25 Oct 2002
Liverpool Red Diary - part 10
Joel Rookwood
The Fields of Anfield Road
I was sat at home watching a certain Catalonia Derby recently - a moderately passionate contest between Barcelona and neighbours Espanyol, which was preceded by a moment of remembrance for two former Nou Camp favourites. The silence in the ground was broken by the Loud speaker, playing to my surprise, a sombre version of 'The White Rose of Texas', which Liverpudlians have adopted as the tune for our best ever song, 'Poor Scouser Tommy'. The chorus to the adaptation begins 'Oh I am a Liverpudlian and I come from the Spion Kop. I like to sing, I like to shout I go there quite a lot'. Unfortunately Liverpool's Spion Kop will soon be reduced to mere rubble and memories, as the club have this week announced that 58% of Anfield's residents have voted in favour of a move to a new ground for the 2005/06 season, to be built in neighbouring Stanley Park. Indeed only 27% opposed the plan, which will sadly ensure that going to the Kop 'quite a lot' will soon be a thing of the past.
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The new ground issue has been on the cards in Liverpool for a while, and call me paranoid but I think the club have been quite methodical and even devious in their approach to presenting the idea, fearing a backlash from fans. First they claimed the present site wasn't big enough for the expansion, aimed at accommodating 70,000 fans. This figure is needless to say ridiculous, as such a ground would have been full four or five games a season, and embarrassingly empty for less glamorous fixtures. Anyone who was there to see us lose to Grimsby in the Worthington Cup last season in front of a half full Anfield would surely subscribe to the view that such an increase in capacity would prove futile. But at the same time, no one could argue that if the club had have required such an expansion, then relocation would have served as the only solution, as the space around the ground is limited to say the least. Yet did the club themselves really envisage seventy thousand flocking to Anfield every week, or was this notion merely instilled into the minds of Liverpudlians, to encourage subscription to the view that relocation is a necessity?
The board obviously expected fans to react negatively to such a suggestion considering the huge sum of money that would be required for investment into the project. This is a viewpoint with which they concurred, "We must not place ourselves in a position where we cannot provide the necessary investment for the team" claimed Chief Executive Rick Parry. The responses were reacted to with the board suggesting that only an extra 10,000 seats would be made available, as they didn't want to deny the club the funds necessary to support team building. But the club conveniently steered themselves away from the possibility of staying at Anfield, even though Parry admitted that, "There is no doubt that on the face of it, redevelopment of the existing site presents less of a financial risk and cannot be ruled out."
The notion of extending the ground is an argument that has been raging for years. In my opinion the problem started when the Anfield Road end was refurbished in 1998. Following the redevelopment, the stand remained far too small (the upper tier holding 2,654 fans and the lower 6,391), and this is essentially where the main problem lies. Such poor forethought was always going to prove problematic. Obviously there is a road and row of seemingly 'unbuyable' houses just behind the ground limiting the possibilities for expansion. But the option of having a tunnel through an expanded stand, allowing the continuation of Anfield Road beneath was not considered when the stand was being extended. If this conception sounds a little off the wall, then I can assure you, I am merely reflecting on an idea executed successfully by Athletico Madrdid at the Vicente Calderon stadium. One could estimate that such a scenario could well provide the extra 10,000 seats. But even if the club adopted such an approach now, either at the Anfield Road end or alternatively the adjacent Main Stand, would it mean the problem would be considered solved? I doubt it.
Opportunities
for a new museum at the new site were only murmured, like small print
in a complex legal document, so to avoid the word 'corporate' being mentioned
in explaining the rationale behind a possible move. But I fear for the
extent to which corporate facilities will be catered for in the new ground.
How else will it be funded, if significant and potentially crippling loans
and a substantial decrease in transfer funds are to be avoided? And is
that the direction this club should be heading in, after doing its best
to resist the temptation of catering for more lucrative corporate clientele
rather than the average fan for so long?
Many people feel the board should be thanked for not moving the club from its home, and credit where it's due, they've promised we will remain in Anfield, which is something. Ideas about relocating out in Speke have thankfully been forgotten. Again I must question the club's thought processes. Were Liverpool ever actually considering a long distance move, or was it a ploy for us to be thankful for the club remaining at the same postcode, to dilute our reservations for moving at all? Was this a psychological stratagem aimed at bringing fans around to the idea that moving to Stanley Park wasn't such a bad idea?
Regarding the capacity, the issue of extra seats is one that has also caused great debate locally. And whilst I appreciate that many Liverpudlians cannot afford season ticket prices, my sympathy with them for not being able to get to games due to matches being sold out is not limitless. I am no millionaire, but I love my club, and will rarely miss a game, from Anfield to Moscow. Locals who suddenly decide they want to go to the match should have preference over regular and non regular foreigners who make trips to Anfield for games, (unfortunately a scenario that realistically will never happen) but if you haven't secured a season ticket for yourself, I'm afraid you must pay the price, wherever you hail from. And while an increase in ground capacity may make it easier for part time fans to suddenly decide to make a trip to Anfield, we will inevitably lose the atmosphere (such as it is), on the frequent occurrences when it is not full, as a trip to Sunderland's Stadium of Light will serve to illustrate. Obviously extra seats would mean extra revenue, but we simply wouldn't fill it every week. Can you imagine 30,000 in a 55,000 stadium for a cup game? The words 'laughing' and 'stock' would surely spring to mind.
Regarding the decision making process, last season we laughed at Evertonians for their manager's admission that they were 'the peoples' club', and rightly so. But when Everton first publicly considered a ground move, their fans were asked to vote at a match, with the decision of the majority proving decisive. But were we ever asked to vote on the decision regarding where our club should play? No, we were informed. It was only the local residents who voted. Don't misunderstand me, I believe the local people should have a commanding voice in the decision making process. But Liverpool fans come from Bootle to Childwall, (and yes Evertonians, one or two from outside the city) and those of us not based in Anfield deserve our say. How I wish I lived in L4 and not L3, how I wish for a proper consultation. If such a process was exacted, and my vote against the proposition proved to be of the minority, than I would not argue, for a democratic decision had been reached following a fair conference. I would suffer in silence, as do those Evertonians I know who are not in favour of a move to the Kings Dock site.
And while we're on the subject of our close neighbours, remaining in Anfield is all well and good - I may still be able to walk to the match, but Everton were refused permission to move to Stanley Park, so why should it be different with Liverpool? Have the 'serious concerns' that the English heritage had for the use of the site for Everton disappeared? Is the site no longer important? Does north Liverpool no longer deserve this historic green area to be kept in tact just because a bigger club wishes to make it it's home? - Another example of injustice surrounding the issue, that is admittedly of greater importance to me due to my stance on the subject than it would otherwise have been, but is still undeniably relevant.
Before now I have thought nothing of the original grounds of Leicester, Derby, Sunderland, Middlesbrough and the rest biting the dust and being replaced with modern arenas, but I now suddenly feel a sense of something lost about our national game. I guess because I've put myself in the position of the fans of such clubs for the first time. And as for the Wimbledon fiasco, well, heads would roll if our board tried any stunt like that. Not that I believe they ever would. I am certainly not anti- the Liverpool board, despite what the expression of this argument may imply. They've done a huge amount for the club, particularly over the last four years, and their efforts are much appreciated.
But I fail to agree with them in this instance. Derby and Leicester invested a large proportion of their finances into new grounds, whilst in a relatively healthy position, and look at them now. And whilst such deterioration is extremely unlikely to occur at Liverpool, with no title in thirteen years, the emphasis surely has to be on the team. And while I am not one of these idiots obsessed with the fortunes of other English clubs, with Goodison, Highbury, the Dell and of course Anfield among the grounds being subjected to bulldozer treatment, it leaves only a handful of 'original' grounds still in tact, with Old Trafford topping the bill. This will add weight to Mancunian delusions of grandeur- and mark my word they will milk it, as no doubt will the increasingly annoying media. The difference between our situation and the aforementioned clubs however, is that our ground is not falling down, and it is (almost) big enough.
Everton's proposed move to the Kings Dock has been on the agenda locally for some time. Having worked for the club, I've subsequently secured the odd free ticket, which I've taken up occasionally when Liverpool weren't playing. I've sat in every stand of that dilapidated ground, and I am in full agreement with the club, that they need a new ground. It's a shed. But Anfield? It's a modern ground with an unrivalled history that may not quite be state of the art but is certainly in good condition. I was there when England beat Argentina in the Sapporo Dome, and I can tell you ¯ state of the art grounds such as that one are not all their cracked up to be. Give me a good old fashion rectangular English stadium any day.
And deflecting more specifically towards Liverpool, it has often been said that nothing in England and beyond beats a European night at Anfield. Will that be the case in a new stadium? It may have a world-class museum, and ten thousand extra seats, but will it have the ashes of hundreds of Liverpool fans scattered on it? Will it have the tunnel through which Paisley marched with a thousand trophies, or the grass where Shankly picked up a red scarf and rapped it round his neck in front of thousands of adoring fans, or the Eternal Flame where bereaved relatives of the victims of the Hillsborough disaster can go to feel close to the deceased? Will it be able to generate the same passion, the same atmosphere, the same noise?
Some may call this viewpoint sentimental, and that's partially true obviously. If you took the heart out of football, it would have no hard-core element to sustain it. But ask the families of the Hillsborough victims how they would feel about visiting the memorial in the shadow of a housing estate or supermarket chain, because by definition, you cannot relocate the eternal flame. It should be intertwined with the club physically, as it always will be in an emotional sense.
I've heard arguments refuting the worth of sentimentality in this instance - that the legend of the kop died in the sixties or seventies, when out-of-towner's started to come onto the kop to 'experience' the phenomenon. Others claim that sad day in 1994 when the standing kop gave way to McDonalds and the seated family enclosure saw the kop finally cease to exist. By the way I've been to grounds all over Europe, notably Bayern Munich who have supposedly 'safe' standing areas. Yet even though a part of every kopite, myself included, died the day we lost the standing kop, not one Liverpudlian would ever question the decision to make it an all-seater stand, despite the possibility for other developments.
The Spion Kop in it's current state may not be able to hold anything like the 28,000 that used to grace it every week, but it's still the most famous and best stand in Britain, and possibly the world. Ask any fan with a stand in their ground why their club named it 'the kop', and they're likely to say 'it's just the name for the home stand'. But THE Kop at Liverpool has been the name of the Walton Brek Road stand since 1906, christened the Spion Kop by The Echo's Ernest Jones in memory of the many Scousers who died in battle over a hill in South Africa by the same name during the Boer war six year previously. The name is Liverpool through and through. The Stand is Liverpool through and through. How many times have BBC's Panorama camera crew gone to film the crowd at Park Head, Highbury, St James' Park or Old Trafford? It is a legend, a one off ¯ synonymous with Liverpool.
And whilst the foreigners and the seats now hinder the atmosphere somewhat, the Spion Kop in its current form is certainly not dead. I defy the notion that "what we hold dear about Anfield is just in our imagination these days" as I read on a Liverpool supporters website recently. Anyone who was there to see Gary McAllister's penalty knock Barcelona out of the UEFA Cup or Roma beaten on Houllier's emotional return from illness will tell you the kop is anything but deceased. It might be in its element only a few times a season these days, but it still has the capacity to make our hearts skip a beat, to make the hairs stand up on the back of necks, to stir emotion in males from six to sixty. While the kop is still erect on that spot, amongst the ashes of hundreds of deceased kopites, it is still alive. While we still watch our team in the same spot that Gerry Byrne paraded the FA Cup before the Inter game, where Fairclough sunk St Etienne, and where Shankly picked a red scarf off the turf and rapped around is neck in front of adoring fans claiming it was 'somebody's life'. While we still have that connection with our glorious unparalleled past, the kop will still be alive in the heart of every red.
But the day that Anfield Road closes for business WILL see the kop die. Liverpool football club will never be the same, in Stanley Park or anywhere else. And as I wander through the Shankly gates before matches these days, I become increasingly aware that when we lose the Anfield Road ground, we will lose something in us that could never be replaced. We will have good times at the new ground, and will no doubt sing ourselves hoarse there. We will see titles and cups paraded in it's trophy room, world class players from home and abroad entertain us on its turf, but it will not be our Anfield. We will no longer be able to stumble out of the Albert pub after two hours of singing dedicated to our heroes, only to do it for another two hours on the kop. It will be like Barcelona - a twenty minute hike through a crowd of foreigners lingering around an oversized museum and mega store, only to climb four flights of stairs to sit amongst the club's official Singapore fan club who need assistance from the programme in naming the substitute that has just made a dart down the touch line in preparation for an appearance. And the true home-and- away Liverpudlians among us will look at each other across a crowd of glory- hunting, entertainment- seeking wools, with an attempted smile stopped in its tracks by a heavy heart - left only with memories of the good old days.
But to make a last ditch attempt to prevent this from become an entirely biased argument, I must concede the possible positive factors regarding relocation. We will have a world-class museum, which will attract thousands of visitors, and thus create considerable revenue. And we can only assume the new bigger, more spacious ground will incorporate a more meaningful commemoration of former managers Shankly and Paisley as well as the greatest ever Liverpudlian - Joe Fagan, and Scottish legends Billy Liddle and Kenny Dalglish than the current ground's poor or non existent attempts. And the name and the postcode will also remain.
But to flirt briefly again with a negative viewpoint, according to the artist impressions supplied by the club, the ground will lose it's shape, with the four sides of the ground interlinked. The fact that the Kop is set back from the other areas of the ground in the current stadium is part of its tradition. Do we really want another Friends Providence Stadium or BT Cellnet ground? (And the names of those grounds would spark another argument, which I don't want to go into). The Kop is a separate stand, set aside for the working class element of the city. I don't envy Man United in their now practically oval ground, despite its enormity. And Bayern Munich's ground maybe famous for it's design, but its just not Liverpool is it?
Despite my ramblings, it seems that in our powerless state, Liverpudlians have three seasons to savour THE Anfield stadium. But make no mistake; there will only ever be one Anfield ground, one place to savour the glory of the fields of Anfield Road. And while some people can look forward, eager to impress upon the club the importance of considering certain issues in terms of the logistics of relocating, such behaviour implies an acceptance of the current situation. This is something of which I am not yet capable, as I'm afraid I am still loitering somewhere between denial and depression.
Admittedly there are worse locations for the football club to move to. Many clubs would be delighted with such a 'progression'. But no club in Britain has such a history with their ground. No club has had such support or such a relationship with their fans. So in essence no club can be compared to ours. And anyway is it really progression? Is sitting still necessarily going backwards? Or is a football ground like a bottle of wine, with a definite life capacity but something that requires maturing before it can assume any worth? And surely Anfield hasn't reached its life capacity.
My critics would no doubt accuse me of caring more about our future than our past. True, I celebrate the past, I'm deeply proud of what the club's achieved and experienced, but if I thought for one minute Anfield was no longer an arena befitting of a club such as ours, I wouldn't wish to block what would subsequently prove a 'progressive' move to a new ground. Memories are not a reason to stay in the same place. You don't stay with a partner simply because of the good times you've shared - you remain because you have a future together. If you don't have a future, then you are wasting time living in the past. And Anfield will not last forever, but for the foreseeable future it is certainly good enough, and can certainly give us a future. You don't buy a new car just because in five years time your perfectly reliable motor may not be up to the job. People who adopt an antithetical stance to mine in this instance seem to talk of Anfield like it's a crumbling wreck.
Furthermore in an argument with a fan on a related issue I was once asked how many European finals we have staged at Anfield. 'How many have we won?' was my reply. We're a club, and a successful one and that, not an entertainment venue. Fame and fortune are essential for a football club, but let either come before the club's heartbeat, the very reason for our being in existence, and you've got problems. Give Manchester the honour of staging a European cup final, the Commonwealth Games, the tramlines. Make them the bloody capital of England, I don't care, but let us keep in tact our past and present that renders us superior to every club in this country, and fuels the jealousy that our rivals have of us.
Take a visit to Anfield or go wherever the mighty reds are playing, and you'll hear the Liverpool faithful sing the following version of the Fields of Athenry: "Outside the Shankly gates, I heard a kopite calling. Shankly they have taken you away. For you led the great eleven, just before they took you to heaven. We saw glory round the fields of Anfield Road. On the Fields of Anfield Road, where once we watched the King Kenny play - and could he play! Stevie Heighway on the wing, we had dreams and songs to sing. We saw glory round the fields of Anfield Road." Soon we will have nothing but memories of glory days gone by from the place Rogan Taylor aptly described as our 'cathedral' - THE Anfield Road stadium.
I openly admit to the existence of bias in my argument - it's a reflection of my viewpoint. And there are, no doubt, several relevant issues of which I am not sufficiently aware, which must be considered before a wholly reliable opinion could be formed. But I'm exercising my right as a fan, a paying customer disgruntled with the service provided. I'm a kopite and want to remain one forever. If, sorry when we relocate, I'll support the move - eventually. But it will never be the same.
Oh by the way on the football front, England won. Apparently. - Not a good week then. But I hear the mighty Macedonia secured a deserved point against them on Wednesday. But just when things were looking up, I find out that Gerrard and Heskey both picked up injuries. How I loathe this international football.
The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily endorsed by Soccerphile Ltd.