It's funny how life throws up the slightest thing at any given moment to see an angry young man metamorphose into a misty eyed old codger reminiscing about the bygone days.
One such flashback occurred to me at Anfield prior to the pre-season friendly with Lazio. At five to eight the PA system relayed a message after a loud two tone noise: 'This is a Liverpool Football Club announcement. Due to problems at the ticket office and the resulting queues at the turnstiles kick off will now be moved to 8.15' or words to a similar extent.
Upon hearing those words my mind was immediately transported back to Tuesday 25th October 1994 where my dad and I queued outside the Main Stand waiting to take our places during the Coca-Cola Cup tie with Stoke City. This wasn't the usual late arrival of match day drinkers; this was exactly the same as the game on August 8th this year albeit on a smaller scale.
After ten minutes of queuing up we heard a vociferous roar from beyond the stadium walls. Liverpool, or more specifically Ian Rush, had scored. Four minutes into the game and he had scored. As a young boy who was devout on Liverpool and had never missed a goal at every game I had attended, one from my first ever Anfield heroes left me feeling colder than the winter air that night.
There was no apologies for the gridlock at the turnstiles, no apologies for missing the goal and definitely no delay to the kick off time. Rush scored again in the fifty sixth minute but that was little consolation to me as a seven year old kid but the game would deal more devastating blows than that with events off the pitch.
A season later I found myself the proud co-owner of a 'dad and lad' season ticket on the now all-seated Spion Kop. Block 306 Row 64 Seat 91. Every other Saturday from the day those leather books dropped through my letterbox in was like every Christmas and birthday rolled into one. The excitement was inexplicable and unsurpassable. My obsession with Liverpool had burned brightly ever since my dad had dragged me down to Anfield one Saturday afternoon in October 1992 to watch Don Hutchinson net the winner against Sheffield Wednesday.
My time of match-going began at the dawn of the Premier League, a season too late for the old First Division but this flame was further fanned by my attendance at every game of the club's road to that 1995 League Cup - climaxing at the old Wembley stadium - and my equally LFC mad school mate Steven Reid. Looking back now - although I didn't know it at the time - but football as a working class past time had changed greatly and it coincided when all football grounds in the old First Division were made all seated stands in accordance with the Taylor Report, a report which corrected the dressed up version events of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster perpetrated by the authorities responsible for the tragedy.
The FA Premier League was formed in 1992 and BSkyB were already waiting in the wings to pounce and change the game for the worst. The broadcaster, owned by Rupert Murdoch, had struck an exclusivity deal with the newly formed League that awarded their offspring Sky Sports the right to broadcast live games in accordance with the new organisation. This deal was unlike the highlights package that the League renewed with the BBC.
This all tied in with the organisation's right to negotiate sponsorship deals with whichever brand they saw fit. Fronted by a rather smug Richard Keys who proclaimed "weekends will never be the same again", Sky promoted their brand as the future of football to the background of fireworks from the roofs of stands and stationing cheerleaders on the touch lines at their featured Sunday games which were now known as 'Super' Sundays.
That 95/96 season provided Sky's marketing team with an abundance of appealing material from goals that shook the frame of the goal to Kevin Keegan stating how much he would 'love it' if his Newcastle side pipped Manchester United to the title. Liverpool had their part to play in Sky's vision - clearly spelled out in their promotional adverts for the new season which were set to Queen's One Vision - when they played their first game of the season at Anfield against Sheffield Wednesday. New signing Stan Collymore, who cost a then British transfer record of £8.5 million, scored a long ranged, fast paced shot on his debut.
Later that season the Reds faced title challengers Newcastle at Anfield on a dark spring night. The game was a thrilling 4-3 win for the home side with Collymore scoring the winning goal in the latter stages of the game. Sky, once again, had exclusivity rights to broadcast the game and this was a double boost to their already high viewing figures.
Two months later England was host to the 1996 European Championships and the entire nation was encapsulated in a mix of patriotism and football. People from the higher part of the class spectrum found themselves being spectators to a sport of the working classes.
In accordance with this new found obsession Sky rolled out Soccer AM - their in house pre-match light entertainment show which encouraged immature behaviour on the terraces. A new breed had been introduced to the football gene pool. As a consequence, there was a new type of clientèle attending matches and in greater numbers, none more so than at Anfield. Tickets that had once been in the possession of supporters from the city and surrounding areas were now in the hands of spectators from as far afield as Asia and as near as London.
Already the tide was turning. Another season, another league title for Manchester United and another marketing ploy by the suits at Sky. Enter Sean Bean telling the wealthier classes that life can be difficult but they knew that and encouraged them to become part of 'a feeling that can't be explained but we spend our lives explaining it' which was 'theatre, art, war and love'. The key demographic fell for the compilation of extravagant goals with a familiar faced Northerner encouraging them to become a part of the game.
In my experience certain things breed idiocy and that Sean Bean narrated advert was one of them. Another was success and despite Liverpool's inability to reclaim the heady heights of English football, the new age fans still sifted through the turnstiles and in greater numbers.
By the time the club had completed an historic domestic and European cup treble in 2001, the numbers increased and loss of the traditional game started to escalate even faster. Anfield was now a melting pot of high class hangers on who were now marketing tools for the club. If the club brought out three kits per season they would buy each one, complete with player names, numbers and Premier League patches. Foot long hot dogs and watered down cardboard cups of Coke were the order the overpriced day.
It wasn't long before the match day stall sellers outside the ground capitalised with half-half scarves and jester's hats which were lapped up without hesitation. The mentality of these people was that going to watch a game of football was just a day out for the family that they could brag about to other parents at the next PTA meeting Liverpool's Irish fan base was given a bad name through the amount of fellow countrymen following the lead of the wealthier classes but instead of treating it as a bragging right over Giles and Sandra whilst discussing the merits of Thomas and Lydia, it was treated like Saturday night down Mathew Street; a stag night in other words. Idiocy, arrogance and blatant disrespect to seasoned supporters was the obligatory hallmarks and greater numbers followed suit in 2005 following the club's European Cup triumph.
At Anfield the jester's hat became the universal symbol of where the game was headed. Were it not for the die hard traditionalists who tirelessly attempt to preserve the traditions and culture of the club's supporters, namely Reclaim The Kop and supporters' union Spirit of Shankly, the pantomime-like atmosphere and behaviour - which is common place at clubs such as Bolton Wanderers, Manchester City and Chelsea - would have become common place on the Kop.
With this change in attitudes comes a new precedent for the constitution of the standard of football both on and off the field in league with the gospel according to Sky. A goal is now not a goal unless it is scored from forty yards, curling in many directions, hitting the roof of the net followed by an acrobatic celebration in front of bottle blonde cheerleaders to the tune of Chelsea Dagger by the Fratellis as fireworks launched from the floodlights. Upon such moment spectators are required to don their jester's hats and begin seal-like clapping to accompany chants of 'who are ya? who are ya?' and 'eas-eh, eas-eh, eas-eh'.
The Sunday Mirror's Michael Calvin wrote an article in the wake of the Manchester City takeover titled 'R.I.P English football - Comical Ali's ripped our game apart' but I am of the opinion that the game was dead and buried by the summer of 1996. Now it is being raped in its grave by the corporate suits, television companies and those who have no consideration for the history or traditions of the clubs to which they pledge their allegiance.
The general overview of the Premier League generation from veteran supporters is that we are all fickle, commercial marketing tools for the clubs we attach ourselves to with no regard for any football-related history prior to August 1992 with nothing but apathy and willingness as the game strays from its traditional, working class format. I may not have been part of the swaying masses in the 1970s and 80s but the game has changed considerably in my 16 years of match-going and it is certainly not for the better. There were no jester's hats, hot dogs or seal clapping when I started going to matches. If I wanted a drink at half time I would have to smuggle in a bottle of Coke, not pay over the odds for a watered down equivalent and I certainly didn't participate in idiot-like behaviour at any point before, during or after the game.
Perhaps this is the sentimental ramblings from the first of the Premier League generation, reminiscing about when children under a certain age were allowed free admission to sit in the Main Stand with their dads and not be charged £20 plus for the privilege of watching their family's footballing lifeblood or perhaps this is the ramblings of an early twenties Scouser on the verge of being booked in for anger management classes. Whichever way you look at it the game I learned to love back in 1992 has long gone and will never return.
