a huge amount of people connected to The Arsenal...
He was a bit of a missionary when it came to helping people to get to see their team and to get to share that experience, which was often a rare treat, with other like-minded people in the best and most fun ways possible...
If you joined him at a game he made sure that you felt welcome, he introduced you to everyone and he made sure that you wanted to come back again to the Gooner family that he himself spent years being an integral part of and enriching with the sheer magnitude of his personality
Dave was a true Arsenal legend, we wrote beautifully and emotionally about our Club, he loved it with a passion, but his love for the people around it is what he will be remembered for. He did so much, for so many, and so many of us owe him so much...
Unfortunately he isn’t here for us to thank him for that and it is one of my greatest regrets that I didn’t get to tell him exactly those feelings this time last year, before he was cruelly and too soon taken from his family and friends on Christmas Day...
But I will always remember Dave as a diamond. One in a million. A gentleman. A scholar. One of the best. He resembles that remark! To you, Dave, well remembered and well cherished. I’ll bell you in the morning.
