Anfield of Dreams , livre ebook

Pitch Publishing (Brighton) Ltd - Neil Dunkin

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250 pages

English

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- Shortlisted for the National Sporting Club's Sports Book of the Year Award- Highly acclaimed - Liverpool FC TV- Football lovers will lap this up but Dunkin's passion and fine line in anecdotes make the book worthy of a much wider readership - Daily Express- Dunkin talks with great passion about the beautiful game in a language fans will appreciate - Birmingham PostMid-Atlantic, 10 April 1954: The Queen Elizabeth's crew commit to the deep a coffin containing the remains of Liverpool Football Club, relegated that day to the Second Division. Istanbul, 25 May 2005: Liverpool 's heroes hold aloft the Champions League trophy, after the greatest final ever. Between those pivotal dates, the Reds touched glittering heights and plumbed the darkest depths. But what about the fans who followed Liverpool FC every step along the turbulent way? On this journey of a lifetime, the cast of characters includes Shankly, Paisley, Dalglish, Benitez, Pele and Ursula Andress... and the action swings from Liverpool to Rome, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, the High Andes, even the top of one of Istanbul's tallest minarets.

Informations

Publié par	Pitch Publishing (Brighton) Ltd
Date de parution	17 novembre 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781908051288
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Anfield of Dreams
A KOPITE S ODYSSEY FROM THE SECOND DIVISION TO SUBLIME ISTANBUL
Neil Dunkin
Contents
1. Depths Of Despair
2. The Messiah From Glenbuck
3. 18 Steps To Heaven
4. Heartbeat Of A City
5. The Scouse Sixties
6. Sound That Rocked The World
7. 1966 And All That
8. That Scarf Is Somebody s Life
9. 28,000 Heads
10. Paisley, The Champion Manager
11. A Threesome In Rio: Pel , Ursula Andress And Me
12. Tarnished Silver
13. Better Than The Brazilians
14. Death In The Afternoon
15. Twilight Of The Gods
16. Eagles Over The Azteca
17. Back To The Boot Room
18. Spaced-Out And Star-Struck
19. The French Kopite Comes Home
20. Our Incredible Treble
21. Cotopaxi 2, Kopites 0 (Match Abandoned)
22. Liverpool Will Not Leave Me
23. From Austria To Eternity
24. Immortality In Istanbul
Thank you
Bibliography
Photographs
About the Author
After his childhood and education in Liverpool and London, Neil Dunkin descended into the underworld of newspaper sub-editing, receiving indoctrination in the dark arts of this print jungle from a succession of wise scribes.
During a career that has taken him from the North-West of England to Fleet Street, he has explored arcane areas of several national titles and managed to come out unscathed, aided in no small measure by survival skills acquired in the Boys Pen at Anfield.
A horizontal fixture to the bars of beer festivals throughout Hertfordshire, he has two children and, at the time of writing, was still married.
Winston Churchill quotation reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Ltd, London, on behalf of the Estate of Winston Churchill. Winston S. Churchill.
Carl Gustav Jung quotation reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. Carl Gustav Jung 1961.
Every effort has been made to trace other copyright owners and anyone claiming copyright should get in touch with the author at anfieldofdreams@hotmail.co.uk .
For Helen, Russ and Anne, the best wife, mother and soulmate in the world
Dedicated to the memory of all those who did not come home from Hillsborough
1 Depths Of Despair
You always pass failure on the way to success . - Mickey Rooney
I T WAS the funeral at sea where everyone was laughing, even those who were grieving most.
As the coffin was carried by four pallbearers around the promenade deck of the mighty Queen Elizabeth, hundreds of mourners clapped and cheered in celebration of a fallen hero s committal to the mid-Atlantic depths.
Lancashire cotton brokers, Wall Street bankers, London lawyers, Boston professors, passengers from across the spectrum of British and American society joined the captain, officers and crew of the great liner to mark the demise of a friend whose name was inscribed on the coffin lid.
Liverpool F.C. R.I.P. , the ship s painter had crafted in big black letters on the rough wooden casket, hastily nailed together by the carpenter.
For this was April 10, 1954, and news had come through on the Queen s ship-to-shore radio that Liverpool had lost 3-0 to Arsenal at Highbury.
Catastrophe of catastrophes, the Reds had been relegated, after 50 years in the First Division.
Within minutes, this calamity was bush-telegraphed from stem to stern and from top to bottom of the 83,000-ton vessel, the largest afloat.
Within seconds, the legion of Everton supporters in the crew, always partial to taking the mickey out of their Merseyside rivals, agreed this was an opportunity not to be missed. After all, as one team went down, they would pass the other coming up, because the Blues had sealed promotion from the Second Division. What a turnaround!
So Evertonians decided Anfield s ignominy deserved a funeral, out at sea. Yes, the last rites would be administered on the club from the opposite side of Stanley Park.
And when Liverpool fans learnt what was planned, they had to join in the fun. As one deckhand told his mates: No use sulking, lads. Let s go down laughing.
He knew, like every crewmember knew, that football offered a healthy subject for banter during long hours of boredom in their oceanic community and the Reds were always ready to give as good as they got. At this time, though, they had to accept the forthcoming humiliation with the best possible grace, since a funeral did seem appropriate to mark their team s fall from grace.
All hands knew it would be a giggle, given that the chief mourner would be the ship s master. Commodore Sir Ivan Thompson had begun his seafaring life as a cadet on a tramp steamer sailing out of Leith and had risen to hold the most prestigious title in British shipping, Master of the Queens, Cunard s twin titans, Elizabeth and Mary. The whole world and his mother and great-aunts knew Sir Ivan was a Red un, holder of a season ticket in the Kemlyn Road stand. Now he too would have to grin and bear it during this maritime requiem.
Soon Liverpool loyalists and Evertonians-for-ever were congregating on deck. Some had made the long climb up greasy steel ladders from the sweltering hot engine room, others had slipped out of cool cocktail bars where they d been serving Singapore Slings and Brandy Alexanders.
Down below, the Working Alleyway, the main street running practically the length of the vessel and containing services such as the bakers, confectioners, printers and hospital, had emptied of personnel because they wanted to watch, even those without the slightest idea how to lace up a caseball.
Before long the promenade deck was lined with onlookers, so many you could have sworn every one of the 2,300 passengers and 1,200 crew had turned up. At the front were chief mourners from every corner of Anfield - Kopites, Kemlyn Roaders, Main Standers, Paddockers, Anfield Roaders, dabbing eyes with hankies, shaking their heads and letting out sobs.
Americans, with no concept of what football was, never mind its importance to Merseysiders, looked on, amused, bemused and confused by these screwball Scousers.
They re doing this? For a saaccer team? A funeral? asked one Philadelphian who d abandoned his stateroom after hearing a medley of applause and wailing.
Yeah, dead funny, isn t it? a deckhand from Bootle replied, with a broken-toothed grin.
Flanked by the throng, the coffin was paraded sedately along the deck by its bearers, wearing red scarves and bobble hats.
Since no one knew the words, some Evertonians had started humming the Funeral March, while others were getting their digs in.
Couldn t kick the ball, now they ve kicked the bucket, a Blues brother teased.
Only cup they ll get will be on a saucer from Davy Jones s locker, another one quipped.
These jibes only served to turn up the mourners volume and raise the intensity of their histrionics. One commis chef, eyes screwed shut in anguish, drummed his white-clad breast like Johnny Weissmuller s Tarzan, while an assistant purser noted for flamboyant theatricality after a couple of noggins of rum and peppermint threw himself at the ship s rail in a bid to hurl himself overboard.
Nevertheless, the corpse s dispatch could not be delayed. Its cortege moved to the stern and waited for Commodore Thompson to give the nod.
After a dignified pause, he could no longer preserve his mock-solemn face. Breaking into a broad smile, he raised his right hand and dropped it, signalling the act of committal to the deep.
Slowly the bearers slid the coffin over the rail, to the accompaniment of a brain-scrambling blast on the ship s hooter.
Liverpool s remains glided down the starboard side of the towering vessel until a strong upward gust of wind stalled their descent halfway and strove to blow them from whence they came. To no avail.
Before you could say Jacob Bronowski, gravity imposed its pull and, with a shrug, the casket resumed its progress.
At last it pierced the murky sea with a hollow splash, disappeared for a few seconds and surged back defiantly to the surface, before bobbing away in the Queen s foamy wake.
Now it was on a maritime roller-coaster, rising up and down to the ocean s rhythm and attracting the attention of a lone seagull which altered its flight path to hover briefly over the box in a fruitless quest for nourishment.
As this hungry migrant resumed its journey and the liner s engines thundered relentlessly on, the coffin shrank into a dot, glimpsed fleetingly on crests of waves.
By this time, most witnesses of the send-off had drifted away, leaving a handful of hardcore supporters of both persuasions at the rails.
They peered into the gloom until, finally, even the sharpest-eyed cabin boy who could spot the Statue of Liberty from 10 miles out was unable to espy the box any more.
The corpse of Liverpool FC had been laid to rest.
But as the laggards returned to their posts, one defiant Kopite, a steward from Crosby, delivered the parting shot.
We ll be back next season - wait and see, he shouted with a toss of his Brylcreemed head at Toffees fans.
He knew it and, to be fair, he was not alone in his certainty. All the Anfield faithful were convinced. No sweat, the lads would bounce up into the First Division, the place they d graced for an eternity.
One season and that would be it; back where they belonged, in the top tier.
**********
As a boy growing up in Liverpool in the Fifties, one of the earliest, most critical decisions you faced, affecting the rest of your life and having an incalculable influence on your happiness, was which team to support.
Back then, my home town revelled in a raw passion for football matched by just a handful of places across the globe, such as Rome, Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires, where people s devotion to a club is magnified by rivalry with another local side.
On Merseyside, Everton were the club: more famous, more successful than their Liverpool neighbours, with a history and stature few teams could equal. Consequent upon this, the Blues had bigger crowds and a greater number of supporters, a statistic readily confirmed whenever the ga