There is a sign above the player’s entrance to Anfield Stadium’s main stand that reads simply: This is Anfield. The story goes that Liverpool’s legendary manager Bill Shankly was following two of the away team’s staff through the doorway one match-day morning. One of the pair looked up and said sarcastically, ‘At least we’re at the right place Jimmy.’ Shankly, the hard-bitten, no-nonsense Scot, said, ‘Aye, and you’re about to find out, son.’
Today, I found out for myself.
Morning dawned fine as promised and the streets of downtown Liverpool teemed with Red and joyful tribalism, like Dunedin on the morning of a Carisbrook rugby test. I followed a crowd of fans onto a bus and 20 minutes later was standing at the gates of Anfield, with a lump in my throat, staring up at the huge LFC crest on the end wall of the Kop.
Three hours before kickoff the place was already humming. A rock band played on an open courtyard, backdropped by a tall screen replaying past LFC glories, of which there are many.
As far from home as it is possible to get without a spaceship, I felt I was in a place I belonged. Liverpool for me started with the Beatles, followed by a long-distant affection for the football team, even though it was rare to see a game in NZ unless they made the FA Cup final. Then on 15 April 1989, affection turned to empathy, then outrage followed by sworn allegiance. Hillsborough was a double-edged tragedy. First for the 97 dead (as the final tally recently became), and then for the lies of the Sun Newspaper, blaming the innocent victims; the police denials and white-wash enquiries, and the 30-year fight for justice.
As with many other incidents in this city’s history, from
the general strikes of 1911 to the crowd-policing fiasco of last year’s Champion’s league final, these are the wrong people to fuck with. The Sun is still scorned in this city, and Churchill’s decision in 1911 to send gunships up the Mersey to intimidate the strikers cemented the scouse mentality as a nation apart. To this day they still boo the British National anthem.
Anfield is known as the hardest football stadium in the world for an away team to win. The collective will and psychic energy of 60,000 baying scousers is a force beyond measure, from the full-throated, evangelism of their adopted hymn, You’ll Never Walk Alone, to the chants, the songs, the relentless barracking and booing of the time-wasting disgrace of Aston Villa on this day; the thunderous eruption of joy when in his last home game for LFC the beloved and brilliant Roberto Firmino scored the equalizer with just 24 seconds of normal time remaining. It was a noise of which I have never heard the like.
For the ten minutes of stoppage time Aston Villa were a rabble under siege, like the Medieval defenders of Montsegur. In the end their cowardly timewasting, led by boofhead goalie Martinez, saw them escape with a draw.
The crowd stayed for an hour after the final whistle, while tributes were lavished on departing heroes. The full squad and their families walked a slow lap of honour, giving and receiving love in equal measure.
Like the rest, I didn’t want to leave. I came 30,000 kilometres for this experience, and every metre and minute, every dollar was worth it.
It brought to mind the words of Martin Luther King: ‘I have been to the mountaintop, and I have seen the promised land’
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