One of my best mates from childhood is finally getting married. Dougie (as he’s been nicknamed since he first went to our local primary) nearly made 50 years of age before finding the right girl for him. She’s been worth the wait too as they’re perfectly matched.
Like us all he’s football mad. His late father Gareth used to run buses for Merthyr away trips. Gareth was known in the town as “Shirt & Tie” because regardless where he was, or the time of day, he was always immaculately turned out. “That’s the best nickname I’ve ever heard,” my radio show co-host Mark Webster said this summer.
We had the stag weekend in Liverpool. Stag or hen, we’ve nearly all been on one. That final few days (it used to be a night) away with your mates. I loved it. I took the time to visit both Premier League grounds and I even went down to where Everton’s new ground will be built. It’s an incredible city for so many reasons. In popular culture it pretty much tops the league after producing the most important artists of the 20th century. It also boasts a football history up there with the best.
The two city clubs are inextricably linked. Indeed one grew out of the other. A rift caused Everton to leave Anfield and John Houlding decided to form a new club to play from the ground named after the city itself (Liverpool FC) and so two of the biggest clubs in English football existed cheek by jowl with Stanley Park separating them.
When I did the research for the film The Three Kings I was pleasantly surprised by how much the two Liverpool clubs pushed one another on in the mid-Sixties. Bill Shankly used the rivalry to drive the red side of the city to ever greater heights but Everton had the quieter but brilliant Harry Catterick as manager and their own holy trinity of Kendall, Harvey and Ball.
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1964 seemed to be the year of take-off for the red half. “You’ll never walk alone” was adopted by the Kop as they played all in red for the first time and stormed the league. Everton won the league in 1963 and the FA Cup three years later. With Merseybeat dominating the airwaves across the world it must have seemed like the city was the centre of the universe.
I always liked the Scouse accent. It seems a real Celtic way of talking — a perfect cross between the Irish and Welsh who made up the majority of the industrial era population. It has a real twinkle, a wink at its heart.
I walked down Mathew Street, past the throbbing Beatles-themed bars and I thought about how the “Annie Road End” lads who travelled to Europe in the late Seventies brought back all the colour of European fashion to our terraces. In those days they travelled together. Red and blue.
Grafters, they called themselves, as they took their bags of clothes around the local pubs looking for customers. It’s an incredible legacy they left. Most men of a certain age dress in a particular way and they owe a huge debt of gratitude to the teenagers of Merseyside and later Manchester who created a unique style of their own. A nice pair of trainers, smartly cut jeans, a Lacoste top and cagoule is still everywhere you look.
Like a lot of people my age I’ve become a bit of a football tourist. I enjoy going to Germany, Spain and Scotland to watch a game. I love to see how other people take in a match. As you get older you become much less partisan. Well I have, anyway.
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I enjoy chatting to fans of other clubs, other countries. There’s someone incredibly liberating about watching a game in a completely new place. Every new city or town I go to now I try to take in a game and a local pub. I’m lucky because of the radio show and this column that people will come over and share their football story.
I’m sure Dougie’s father Gareth would have enjoyed the trip to Liverpool for his stag. I’ve no doubt he’d have been in his best suit to go to the clubs, museums and the pubs, raising a glass to his son and wishing him a happy marriage la!
