Everton v Aston Villa – 50 years on
I went to a big football match yesterday – Everton v Aston Villa – and I found all sorts of strange emotions returning. I don’t go to football much these days; that was only the second time in a year, partly because I’m not so much in love with the game any more. Once I was obsessed with it. I knew every little last and lost fact. And when I grew older I became a football reporter and watched big games all the time, sometimes three or four a week. For 30 years.
That’s partly why I don’t go. Football isn’t as entertaining or perhaps it’s because as it’s no longer my job I don’t concentrate on it so much. Besides I can’t watch football as a fan. Too long trying to analyse it I suppose, When everyone else is jumping up in excitement I’m sitting there wondering who crossed the ball, who failed to track and runner and so on.
I watch it on TV but I cancelled my Sky subscription because I couldn’t stand the over-hyping that they do so badly. Every match is bigger than the next, everything is puffed up far beyond it’s normal size.
But yesterday brought back why I like football and why I might start going again, semi-regularly at least. I was in Liverpool for a book signing. David Cregeen and Jonathan Mumford, the authors of ‘Tales from the Gwladys Street’ were signing the book (along with the old Everton full back John Bailey, in the Bluekipper lounge after the match and it was a chance to see Villa, the team I support (soft of).
We were eating lunch beforehand and watching Arsenal v Tottenham on Sky. The derby of the millenium or some such according to Sky. The teams were lining up to go out onto the pitch and I suddenly realised that this was just what they did on parks all over the country. OK so not all teams march out to play for 60,000 people and the cameras, but the only thing that separated these players from the thousands of others was that they were better than most, quite a lot better. Of course they were being paid huge sums of money but I suspected most of them would still be playing football on a Saturday even if they weren’t so good.
Then came the match. In truth it wasn’t that good. The teams seemed more concerned with cancelling each other out (another reason for not going to matches much) but the experience of being in a crowd, of being there for the same purpose as thousands of others prompted a camaraderie that brought back memories.
I first went to Goodison Park 51 years ago. I was visiting my Auntie Dot and Uncle Fred for the Easter holidays and they lived in Bromborough. So I was able to pop across the Mersey on the ferry (lads of that age would not be allowed to go alone nowadays) and watch Everton. Well, you wouldn’t go to Anfield as a football mad teenager because they were in the Second Divison. I saw Everton three times (and Tranmere Rovers, the team my uncle supported, twice). Those Everton players are still in my memory bank and the ground, the crowd and the Liverpool Echo special editions are not far behind. Later when in my 20s I remember a group of young supporters chasing me outside the ground because they thought I was Bob Latchford. On a good day I’m 5ft 11ins and Bob is 6ft 2ins but we both had similar beards at the time.
So yesterday was Everton and Villa again and not even the scouser sat behind me could spoil it. He was one of those one-eyed fans who follow teams up and down the country. Nothing wrong with that. I used to be one. But this one-eyed supporter knew nothing about the game. His mate did which is why, every so often, there was a quiet interjection. Yes it was handball, yes it was a foul, yes he was off-side.
To the one-eyed scouser everyone was a ‘dickhead’. He took a dislike to Steve Sidwell, because he is ginger I suspect. I did wonder whether I should report him to a steward for racist remarks but I couldn’t decide whether he was being racist or not! Twice he called Villa’s Gabriel Agbonlahor an “Ethiopian’, which I’m sure he didn’t mean in a kindly fashion. Agbonlahor’s parents are from Scotland and Nigeria so why ‘Ethiopian’?
He was up on his feet spitting rage when Diniyar Bilyaletdinov, Everton’s Russian winger, was sent off and while I wasn’t upset I agreed with him, until I watched Match of the Day and realised the referee was correct. After that the one-eyed fan turned his attention to the referee and when Carlos Cuellar got a red card for two bookings he sided with the Villa player.
The signing was good too. When Duncan McKenzie, the ex-Everton and Nottingham Forest striker who could throw a golf ball huge distances and jump over a Mini (not at the same time) had sold 25 copies of his autobiography at a Blueskipper do. We almost doubled that. “That’s because a football biography is about the player,” Steve Jones who runs the bluekipper website told David Cregeen, “but your book is about us.”
As indeed it is.