Team '71

The boys from our school were playing an important game at one of the famous football stadiums in Liverpool, Goodison Park. We were getting a coach from St.Augustines to the ground. It was mid-April and although chilly it was not raining. Me and my friend Carole wore our brother’s football scarves, and we had a rattle to turn if the boys scored any goals. There was a lot of celebratory singing on the coach as though the Huyton team had already won. The coach driver didn’t seem to mind. I wasn’t a red-hot football fan, but these boys were from our school, and I knew how important the game was to them. My brothers talked of nothing else but football, our front garden wall was often used for the goal in the street games and my eldest brother seemed to permanently have a leather football stuck on the tip of his baseball boots. The footballs were heavy and had a rubber bladder inside like an iron lung. My brother goaded me to head one once, I felt like I had collided with a boulder. Every Saturday we were ordered to be completely silent as my dad checked the long list of football scores on his Littlewood’s Pools coupon. Neither were we allowed to walk in front of the T.V instead the six of us children watched, as still as the Terracotta army, while the little black printer on the screen typed out the teams and the scores, Everton 3 Liverpool 0. Dunfermline 0-Stranraer 1. Heart of Midlothian 2 -Crystal palace 3. Fife 5-Forfar 4 so far, and on and on the list went while he marked off his pool’s coupon, so we got to know the team’s names almost off by heart without knowing too much about the individual teams and players, although Keegan, Emlyn, Alan Ball, Maradonna, Dalglish, Joe Royal, George Best, Pele and of course Willie Morgan were the names that were mentioned more often than others. I say Willie Morgan because like all other kids; boys and girls, we collected football cards and Willie was my favourite card. When we arrived at the ground there were so many people already there queuing up to go through the turnstiles. It was exciting! I had never been to a real football match before, but Tommy Evans, Peter Reid and Roy Clarke were always kicking a ball down Montgomery Rd or at least holding one under their arm as they passed or huddled together with my brother Bernard and his mates talking football. They always had a ball with them practising their headers, flicking the ball up from their feet to their knees and then from one knee to the other. It wasn’t easy, I tried it. It takes a lot of practice. Carole and I found a seat. The stadium was cold, but we were well rugged up, there was a lot of steel handrails with worn shiny patches where fans had repeatedl wrung their hands around them in anticipation of a goal being scored. And there was a lot of pale concrete but the grass on the pitch was very green, and the striped scarves of the fans brought much colour to the scene. Either blue or red scarves from the Huyton crowd or red and white from the opposing team Stoke. Although there were quite a few women and girls attending, the fans were predominantly male. There was an air of patriarchy even though there were more male youths than male adults. Some of the teachers that had coached the boys passed us to get a seat, it was strange seeing them in this environment. “Hi Sir” we called. When the boys came running out of the tunnel, their screw in studs tapping on the concrete floor, there was an uproar of cheering, it was just like watching it on t.v. I kept scouring the vastness of the arena. I could smell the muddied grass mixed with the whitish cold clouds of our breaths as we cheered and laughed at the idea of it all. I was sure I would feel more of a football fan after this. After I had seen the game in the flesh. Even though football was ingrained into family life generally there was a difference between being a part of the fabric and having a passion for the game. I couldn’t escape it, living it every day in one way or another, and so was along for the ride. Baritone chanting echoed along the underside of the roof “Huyton! Huyton! Chammmppionns! and seemed to run along the concrete and ricochet off the handrails which were already rattling from the shaking they were getting. It scared me a bit when the sung slogans spilled from the above scarved necks of darkly clothed males. It was an eerie choir. I had not witnessed this close up before. Yet it had its beauty which made me smile and shiver simultaneously. Warmly. Strangers were uniting. It was a strange sensation. I had heard so much about football matches and the violence, but it wasn’t apparent at this, my first match. But that coagulation of coats and jeering and cheering mouths had a force which could have gone either way. The cheers were unmerciful when we scored; when the Huyton team scored. Boys and men standing above us swayed like large, shadowy skittles with identical open-mouthed faces painted on them. At the final whistle the score was still 1-0. The mad rush just seconds after the players ran, waving, back down through the tunnel, was discerning. Shoulder to shoulder people herded together pushing and shoving, squashing each other between the walls of the narrow exits. I held on tight to Carole’s arm. A sea of heads in front and behind me, all excited to get out, get home and talk about football, play football, flick Subbuteo figures or twist the steel rods on the table-top football. I just wanted space, out of the smell of tobacco, mud, tweed, leather and the chilled metal. It was a relief when the hoards spilled out of the turnstiles diverging down different streets with names like Gwladys, Bullens and Walton Lane, or like us followed the familiar faces of school mates until we found the school’s coach and boarded it. The colourful velvety seats were warm, and the smell of an alpine air freshener added a sense of home to the unfamiliar just enough to still enjoy the freedom and the aftermath of what it feels like to win, although bathing in other’s glories. The fans could not settle and squawked on about the game like a murder of crows. It was unreal, for me, that first match. I somehow didn’t want it to end.