We'll Meet You By The Wall After The Match. (9/11/16)

Two years ago today, we lost our dad. I was in a privileged position, I was able to write something for The Anfield Wrap in the days that followed, able to tell a lot of people what I thought, what we thought, about him. 

Sachin Nakrani and Karl Coppack were putting together a fine book called 'We're Everywhere, Us', a book which covered the season through the eyes of a number of fans in a way that showed that the match itself was only part of the experience. Sachin had been very kind abut the piece that I'd written and asked if I would be interested in writing something similar for the book. I was honoured.

What follows is the piece that I wrote. It was written on 14th February 2015, only 4 months after we lost dad. It felt like centuries at the time, it feels like five minutes ago.

Our Matty is mentioned in it; Matty turns sixteen today. He's about six inches taller than he was then, probably more, and he has a hell of a lot more hair. Dad would love the young man he's turned into, he'd love the way all his grandchildren are growing up. He'd be proud, he was always proud.

This is for my dad. 'We'll meet you by the wall after the match.'

Liverpool 3 Spurs 2

10th February 2015

For Robert Salmon. Bob. Dad.

Life is an accumulation of small moments reflected through memory and perspective.

I see things differently now; literally and figuratively.

I’m sitting at a screen on Valentine’s Day. A Saturday this year; a day when, no matter how five billion pound media deals distort the structure of our game, tradition dictates that you think about the match. And at half past five I’ll think about the match. I’ll think about Crystal Palace in the FA Cup and that will lead to thinking about Crystal Palace in the semi final in 1990 because there’s no way the TV coverage will allow us not to and that will lead to thinking about a ‘beat bobby’ in Birmingham as we ran past him to that game saying casually, ‘they never learn these Scousers do they?’  Shocking. Shocking then, shocking now.

No moment exists purely to itself, everything links to everything else. So I’m sitting on Saturday, thinking about Spurs last Tuesday but Spurs last Tuesday leads to so much more. 

My Dad’s birthday is next Friday, the 20th of February. Friday is my Dad’s 80th birthday. Friday would have been my Dad’s 80th birthday. Sentences you never want to write.

I sit in the Main Stand now. I think I may have become a grown up. I’m 51 and I think I’ve finally become a grown up. My wife will probably dispute that theory. The season ticket that I was going to buy in 1986 on the back of the double (tumbling backwards down the Wembley steps, holding onto Fleety and screaming “we’ve done the f***ing double”) - the season ticket that I didn’t buy because I got a job that involved working Saturdays - looks like it’s finally arrived. Anfield are being really good about it. The transfer is slow but it’s happening. All the scare stories about having to hand it back in so that a Norwegian tourist could get the benefit of a ticket that my Dad held for nearly sixty years? No need to worry about them; the ticket’s mine. My Kop days are over. I watch games from my Dad’s seat now and as long as I’m there - probably until they move us all for the redevelopment - it’s my Dad’s seat. It always will be. The guys who sit around me are and always will be ‘the blokes that sit by my Dad’.

That hits you at times. It hit me in the Chelsea game; in the first half, that glorious first half under the Anfield lights that we’ve stood under on so many cold midweek nights with the chill in the air and the warmth in your comrades. The snow which had started as I parked up became heavier, began to drift. We were attacking the Anfield Road end. In the snow and the lights and looking like a Liverpool side - like a real Liverpool side not a pallid shadow, not the early season version, not the last version that my Dad ever saw play, like an actual, honest to God, legendary, glorious Liverpool side - and I looked at all this and I thought, “my Dad should be seeing this”.

And the tears came. Briefly and unnoticed but they came. It’s the moments. Those moments. They’re the ones that get you. Moments when I feel very aware that, although my brothers are watching from their seats in The Kop and knowing that our Dad isn’t in his seat, I’m watching from where he would be, where he should be and I’m seeing exactly what he would see. I’m watching the game for him. There was another moment, a much more terrible moment, when our Dad watched from another stand for two of his sons. I’ll come to that, I can’t avoid coming to that.

I stood and I watched this wonderful display against Chelsea and I tried to figure out why I couldn’t think of a single moment of losing to them in the league at Anfield. And then I remembered.

As we walked back across Stanley Park after the Spurs game, after another glorious performance, after another Liverpool performance, our Kev (youngest brother - middle brother Keith lives on the Isle of Man now, gets over as often as he can, coming over with his son Charlie for the City game, Dad and Lad ticket) and I, aware that I was writing this, tried to pull together the moments as we recalled them. Tried to shape them.

Rituals change. What we did these last few years was this: Kev (Fazakerley based) and I (Netherton) would meet at Mum and Dad’s (Walton/Aintree) and me, him and Dad would head to the match in one car.  For an 8pm kick off, Kev would arrange to meet at 7pm. I’d turn up at ten past. It’s not deliberate. Not all the time. It’s just what I do. We don’t do this now. Generally we just go straight to the match. No need to all meet up anymore. Rituals change.

After the game we used to meet up by the wall at the corner where the Kop and the Main Stand meet. Dad from the Main Stand, us from the Kop or wherever I’d managed to get a ticket for. The wall went a few years ago but even when it became a mesh fence housing TV vans we would still ‘meet by the wall’. The fence went. Replaced, quite poetically, by a wall. A big wooden wall to hide the digging behind it for the new main stand. Dad always said that he wouldn’t see the new ground built or the old one extended. “Oh behave yourself, don’t be so bloody miserable” we’d reply. Always maintained that he wanted Spike Milligan’s epigram ‘Told you I was ill’ on his gravestone, part of me feels he’ll be laughing about the fact he was right.

The wall’s gone. That’s important. Remember the wall.

Rituals change. The walk across the park remains constant though. The walk that became harder for Dad in the last few years. The walk that became virtually impossible at the beginning of this season. The walk that becomes the analysis of the match. The important bit, the bit where we talk football, where we talk glory and disappointment and heroes and villains and chances spurned and victory seized. Where we talk Suarez and Gerrard and Torres and Fowler and McManaman and Dalglish and Rush (and that’s where the tears came, 1,000 words in, 3 months on and that’s where the tears came, the moments that surprise you, sneak up and grab you) and Keegan and Toshack and St John and Hunt and Clemence and Callaghan. And before us, Liddell. And Shankly and Paisley and Fagan and Souness and Evo and Kenny and Ronnie Moran and Rafa and (God help us) Hodgson. And now Brendan.

So Kev and I talked about the might of Emre Can and the speed of Jordon Ibe and the way that Markovic can be fantastic when he’s facing play but can’t turn 180 degrees and argued about Steven Gerrard and I maintained that the Spurs game had been Gerrard’s best all season; argued that he’d been commanding, measured, cleaned up everything, linked everything. Thought Henderson had had a dog of a game though; every decision he could make was the wrong one, the game passed him by, he added nothing. Until Steven went off. After Steven went off, Jordan grew. As he tends to. Loves a bit of responsibility that lad. Wrong sub I’d thought though. Pull Henderson, push Can forward, let him rampage to his heart’s content. Kev thought the complete opposite, thought Steven had been woeful. We argued the point, agreed on Emre though. Everybody agrees on Emre.

We talked about Mario and whether this was the start of something or a cameo that might take us to the end of the season and give us an alternative and about the outpouring of joy, relief, hilarity that greeted his long, long, long overdue first league - and vitally, match winning - goal. Dad didn’t see Mario come good. Didn’t see much of Lallana. Knew nothing of the glory of Emre Can and all the man love that’s following him round. Didn’t see Markovic emerge, Sakho return, Sturridge come back. Didn’t see the 3-4-3. So much that he didn’t get to see in such a short time. It’s not even three months since we lost him (I have real trouble with using the phrase ‘he died’) and so much has changed already. We’re seeing a rebirth of Liverpool, of a Liverpool that he’d recognise; new but old. Still obviously Liverpool but the next Liverpool. The next one to bring the glory back.

Part of the disappointment of not winning the league last season - and this is just for me, I don’t think I’ve even spoken about this to the lads yet - is that deep down I knew this would be the last chance for my Dad to see one more league win.

He’d seen so much though. Born in 1935, heading to Anfield from the late 40s, early 50s. Seen some rubbish in the second division but saw Shanks arrive. Saw the start of everything we love, saw the start of everything we were given. Saw Shanks build his team. Saw St John arrive, saw Hunt arrive, named me for the two of them (or for Cally and Hunt depending on which day he told the story). He was at the final in 65, the first FA cup win. At the semi before that. Pictured in the Echo as part of the joyous pitch invasion, the invasion that felt the glory coming. A young man amongst young men, feeling what we felt last season. The same as us, the same as every other red. Every one of us, the same person deep down. The same love for the thing, the wonderful thing, that we were brought up on, that they, that generation that invented fandom (they did, you know they did, singing on the BBC, She Loves You and all that) brought us up on. The generation that gave us our anthem. Never forget. They did that, it’s their song, we inherited it.

Wembley 71. The heartbreak of Charlie George. Wembley 74. The glory of Keegan, the demolishment of ‘Supermac’. Three European Cup finals. 77, 78, 81. The glory that was Rome, three days -apparently - sober in the Eternal City so that he wouldn’t miss a second. Gutted to find that when he ordered spaghetti it wasn’t the same as the version you get in tins. Never allowed to forget the fact. A bloke out at the match with his mates behaving the way blokes out at the match with their mates behave. No different to your dad. All the same. All the same as us. It’s the same story told from different perspectives in different memories. The second leg of the UEFA cup against Bruges, drunk on a ferry, nearly returning to Zeebrugge as he’d gone back to thank the captain for a nice drive. 

And then there was that other stand. (The tears are back) That stand that you can’t avoid coming back to. Sitting in the stand at Hillsborough watching bodies being stretchered out of the end where his sons were. Where my brothers were. As I listened to the tragedy unfold on a radio in work my Dad watched and waited for Keith or Kev to be the next person carried out. They weren’t. We were lucky. Keith and Kev had gone by car, Dad by coach. The coach was kept waiting as one of the passengers hadn’t returned. One of the 96. We never knew who. I don’t know how Dad got the news later that evening but I know it was the first time that I ever saw my father cry.

Four years earlier he’d waited for the phone call to tell him that Keith had safely returned to his hotel after another final. You don’t expect to be lucky twice but we were.

So, Kev and I walked across the park, analysis done and the possibility of the top four back on the table, and we tried to piece the moments together. The last game that Dad had walked back from was the Derby. I didn’t walk back with them that day, I had a performance of a play on in town. I headed straight to town. Dad had seen the play the week before. Already ill, we already knew what was happening but he came to see my play. Knew I was doing what I’d always wanted to do in life. Couldn’t hear most of it but was happy, was proud. I hope you have the chance to know how that feels. He was proud of us. We were proud of him.

HIs last game was West Brom. Kev dropped us at the back of the Anfield Road, I walked with Dad to the main stand. We stopped a lot. It was getting too much. Afterwards we had to get the car to him, the other way round was unthinkable, impossible. I don’t remember anything about the game.

We tried for other games. Kev spoke to Anfield about using a wheelchair to get him into the stand for the Real Madrid game, stowing the wheelchair somewhere, giving him one last glorious European night. We knew by now that we were looking at last things. The club were fantastic. Couldn’t be more helpful. But the weather was foul, it was freezing and he just wasn’t strong enough to do it.

We thought about the Chelsea game. Thought we could get a more portable version of the oxygen that he was on at home and use that at the game. We didn’t even get to ask the question. Dad went into hospital on the Sunday before the game and didn’t come back out. By the time Liverpool kicked off against Chelsea on that Saturday lunchtime we were simply waiting for the moment that he was ready to give up the fight. The game was unimportant.

The end was both quick and slow. The ‘six months or less’ that I’d been told in October became a matter of weeks and then, far too rapidly, less than 24 hours. He wasn’t having that though. He refused to be beaten, refused to let go. There were seventeen of us around his bed and he was told that he was loved. God, he was loved. I’ve never been in a room where there was so much love. He fought. I’ve never seen anybody with so much fight, but in the end - as our Keith so beautifully put it, in print and in church - ‘on a sunny Sunday Liverpool afternoon, at two minutes past two, our Father and best mate passed away’.

Two minutes past two on Sunday the 9th of November. My son’s two o’clock kick off delayed by two minutes for the Remembrance day silence. I don’t know what you believe in life but I know this: I know that, as my son kicked off on his fourteenth birthday, my Dad went to watch his Grandson play football.

As I walked to the Spurs game, I fell in behind a father with his son. The lad looked about ten. Talking about the game, excited about the game. I don’t get to do that with my lads; my eldest isn’t interested in football, my youngest is a blue, a very passionate blue. Just like my wife. We don’t go to the game together, I’m going to have to wait for the grandkids before I do that. Rituals change. Rites of passage change. And Dad did that more with Keith and Kev than he did with me. I was a bookish child and teenager, didn’t really get the beauty of the game until my later teens, more interested in comics and books and music. Keith and Kev though? They got it immediately, they grew up at the game with Dad. Did the homes and aways with their mates as he’d done them with his. Carried it all on. The torch doesn’t pass on, it co-exists for so long.

You find out more about your parents as you get older. As you become a parent yourself. I found out a few years ago that my Dad had wanted more than anything to be a sports journalist. The fact that the Daily Mirror was the paper of choice in our house was due to his love of the boxing coverage. His love of boxing due to sitting at the Stadium between Bessie Braddock and Hogan ‘Kid’ Bassey as a young lad sent on errands by his father, my love of Ali given to me by my Dad. Dad wanted to be a sports journalist and by some bizarre series of accidents I’ve somehow managed to fulfil some of his dream. Connections and moments, it’s all connections and moments

The moment that I rocked up at Anfield last season, on one of those nights when you could actually pay on the door, and managed out of 40,000 people to get a ticket on the same row as my Dad. Both equally delighted. Dad almost as delighted as the night that my wife and I came over from Leeds - where we were exiled for four years - to surprise him and Mum in a pub on the Dock Road. Me armed with a copy of Muhammad Ali’s autobiography pre-signed but dedicated carefully in Ali’s own hand ‘To Bob’. Yes, I’d met Ali, it’s a long story. Dad spent weeks telling his mates that he’d ‘shook the hand that shook the hand that shook the world.’ That, my friends, is a moment. That’s one of the important ones.

The most important moments though? They’re the football moments. Not the Liverpool moments, glorious as they were and there were so many of them. Not the moments at Anfield or the afternoons in a darkened social club watching Liverpool fail to capitalise on easy Newcastle aways or the pub where I caught up with Dad for the second half of the Chelsea away game that Christmas. The moments on a cold, windswept Buckley Hill touchline watching my son, his grandson play football. Together. Should you ever feel the need to define the term ‘quality time’, it’s that. A very definite shared love. My Dad took Matt to his first ever soccer school - back when he still nominally supported both mine and my wife’s teams; an Everton soccer school. Three days on a half term touchline in Maghull in 2006 (ish) watching his grandson show promise, medals awarded at the end by Leon Osman. My Dad, a man who grew up watching Liverpool one Saturday and Everton the next - as they did when he was a lad and the fact that it was football was everything, a proper fan - a man with a pretty encyclopaedic knowledge of football, had no idea who Leon Osman was. That one came up in conversation pretty often too. True happiness comes in the smallest moments.

Then there are the moments that you expect to break you. Hearing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ again.  We played it to him in his hospital bed, told him that from now on that was for him, that every time we sung it now would be for him, carried him out of the church and into the crematorium to that anthem that pulls all together, that supports us when we need it. I expected the tears to come when I next heard it, to come every time I sang it. They didn’t. Writing about it though? That’s a different matter altogether. I dreaded telling the lads (lads? They’re mostly my Dad’s age) who sit by him. They knew, they’d guessed. Knew he wasn’t well, knew when the seat was empty for the Chelsea match that something was up. Independently of each other, they all said one thing, “your Dad was a gentleman.”

The wall. I told you that the wall was important, told you that you needed to remember it. The wall that we used to meet at after the game. The ‘we’ wasn’t just the four of us, it was also my Granddad and my Uncle Len - my Dad’s best mates. They went before him, he’s with them again now, he’d missed them so much and he’s with them now. I knew for about a day before he went what my last words to my Dad would be, knew the message I wanted him to have as he left, to know that nothing ends - it just changes and that we would all meet again:

“We’ll meet you by the wall after the match.”

And we will.

There’s one thing left to tell. I only discovered this a few weeks ago. Dad wasn’t going to renew his season ticket this year. The walking to and from the ground was too tiring for him, his eyesight was failing. My Mum told him to renew it, told him ‘Ian will have it”. It had been what he’d wanted, it happened. My Dad’s last gift to me. Passing it all on, part of the endless series of linked moments.

I sit in my Father’s place now. I see things differently.