raw and I was buzzing. This place looked like heaven on earth.
On the avenue red and white chequered flags were changing hands faster than an Olympic baton, at five thousand lires each (about three pound fifty). I reckon the I-tie who sold them must’ve retired on the banks of Lake Como from the business he did that night, though I wouldn’t begrudge him a single lire, because his flags were about to become a defining symbol of this whole amazing night, a visual jaw-dropper that’d soon be written into LFC history. A bit further on a couple more lads who I knew from town, Strodey and Ray Baccino, looked spaced out. At first I thought they were blitzed on vino, till Strodey managed to get his words out: ‘Davey, me prayers in the Vatican have been answered. We’ve just met Shankly.’ It was true. Shanks had walked up to the ground, mingling with all the Reds. ‘We’re gonna win this tonight, boys’ were the great man’s exact words. Strodey was totally gone. ‘Even the Roman statues were bowing as he walked past,’ he said.
Outside the stadium bizzies were frisking everyone for ale. It had been banned inside. I got past them and unravelled me battered match ticket. After three days’ worth of dossing, it looked like one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The final stage of the pilgrimage was passing through those turnstiles. I closed me eyes for a sec, clenched me fists. I was in.
If there’s one sight I wanna see on me deathbed, it’s the scene that greeted me when I walked onto the Curva Nord terrace: a red and white panoramic rush of waving chequered flags, home-made banners, epaulettes, scarves, hats and streamers stretching three-quarters of the way around the ground. As far as breathtaking colour and beauty goes, it was right up there with the Swiss Alps – a vision that’ll never fade. Some of the raised banners I saw in our end are now legendary:
When in Rome, do as the Scousers do
Here we go gathering cups in May
… and the mother, daddy and now grandad of them all, a twenty-four foot by eight-foot banner that became the story of Rome, the Scouse version of the Bayeux Tapestry that will be talked about and revered by Reds until the Liverbirds take flight: ‘Joey ate the frogs’ legs, made the Swiss roll, now he’s munching Gladbach’.
It was an honour to be in its presence. To Phil Downey, Jimmy and Phil Cummings, all’s I can say is well in boys – your banner will wave and echo in eternity.
Down at the front I was looking at the half-deserted Gladbach end when there was a tap on me shoulder. I turned around and, fuck me, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was Vinnie, standing there grinning like Wardy. His white clobber was absolutely rotten. First thing out of his mouth was, ‘I hope yer haven’t ate me sarnies.’ We laughed for ages. He’d managed to bunk a special via the platform nine fire-escape ladder. Lime Street was the only ticket checkpoint on the entire trip. I asked him about getting home. ‘Who cares?’ he said. Seeing him just added to the buzz. Everything was going right.
The racket from our end was non-stop and loud – not bad considering we were in an open-air stadium. Horns added to the din. You could see that the players were shell-shocked when they walked out and saw us all.
Tommy Smith: ‘I couldn’t believe it … and it did hit you.’
Emlyn Hughes: ‘Jesus Christ, we’re back in Liverpool.’
Terry McDermott: ‘Christ, how can we get beat for these lot?’
Terry Mac’s quote said it all. They couldn’t get beat, and the result we all know (you know the score). Every one of them dug deep and gave everything and more that night. They were just young lads, but under the genius of Bob Paisley they understood the historical importance and massive responsibility of it all. They represented who we were – our city, hopes, dreams and fantasies. They were how most of us got through a working week, our escape route from the dole queues, building sites, factories, mundane offices, domestic shit, wedge troubles or family grief. We needed them, and they needed us. We existed for each other, and together on one beautiful spring night we made history. If I had to choose a phrase to describe the moment, I’d put a footy slant on that famous old Churchill quote: ‘Never in the field of football memories has so much been owed by so many to so few.’
When the final whistle went, me, Jimmy and Wardy had a two-minute game of ring-a-ring o’ roses, which didn’t look out of place amongst the wreckage of the emotional bomb that hit the Curva Nord. It was a scene of total ecstasy, with quite a few tears thrown in. A lad near me was sobbing and being consoled. ‘He’s thinking of someone,’ his mate said. It’d be quite a few years till I’d understand where that lad went to that night, though he wasn’t in the zone for long. Minutes later he was buzzing alongside me on the front fence, watching the Reds parading on the running track. In between us a line of paranoid-looking bizzies ring-fenced our end. It was my first-ever glimpse of Big Ears. It looked massive, and it dazzled under the floodlights, shining brighter than Emlyn Hughes’s teeth. We all milked the glory till the boys disappeared down the tunnel through a posse of photographers and flashing cameras. Everyone was emotionally punch-drunk. The moment felt surreal, like something from a movie. But it was no illusion. We weren’t dreaming. Rome had just been conquered.
Arrivederci, Roma
To keep the rail hordes away from the city centre after the match, the I-ties diverted us all to Tibertina station, north of the city. They’d announced it in the stadium, though we never heard Jack shit. I don’t know what happened to Vinnie. The last I saw of him was when Phil Neal’s pen went in. He took off into the crowd like a rip-rap, screaming like a fella on fire. I was half looking out for our kid after seeing a lad called Gerry Cornett in the Curva Nord, who told me, ‘Your Mick said if I see yer, to tell yer they’ll meet yer at the station.’
Jimmy’s gravel throat needed oiling, but he got a few songs going in a cafe near the station. ‘We all agree, the FA Cup is an ashtray’ was one. Then a classic: ‘We all hate bambinos’, which came about after some tithead told him that bambino was the Italian word for a dipper.
By 1.30 a.m. the queues outside the station were all over the place. No one asked to see our tickets. We squeezed through the gates into a commotion on the platform over packed-lunch buffets that some Reds had paid extra for – they’d all been snaffled or blagged. The train we boarded was all compartments. Most were chocka, apart from one that a fat, pissed-up fella was inside. He was shouting abuse at some harmless arl fella and his middle-aged son, keeping them out of the compartment by jamming the door. It ended up a tug of war with him and Wardy. Thirty seconds later we were all sitting down in the compartment looking at the fat beaut staring at us through the door. He kept coming back in and giving the arl fella stick. After the second time Wardy jumped up and launched him down the corridor, then sat back down … grinning, with his hat in his hand. After that it was all boot-room talk. We kicked every ball of the match before finally crashing out. Jimmy and the arl fella’s son took first shift in the luggage racks.
The worst part of any footy trip is coming home. You just wanna get back. The buzz levels are back down, party horns have faded, corks have popped, fizz gone, adrenalin gone, laughter gone, conversation gone and wedge gone. The overnighters I’d had at Wembley were always quiet trips back, mainly involving popping Rennies while staring out the window of a train or van, eyes flickering, thinking of nothing apart from maybe me own bed. The joy of seeing us lift Big Ears for the first time definitely took the pain out of the first night’s journey back, but waking up on the Thursday morning like a bag of shite knowing we had another day and a half to go was a killer. All’s I had was four ciggies in a squashed Marlboro packet. They were that flat it was like smoking lollyice sticks. I badly needed a Rennie. I’d asked for some in a shop in Rome, but it was like talking to Manuel from Fawlty Towers. My heartburn was so severe that I could’ve lit a ciggy with me breath.
