‘Called on to Sing’

‘Called on to Sing’

Memories of Liverpool v QPR (April, 1990).

Me and Gail queued-up – that’s what you could do in those days. Don’t ask me for how long. All we hoped was that the Kop turnstile would not stop clicking before we got there.

I’d met Gail on the Kop, on the left-hand side, the end nearest the Main Stand one late January day – versus Luton and arranged to meet her every game then. We rarely saw the reds draw, let alone lose. It just did not happen.

On this particular day we managed to squeeze into the top right-hand side of the famous old terrace, looking towards the old Kemlyn Stand (the Sir Kenny Dalglish Stand – these days). All that mattered was that we were ‘in’.

We had beaten Millwall with a goal from ‘Bupa-Man’ Gary Gillespie and then along the way had crushed Charlton away, 4-0, when our new hero, ‘Oh Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie Rose-en-thal’ had scored a hat-trick, following a surprising 3-4 semi reverse against Palace. Then we had beaten the soon to be Chav Chelsea, 4-1 – blowing them away and as I had headed towards the coach, Des had told me that we would be Champions. I was a pessimist then and nothing has changed in thirty years since.

The visitors on one of the last days in April 1990, QPR though, had not read the script. They only went and scored first, down at the Anfield Road End. The cheek of it!!! I’ve had to check this fact out but it was that Yank, Roy Wegerle – didn’t he have a moustache? He put the visitors in front. I knew I was worried.

This reds team though had Alan Hansen at the back – with my abiding memory of him striding forward against Southampton that season in I think, the crucial 3-2 League win, and laughing my head off in pride as the Kop chanted, ‘Hansen, Hansen, take the piss’ and he did, always. McMahon and Whelan were also there along with a front three which are an equal of Bobby Firmino, Mo Salah and Sadio Mane; in the form of Johnny Barnes, Peter Beardsley and my number one hero, Ian Rush. Not a bad spine, with ‘Brucie, Brucie Grob-el-laar’, in goal and Stevie Nicol as well who was a very decent player – akin to Andy Robertson.

Well, with the lads, wearing that red top which looked as though a few pigeons had crapped on it and a Candy logo – the top which I’d had in March, for my birthday (before we crucially beat Man U 2-1 away), attacking the Kop, desperate for a goal, the ball came in from the Main Stand side to the edge of the six yard box. Someone swivelled like a ballerina and lashed the ball into Dave Seaman’s top right-hand corner!

‘GOAL’!!!

Doubly or even triply delight for me because not only was it a Liverpool goal and a critical equaliser but it had been scored by said hero, none other than the goal machine, the moustachioed master, Heinz Bean loving lithe – nay, Gazelle, number nine with a shot-gun sling finish, in the form of Ian Rush.

I just know that I could not believe that he had scored from such an acute angle… I was nearly over-come. I don’t often cry (still I haven’t since my dad died a few hours after the win in Madrid) but give me a Liverpool goal and the chances are, I’ll immediately explode into a fountain of tears, especially if I happen to be really there. This time was no different. You see, I love Liverpool, right from the very, very, very depths of me and can’t never contain my most natural emotions. I will be the same till the day I die but before then I just want Liverpool to win the league again, I can die happy then.

Well, that was the equaliser, 1-1 at the break.

Not sure how Villa were doing. Villa being our nearest Title challengers. It had been nip and tuck but Liverpool had just gone on this incredible run since returning to Hillsborough and losing 2-0 before Christmas. Villa were hanging onto their coat-tails, just like Forest, United, Watford, Ipswich had in the past, except for Arsenal though, who had dramatically won the title right in front of our disbelieving eyes less than 12 months before. After that, anything could happen – and well, you all knew it did in subsequent years to come.

Sometime in the second half we won a penalty. Now, I’ve just got this feeling that it was not really a pen – as Stevie Nic got fouled outside the area but do you know, I took it, thank you very much, yessiiireeebeee. There was only one man to take it. The coolest player and one of the most graceful I’ve ever had the pleasure to see in real life, the player whose Anfield debut I had not seen because I’d criminally missed the bus against Oxford in August, 1987 and subsequently missed his introductory free-kick in front of an instant adoring Kop; Johnneeee Barnes.

Don’t ask me what the strike was like. Id have to You Tube it or watch it on video, providing my bro can set my dad’s video up for me, but the main thing was, Barnesy scored to make it 2-1 to Liverpool. It put us in the box seat -set-us up to have a real chance of winning the League there and then, that day.

The closer the time ticked the more tense I got because in those days before mobiles and instant info access, I used to carry a transistor radio with me. So, as the game neared it’s close and Liverpool, with Glen ‘Glenda’ Hysen, all grey permed locks alongside ‘Jocky’ Hansen in defence, with me having lost Gail, having gone to the loo and never finding her again amongst the sea of faces below me, I pressed my ear up against my radio as though some spirit was whispering to me Lottery numbers to the first draw, about five years later. What I heard though, as the Kop chanted, ‘Champions, Champions’ ringing out like bells being peeled out as regularly in those days for a Sunday service, was much more important meaningful news to me, which confirmed that Villa had drew 3-3 with Norwich.

Now I joined in with the celebrations going on all around me because I knew then for certain that Liverpool were League Champions.

Let that sink in a moment or two.

League, Cham-pions. Liverpool.

League Champions. Premier League Champions – it doesn’t matter. It means the same thing – Liverpool were champions of England. Not just for the first time either. It was for the 18^th time. 18 times Liverpool have won the League. 18 bloody times and in 1990, on that spring day, 30 years ago, I was fortunate enough to have witnessed it. Lived it. Breathed it. Felt it. Got emotional about it with every last one of my breaths. Tears running endlessly down my cheeks, as the Kop continued booming out, ‘Champions’ or ‘Camp-e-o-nee’ in equal measure.

I’m there again. I’m 21 again. Liverpool top of the tree, back where they belong, after only a year away. The King, Dalglish as manager as the players file past us, celebrating. Nowhere else I want to be. Living the moments which will, little did I know it, last over half a life-time in my memory…

Today, as I write this, Liverpool should have been playing Crystal Palace. Could have played at Everton on Monday and maybe they’d have won and then, just, just maybe, if they had beaten Roy Hodgson’s team, they could have turned back the clock and I could have perhaps closed my eyes and sang ‘Champions’ once again, in the blink of an eye…

The fat lady has maybe put back that date but you never know, she may still yet be called on to sing…

21/3/20.