Liverpool Down Under: More important than football

Liverpool fans in Australia get to see Liverpool play on TV and the lucky few spend a small fortune going to the UK to witness the Anfield choir in person.

Every Liverpool fan is aware of the majesty of a home game, of course you can see it on TV, but nothing can compare to being there. Where you don’t just hear it, you feel it.

On Wednesday, 24th July 2013, Liverpool fans across Australia had the chance to turn Melbourne into a suburb of Liverpool.

When you are born into a family that supports Liverpool Football Club, there is very little chance of straying from the nest and finding yourself sitting in the stands at Goodison Park, the home of Everton, Liverpool’s cross town rivals. There is even less chance of doing the unthinkable and traversing the M62 and supporting the team that shall not be named.

Anfield, the home of Liverpool, was a major part of my life growing up. I wasn’t one of the lucky ones who owned a season ticket (the English equivalent of a membership), so my trips to Anfield were always the less attended early rounds of cup competitions. But there were occasions when friends of mine were unable to go to games and gave me their season ticket and on those rare chances I was able to witness Anfield in full glory.

I remember distinctly going to a game when I was very young and my dad had managed to get tickets for The Kop on the last day of the season. I’m not sure how he got them but he does have a strange scar on his back and keeps referring to his kidney, not ‘kidneys’ as most people would say.

Liverpool had already won the league and this was going to be the day that the trophy was presented. The Anfield crowd was in full voice. The atmosphere was simply awe-inspiring. Looking back at that occasion it is hazy, snapshots of noise, I can’t really piece together the whole experience.

As I grew up I saw the Liverpool crowd rise to the occasion and add to their own legend. The atmosphere created at Anfield during the 2005 Champions League campaign and famously, the final in Turkey added to the legend of the Anfield crowd. I began to plan ahead, I put my name on the waiting list for a season ticket, which I was informed was measured in years. I didn’t care, I was going to wait, and I had to be part of the mass of red that witnessed truly memorable nights.

Then my life changed direction and I moved to Adelaide. A tiny unspoken regret remained with me through the move. I would never be a season ticket holder. The chances of me seeing Liverpool playing live were all but lost.

However, like all good fairy tales there was a twist. The announcement that Liverpool would play at the MCG made me sit up and take notice. Tickets were bought and flights were booked. Everything about the day was fantastic. Adelaide airport was a sea of red.

Normally, when people get on a plane with music blaring out of their mobile phone I look at them politely, while silently wishing that their thumbs would drop off preventing them using a mobile ever again.

This time however, Gerry Marsden was warbling his way through ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone.’ So, I smiled and nodded my head approvingly at him.

Once in Melbourne I tried, unsuccessfully, to convince my girlfriend that I needed to get more Liverpool stuff, as I felt I wasn’t showing enough red. I felt that I needed to display my colours more; I kicked myself for not thinking about my wardrobe choices. Scarves, jackets, shirts and flags prompted silent looks between people proudly displaying the sigil of House Shankly.

Connections were made regardless of age, sex or race. Each acknowledgement strengthened the bond, an entire planet brought together by a Liver bird crest.

I met up with friends and made new friends, simply because they wore red. As beer oiled the wheels of reminiscence, talk of glory days and the legends of Anfield began in earnest. I explained to my football virgin girlfriend that if she yelled out “that was never offside!” at random intervals during the game she would be accepted, for the record she got it right once.

The walk from Federation Square to the MCG was beautiful. A mass of red, evoking memories of sunny May days and the Liverpool fans flooding Wembley way.

95,446 people filled the famous old arena and the moment that I had been waiting for arrived. As the first notes of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ started, the scarves held proudly above heads, and the loudest and most passionate rendition of the Liverpool anthem I’ve ever heard started.

I’m sure there have been louder and more important ones, but this one was mine. I was swept away, adrift on a sea of noise; all of the cares and worry about life gone. For nearly 3 minutes, I was part of something bigger, a single cell in an organism of football support.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFrjcX1accI

There was a game and Liverpool won 2-0, but for me, I didn’t pay for the football. Every dollar was spent to be a part of 95,000 people singing our song.

Liverpool fans are famous for taking over stadiums. Wembley was nicknamed Anfield South due to the fact that Liverpool played there so often and the fans were without rival when it came to atmosphere.

Liverpool fans have every right to petition the MCG and ask for a sign to be installed above the player’s race. In bright red, displaying the Liverpool crest, announcing to all that take the field:

‘THIS IS ANFIELD DOWN UNDER’