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| ARCHIVE GUEST COLUMN : VIEW FROM THE PRESS BOX |
IRELAND AND THE REDS - A NATURAL FIT
Alan Murphy
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Irish Red Alan Murphy reflects on the greatest night of his life and discusses why Liverpool are so popular in his home country in this week’s ’LFC Letter From...’ column.
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“What’s bleedin goin on?”, sobs the loner standing to my left in the Upper East Tribune stand of the Atatürk Olympic Stadium.
He stares straight at me, glassy eyed, his chin’n’cheeks drenched in a thick coat of snotty tears. Every breath lurches from his lungs, picking up a hitchhiking, high-pitched wail along the way. He sounds like a kettle coming to the boil, and his mouth quivers involuntarily. His nuttiness is making me feel very uncomfortable. Crespo has just scored his first of the night, and The Reds are two-nil down. I’m hurting; we’re all hurting.
But this man – I’ll call him Bobby Biscan for want of his real name – is easily the most emotionally distraught man in Turkey, if not the known universe (including disputed Pluto). “What’s bleedin goin on?”, he repeats. I pray his question is rhetorical, but his body language suggests otherwise. This unhinged stranger is imploring me for some consolation. What does he want me to say? Jaysus, this is getting awkward.
I turn to my mate Turlock for refuge, but he’s pretending to be on his mobile phone. He wants no part of what I have. Sensing that the crippling awkwardness between myself and Bob is spiralling out of control, Turlock goes into survival mode, cutting me loose. I am a stranger to him now, and resigned to dealing with the Bob unpleasantness solo for the remainder of Liverpool’s titanic battle-royale.
Am I painting a harsh picture of Bob? After all, Liverpool are floundering badly on the biggest stage, before the watching eyes of the world. Who in the Atatürk stadium, of the red persuasion, isn’t welling up inside? What you have to understand about Bob though, is that he was crying before the game even kicked off! He arrived at his seat in great spirits, grinning broadly, singing in unison with his LFC brethren. And then “You’ll Never Walk Alone” started. He got only as far as “When you walk…” before slumping onto his seat and suffering an emotional meltdown, the swiftness and severity of which, I have never seen the like.
I love the Red Army camaraderie as much as the next man, and I patted Bob on the shoulder enthusiastically, telling him not to worry. This was a fatal error, and not a day goes by that I don’t wish I’d kept my paw to myself. Bob locked onto my hand with a vice-like grip, similar to that which a woman in labour might inflict upon her terrified husband. It would be fifteen minutes before I managed to pry loose, but by then it was too late: in Bob’s mind, we had bonded, and I was now his deflective shield against the onset of a full-blown, football-induced nervous breakdown.
“It’s going to be ok Bob. Everything’s going to be ok”, I chance. “Promise?”, he sniffles. I nod diagonally, aiming for as noncommittal a response as possible. Bob takes it as a yes. At that moment, not even Rick Parry has more of a vested interest in AC Milan not scoring a third goal than me. Bob is not the kind of person you want feeling that he’s been lied to. The man is enormous. His hulking frame stands only inches shy of seven feet, with the combined girth of Jan Molbian Siamese twins. Appropriately, his decades old ‘Crown Paints’ jersey may well not be a jersey at all, but body paint, such is its tightness to his giant exoskeleton.
He’s a fellow Dubliner, but he hails from a far tougher realm of the Emerald Isle’s fair capital than myself. His beard grows visibly and audibly over the course of the game. This glass-chewing goliath makes Grizzly Adams look like Miss World. Crespo. Three-nil. “You promised”, weeps Bob, with a hint of thinly veiled menace. I’m considering having a crafty cry myself.
Halftime arrives, creating a fifteen-minute void in which shock could easily mutate to depression, not just for Bob, but on a mass scale. How can Jesus/Allah/Buddah/Vishnu/Tom Cruise allow this to happen? I know they’re busy guys, but consider the romance of the occasion: the stadium is awash with Liverpool red. The Italians? Sure there’s only a handful of them; 50 or 60 by my count. My phone vibrates frantically as supporters back home of every non-Liverpudlian hue come out of the woodwork, their gleefully sarcastic text messages laced with the arsenic of gloating and schadenfreude. The vultures are circling, and a lump comes to my throat as I pan my eyes around the stands, the contorted anguish of broken dreams etched on every non-Italian mug. We are shell-shocked. It appears Mr. Shankly was right: football really is that important.
Never has the beautiful game brought me so terribly low. Strange then, that from the unlikeliest ashes of despair was born my proudest ever moment as a card-carrying member of the Liverpool faithful. Three-nil down, being crucified before probably a billion people in TV land, with our team not even yet back on the field of battle, and our fans – our club’s indomitable, unsinkable fans – suppress their personal grief to rally a rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” for which the cliché ‘Spine Tingling’ seems scarcely sufficient.
Buoyed by the moment, Turlock pulls me to my feet, and arm-in-arm we sing from the heart, cutting through the misery. The chiselled words echo, crashing against the stadium walls, bewildering the Italians. It isn’t a war cry as such – who amongst us could truly have believed in the eventual outcome? It’s more an act of proud defiance; a salute to our team, who we know are facing (seemingly) insurmountable odds, not through any lack of passion or desire. The buzz is palpable, and even Bob is roused to his feet. Holding back the watery tides behind his eyes, he begins to sing. His vocal chords could not be a starker mismatch for his gruff appearance and Barry White-esque speaking growl. Bob’s singing voice is revealed as being virtually identical to Aled Jones (circa ‘Walking in the Air’). A good hundred-odd square feet of surrounding fans give hush to hear this bizarrely effeminate, yet beautifully skilled solo voice bring completion to our team’s anthem.
It seems Bob has turned Houllier’s corner. Yep, he’s going to be ok. He sits back down, and I pat him on the shoulder. When will I learn? With both hands, he clamps painfully onto my paw again, looks at me doe-eyed, chin quivering, and bursts into floods of tears. Within seconds, his Crown Paints jersey is drenched in a litre or more of dewy eyeball juice. I turn to Turlock for help, but he’s gone. I thought we were still arm-in-arm, but somehow sensing Bob’s re-emerging emotional fragility, Turlock has Houdini-ed two or three seats to the right, seamlessly removing my arm from his, linking it instead onto a loner only marginally more sane looking than Bob. Damn Turlock’s survival instincts. Damn them to hell.
Moments before the commencement of the six craziest, most euphoric minutes in footballing history, I remember thinking to myself, “Hang on, I’ve a hunch that Smicer and a couple of his cronies are going to bang in three quick goals here and level the tie”. Ok, that is an out-and-out lie. Truth is, try as I might, I can’t remember a helluva lot about those six minutes, save the unbridled ecstasy. It was numbing, and surreal, and I was terrified that any moment it would all be taken away, or evaporate. I do remember turning to Bob after the equaliser and saying “told you it would be ok”, but he was too overcome to register my words. His eyes had rolled up into the back of his head, and he was rocking back’n’forth, mumbling a load of gibberish that sounded suspiciously like ‘The Anfield Rap’, except in Irish.
At 3 – 3, surely we had exhausted our supply of heroes? Arise Jerzy Dudek. I’ve never had the pleasure of making the offer personally, but let the record show that Jerzy Dudek is more than welcome to my first-born (apologies, future wife). Or if the Pole needs a kidney? I’m there. In fact, take two! I might even throw in a liver. I’d give him my ticker, but I fear it suffered irreparable damage during that legendary, historic, nerve shattering penalty shootout in which he so distinguished himself, carving his name into the annals of Merseyside folklore for time everlasting. What can I say about the ensuing scenes and feelings of jubilation that hasn’t already been said, or portrayed, pixellated and immortalised in print and celluloid? I could conceivably spend the rest of my life hoping for a single repeat taste of that particular brand of joy. It was heaven, simply.
With the greatest ever cup final concluded, and the emotional roller coaster’s terminus in sight, I thought I’d throw Bob a congratulatory hug. What could be the harm? Mistake number three; the hat-trick was complete. Welding himself to me, the completely exhausted, dehydrated-from-crying, borderline catatonic Bob simply would not let go. “Bob…you’ve got to let go now Bob….come on now Bob….you’re hurting me Bob”. That yellow-bellied son of a bitch Turlock was nowhere to be seen. What I would have given for a crowbar, to pry loose, and maybe beat Turlock with. The minutes rolled by, the stands emptied, the floodlights dimmed, but still Bob held fast, rooted to his spot. I believe we were the last two fans to belatedly leave the stadium. We stood there so long that we almost caught a Galatasaray Champions League game.
Finally relinquishing his death grip, myself and Bob left the Atatürk Olympic Stadium side-by-side, but I quickly lost him in the car park melee, never to see him again. Never had I witnessed a football match have such profound impact on a person before. It wasn’t the beer – you could tell he wasn’t drunk – the man just cried from the match’s first whistle to its last penalty kick, and it got me thinking: what is it about this great club of ours that can reduce a burly Irishman to a gibbering wreck? Or Bob aside, even myself and Turlock; what instils in us so much love for a football club whose shores we don’t even hail from? We were born on the Liffey, not the Mersey. Why were ten thousand of my fellow countrymen (approximately 20% of the overall travelling contingent) irresistibly drawn to Istanbul, like moths to a flame?
Alas, it would take a far greater historian than I to properly articulate the origins of Ireland’s love affair with LFC. What I would argue though, is that the attraction transcends football; I don’t doubt that the great success of Liverpool in the 70s and 80s was a huge recruitment drive, but to be exalted as the sole reason? Far too lazy, and convenient. I believe there is an intangible, cultural bond between Ireland and Liverpool, and that this bond has always cultivated an affinity between the two peoples. You don’t necessarily have to know that in 1850, 25% of Liverpool’s population was made up of Irish emigrants (I only learned this statistic whilst conducting a little research for this article). These cultural memes are not lost, but passed from generation to generation, not by the memorising of statistics, but through unconscious subtleties: perhaps the warmth and affection with which an Irishman’s father speaks of the city of Liverpool, as his father did before him, and his father before him, all the way back to periods such as the 1850s, when the bond was more concrete.
I could spiral on this topic endlessly, but this article needs wrapping up. In any event, one simple statement probably brings me closer to the matter’s crux than another ten minutes ramblings and amateur musings could: as an Irishman, supporting Liverpool just feels right. I knew it even when I was a nipper. My mother thought it would be cute if she bought my brother a Liverpool quilt, and me a Man UTD quilt. Despite my ultra-tender years, I rebelled satanically against my unholy duvet, barely stopping short of projectile vomiting, head spinning, and the whole ‘THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU’ rigmarole. Man UTD didn’t fit. It felt right that I be a Liverpool supporter.
It feels right when I hear the red army singing ‘The Fields of Anfield Road’, based on the famous Irish ballad ‘The Fields of Athenry’. It feels right when I see the triumvirate of Ireland, Liverpool and Celtic football club swapping anthems and terrace chants. It feels right every time I visit the city and am made feel incredibly welcome by the indigenous folk. It felt right when I walked through Taxim Square in Istanbul, hearing Irish accents permeating the Scouse, seamlessly trading their similar brands of witticism and banter. I expect Bob, wherever he is, probably couldn’t any further illuminate the reasons why he invests so much time, money, energy and raw emotion in the support of an English football club. He’s Irish, and Liverpool just feels like the natural fit.
P.S: My ma – who has a long, distinguished history of buying incredibly dodgy presents – recently arrived home from a market and presented me with a framed, fake Istanbul Champions League ticket. “Eh, ma…you do know I have a real one, yeah?” She saw nothing strange in this. So now I have two Atatürk Stadium tickets from May 25th, 2005: one fake, one real. The forgery is very high quality. Comparing the two, there really is no difference, which brings me to my point: if the person who sat in Block 306, Row 43, Seat 340 of the Lower Tribune North is reading this article, well…I don’t really know how to tell you this mate….there’s probably thousands of people out there right now claiming to be you. I hope you have some photos of Istanbul to back up your story.
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