John Williams September 1999
borrowed from (
http://www.liverpooltales.com/)
I went to Anfield football ground a few weeks ago with my fourteen-year old son and I experienced a kind of culture shock, as I hadn't been to watch a live game since the early seventies and was staggered by the air of cleanliness that pervaded the place. Where there used to be blizzards of chip wrappings and cigarette ends drifting on the Kop there was now a McDonalds. The meat pie is dead! Long live apple pie! God bless America!
I couldn't help but reflect that my son had missed a cultural experience by not queuing for ages to obtain a pale and rubbery looking meat pie and cup of tea served in a real mug. The pie and cuppa was the last ritual of fans before joining that heaving mass of humanity known as the Kop. The Kop, so called because it was so high that it resembled the Spion Kop, which was the site of a famous battle in the Boer war, was one of the wonders of the modern world. On match days twenty six thousand people, the average gate of some Premiership clubs or the population of a small town, would be packed onto a steeply raked embankment the top of which seemed to caress the sky.
The noise created by this mountain of fervent support was awesome and quite often terrified the opposing players into making elementary mistakes. Of course, there was always the possibility of tragedy. When play was taking place at the Kop end of the pitch then all of those supporters straining for a better view would surge forward and a human avalanche would cascade down the concrete steps forcing those below onto the strategically positioned crush bars. I was often caught on them myself and one of my great fears was of being emasculated by the angled stanchions that supported the crush bars.
It has often been pointed out that before Hillsborough the general attitude of the powers that be toward football fans resembled the relationship between a cowboy and his cattle, in that they were there to be rounded up, herded into pens and left to wallow in their own waste. The inadequate toilet facilities found at football grounds was the rule of the day and Anfield was no exception. A minority of men, who had drunk two or three pints of beer before the match couldn't escape the crush to attend the toilets and so used to roll their newspapers into tight cylinders and relieve themselves into the tube of newsprint. Naturally, there were those untutored fans incapable of reading and so had no newspaper. Their preferred technique was to wait until a gap was created by the downward surging mass and then relieve themselves in the resulting gap. Wearers of fashion shoes were a rarity on the Kop.
It might be wondered why anybody would want to visit such a pissoir in the first place and the answer to that is simple. The Kop was the most stimulating experience I have ever encountered outside of the 1970 Isle of Wight festival. The comparison is fair because the same sound of singing amid primitive conditions could be found at both venues. The Kop's reputation for biting wit was well established long before the 60's but the advent of the Mersey sound, which was relayed to the crowd via a tinny amplification system called a tannoy, prompted a new weapon for their armoury, the popular song. At the slightest provocation the Koppites would break into a spontaneous and cruelly humorous parody of a popular song aimed at the opposition. They also just joined in with current hit songs and I will never forget that magic moment when the Beatle's 'I want to hold your hand' bridged the generation gap as supporters old and young sang the chorus with gusto.
Not all of parodies were of secular songs. In 1965 Liverpool had won the F.A. cup on Saturday and by Tuesday they were playing in the semi-finals of the European cup against the great Inter Milan. When Liverpool slammed three goals past the bemused Italians the Kop broke into a chorus of,
'Go back to Italy'
sung to the tune of Santa Lucia. The manager of Inter was called Herrera, and when the third goal went in he was treated to a version of a children's skipping song which went,
'One two three ellaira'.
In the new version 'ellaira' became Herrera. Spontaneity in all things it would seem was an ever-present factor on the Kop.
So you can imagine my surprise when on my last visit I encountered the sort of muted enthusiasm you might experience watching a raunchy movie while your mum's present. Where once chaos had reigned, families sat amid the debris of their happy meals and they were generally content to cheer only when something of import happened. Incidentally, Liverpool lost that day, to Watford. Watford were later relegated and I wonder if they'll ever have a crowd of 26,000 at Vicarage road.
I was devastated at the defeat, as in the old days losing was not a word in my vocabulary. Who shall we blame? Roy Evans' legacy, family values or the lack of decent pop songs? In the end it's only a game, like chess, army manoeuvres or the dance of Shiva, and it's the beginning of Saturday night.
