Liverpool had reached the last eight of the FA Cup, but everyone’s thoughts were focused on another quarter-final … the big one. French champions St Etienne were coming to town in the European Cup. The Reds were also looking good in the league, so people were starting to whisper about a unique Treble – the first in British history. One of the shift workers at the garage was a Bluenose. There was always banter. One day he said to me and Big Dave, ‘If you get to Rome, youse’ll blend in nice, cos Italy’s full of shithouses.’
Dave came back with, ‘The last time you crossed the Channel with Everton, the ship had fuckin’ cannons on it.’
The St Etienne match was cash on the gate as usual. We got there about five o’clock and couldn’t believe the crowds. The back of our queue for flagpole corner was up by the Annie Road. Mounted bizzies edged us along Kemlyn Road inches at a time. Their horses kept dumping all over the place, just missing fellas’ shoes. Loads of shouts were going off. ‘Stick a nosebag on its fuckin’ arse’ was one I remember, though by the time we reached the flagpole it was us who were shitting ourselves, listening to turnstile bells going off by the minute (full to capacity).
About seven o’clock I was wedged half in and out of a turnstile when the school-bell sound went off. There was loads of pushing, shouting and swearing. I held me arm out to a bizzie inside and let out a harrowing Oscar-winning scream: ‘Ahhh, me legs.’ He panicked and pulled me through, then the door slammed behind me. (I still say a prayer of thanks to this day.) Every button on me Wrangler shirt had popped, and I’d lost a shoe, but I was in. An arl fella gave me a woollen scarf to tie round me foot. After a while I didn’t notice me shoe was missing. To be honest, knowing what I know now I’d have stood barefoot on broken glass in there because like everyone else I was about to sail, float, then drown in the greatest atmosphere on the greatest ever night at Anfield.
When Fairclough slotted the third, I bounced from near the back of the Kop to the Kemlyn Road corner flag. My clobber was stuck to me; I was soaked to the skin and drunk on adrenalin. There were 55,000 inside Anfield that night, mainly raucous, working-class Scousers, and apart from the frog firm in the corner of the Annie Road every single person in the ground was bouncing up and down singing ‘We shall not be moved’. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. I levitated out of the Kop after that game with me foot-scarf trailing behind me. There was still a semi-final to play, but deep down everyone who experienced the phenomenon that night knew that nothing could stop us from getting to Rome. As some fella said on the bus going home, ‘I can smell the fuckin’ pasta.’
I was still floating three days later when bang … a two-till-ten shift on FA Cup quarter-final day shot me out the sky. It was a bad comedown. My Kop that day was a minty kiosk with a burst chair and an oily floor, the only atmosphere being the noisy traffic on the East Lancs. My lifeline was a poxy little battery radio in the kiosk. I’m not kidding: finding Radio City on it was like trying to crack a fuckin’ safe. I listened to the Boro game with it held to me ear. Somewhere between the hissing and crackling I heard us win 2–0. That meant two semis. The Treble really was looking on.
The entire month of April was a permanent rush, and I don’t mean drug-induced. In fact there were no heavy drugs around at that time, just pot, and even that was seen as a sweaty hippy thing to do … ‘love and peace’ and all that shite. At home in the league we beat Leeds, Man City, Arsenal and Ipswich and drew away at Stoke to virtually seal the First Division title. In the FA Cup we beat the Bluenoses after two semis at Maine Road, and in the European Cup we steamrollered FC Zurich twice to nail our place at the Olympic Stadium in Rome. You hardly had time to get the ale out your system before the next colossal game. I must’ve gone through about twenty packs of Rennies that month. Treble talk was rampant. What started off as a hopeful Kop whisper had steadily built into a Red roar that engulfed the entire city. Every street corner, every shop, bus stop, alehouse, radio chitchat, the patter was all about the ultimate three-in-the-bed.
Town’s Travel was blitzed after the second Zurich game. By noon next day 2000 fans had booked package flights to Rome costing between ninety-three and a hundred and thirty-three quid (including match ticket). It was out of my price league. I told me ma and da I was going, but I didn’t have a clue how I was gonna get there.
Gordon Lee, the Everton manager, was at the Zurich home match. Radio City spoke of the ‘ecstasy and agony at Anfield’. The ecstasy was obviously ours, while the agony was for Lee, whose wallet was dipped outside the main entrance. ‘A considerable amount’ was mentioned. It was tough luck on old Skeletor. He reckoned that the person who did it would have no luck in the future: ‘He will end up paying for behaviour like this,’ he said. But I don’t know about that, because I wouldn’t mind betting that the Scouse Fagin who zapped him was in Town’s Travel next day booking a flight to Rome.
The two semis against Everton were in everyone’s price range: one pound fifty for a ground ticket and one pound fifty on the special. I’ll never forget the first game for a couple of reasons – not the exquisite chip from Terry Mac or the iffy Clive Thomas decision; I’m talking about a Mario Lanza song from the film Seven Hills of Rome and an incident that epitomises Scousers at the time.
For someone like me who was into stuff like Floyd and Deaf School, the thought of listening to some operatic tit singing ‘Arrivederci, Roma’ was ridiculous. But boy was that about to change. I’d heard rumblings of the song at Anfield when we beat Zurich, though the words were vague. Then, three days later at Maine Road, the song echoed with clarity across the Kippax like a Vatican choir. To this day the song never fails to take me back to that spring:
We’re on our way to Roma
On the 25th of May
All the Kopites will be singing
Vatican bells they will be ringing
Liverpool FC we’ll be singing
When we win the European Cup.
Something else happened that day. We were on one of the seventeen specials into Manchester Victoria; Reds and Blues together. There was usually murder outside that station – remember these were the days when trouble was a big part of footy culture – but we weren’t arsed that day, with fifty-odd thousand Scousers heading in. United were playing Leeds at Sheffield in the other semi, so quite a few Mancs were mooching around. We heard chants of ‘United’, then they charged at the people in front, forcing them back. It was literally only a minute till the Red and Blue masses spilled out the station and chased them down the street. As far as trouble goes it was an absolutely nothing incident, but it was the catalyst to what happened next and the thing that’s stayed with me. As we set off in a police escort, the entire special (about 500 people) tied their scarves together and held them aloft. The confused expression on bizzies’ faces sticks in the mind. Shoppers looked just as stumped. Buses and traffic slowed … all staring at the ranks of entwined red and blue and white marching down Deansgate in the pissing-down rain, singing:
Merseyside, la la la
Merseyside, la la la.
It was a natural and genuine show of Scouse solidarity – a moment of pride that means more to me now than it did then because it captures the Liverpool that I grew up in; a time before ‘banter’ was replaced by the word ‘bitter’.
Sunday afternoon, 1st May: I can see meself now … kicking an oily ball at the diesel pump in a deserted garage, waiting to change shifts with Lol (the Bluenose). My head was up me arse around that time. British Rail had announced that they were putting on trains to Rome with match ticket included and were taking name and address reservations with payment at a later date. Like most I took a chance and booked not knowing how I’d get the wedge together. I was seriously skint, and back then skint meant skint. If you wanted to travel, you had to get off your arse and do a bit of independent, creative head-working, usually without tank or ticket.
We were due to face the Mancs at Wembley, but all I could think about was Rome. Getting around Britain wasn’t an issue. If you couldn’t afford a train or coach, you’d just thumb it. Loads of footy