FOREVER RED: LIVERPOOL’S DEVOTED NI FAITHFUL
With Liverpool on the brink of what must be their strangest title win ever, Ivan Little finds out why the club inspires such loyalty among fans in Northern Ireland
❝ Coming back from three goals down in Istanbul in 2005 to beat AC Milan on penalties will never be surpassed
Social distancing or no social distancing Liverpool fans in Northern Ireland will not be walking alone when their champions-in-waiting finally clinch their long-delayed title win as football comes home after the coronavirus shutdown. But one Liverpool fan and former Anfield apprentice, Jim Magilton, will have mixed emotions as Jurgen Klopp’s side are officially — and inevitably — crowned Premier League kingpins.
As well as joining thousands of Irish fans who’ll celebrate the Merseysiders’ victory, Jim will also be thinking about 96 fellow supporters who won’t be able to join the party.
They’re the Red fans who died in the Hillsborough disaster on April 15, 1989, a horror that Jim watched unfolding at Sheffield Wednesday’s stadium.
Jim, from west Belfast, was only 19 back then and he’d gone to the FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest as a Liverpool reserve.
From his grandstand seat, Jim initially put the sight of fans streaming onto the field down to a pitch invasion, but quickly realised that scores of people were dying.
The memories still haunt Jim, who now works at the Irish Football Association as elite performance director. “Those men, women and children will be uppermost in my mind if and, more likely, when Liverpool are handed the Premier League trophy for the first time,” says Jim, who has been a lifelong Liverpool fanatic.
“My dad was a Manchester United supporter and he tried to convince me to follow suit. But I fought tooth and nail against being dragged into that way of thinking and my love affair with Liverpool only increased when I joined them in 1986 at the age of 16.
“I had never been to Anfield before I signed. So you can imagine just how massive a thrill it was for me to go there as a kid. My hero Kenny Dalglish was in his first year in charge. I stayed four years at Anfield and I learnt a lot there.”
Jim’s passion for Liverpool never diminished even as his career flourished with other clubs in England.
And he’s delighted that the endeavours of Klopp and Co are to be rewarded with the title after months of Covid-19 uncertainty.
All the remaining games in the league will be played behind closed doors which will make for a surreal trophy knees-up.
But Jim says: “There mightn’t be much noise at the matches but there’ll be plenty of noise around the world when Liverpool are confirmed as champions. And there’ll be lots of emotion remembering the victims of Hillsborough.”
Warrenpoint Town manager Barry Gray is another Liverpool supporter who was raised in a Man United household. He says: “My brothers were all United-mad and I just had to go the opposite way. There’s something special about the club. As I got older I travelled with friends to watch their matches, but now because I’m involved in football it’s impossible to go to the games on Saturdays and tickets for other games are like hen’s teeth.
“My idols down the years have been Steven Gerrard, Robbie Fowler and Steve Mcmanaman.”
Barry shares the highlights and lowlights of being a Liverpool fan with countless others. He says: “Coming back from three goals down in the Champions League final in Istanbul in 2005 to beat AC Milan on penalties will never be surpassed.”
And Gerrard’s slip against Chelsea that cost Liverpool the league in 2014 is the moment that he and most Anfield fans cite as the worst in their football lives. Barry is just hoping that Liverpool, who are 25 points clear at the top of the table, can get the business done as quickly as possible, “just in case there’s a second spike in the coronavirus”.
The Reds’ first game back in action will be on Sunday against their old rivals Everton, a match that is traditionally a tinderbox of passion and emotion but will be very different in an empty Goodison Park.
But Barry says: “That’s just the way it has to be with the virus.”
Thousands of miles away in Australia, a long distance Liverpool fan from Belfast is cursing the coronavirus for robbing him of the chance to see his idols winning the championship in the flesh.
Malcolm Hunter, who emigrated in 2006, thinks nothing of flying halfway around the world to watch the Reds, a pilgrimage he’s made 10 times in the last 14 years.
He says: “I try to combine the matches with family holidays to Belfast. But there have been a few visits purely for the games. I got the bug from my father David who started supporting Liverpool in the 1960s when they were in the second division.”
Malcolm, who’s been to Champions League finals, says he’d been hoping to be present when Liverpool eventually win the league, but instead he will up with the lark to see them on TV sealing the title whenever that happens.
“A 7pm kick-off in England is 4am here in Melbourne. But I don’t care. I’ve waited 30 years to see a league win. And a group of friends who are all Liverpool fans will probably join me with an early morning beer,” says the commercial property consultant. Nearer home, one of Northern Ireland’s top athletes, Jason Smyth from Eglinton who’s won a fistful of gold medals in the Paralympic Games and World and European Championships, can’t wait for Liverpool to strike gold again.
“I’ve been a Red ever since my uncle bought me a Liverpool top when I was a young boy. And I have to say that I’m a bigger football fan than an athletics fan. Indeed I would have preferred to have been a footballer rather than an athlete,” says Jason.
“I’ve been going for years to Anfield with my brother Justyn and cousins from America have even flown across for matches.”
❝ In my more than 45 years of supporting this amazing club, this is the first time I have no favourite player. I love every one
Broadcasters Stephen Watson and Colin Murray are self-confessed Liverpool aficionados as is Cool FM presenter Pete Snodden who converted his late father Jackie from a Spurs supporter to a Liverpool fan.
He says: “I was only eight at the time and dad started watching Liverpool games with me on the television creating an extra special father-son bond. The Reds won the league soon after I started supporting them but I didn’t think I would have to wait another 30 years for another title.”
Pete, who has travelled extensively with friends to see his team in Europe and who handles the public address duties at Northern Ireland internationals, got to meet one of his Anfield heroes at Windsor Park last year.
Towering defender Virgil van Dijk, who’s a Dutch international, was coming out of a press room and Pete who has played in games involving Liverpool Legends teams did something he rarely does. “I approached him for a selfie and he very graciously agreed.”
Belfast-born Peaky Blinders actor Packy Lee, whose love of Liverpool has made him a fixture on Sky TV’S Soccer AM show, got even closer to van Dijk who’s a huge Blinders fan.
“I showed him around the set and he later returned the compliment by taking me and my family to a Liverpool game,” says Packy, who accepts he’s not the only Northern Irish actor who loves the Anfield side.
Recently a Liverpool website published a top 10 of their most illustrious celebrity fans and Ballymena’s Liam Neeson was top of the list. Several years ago he was photographed with his sons at a game against Fulham in London.
Dungannon-born golfer Darren Clarke is another of Liverpool’s most fervent fans and in a lengthy online interview about his passion he said the memory of his first game would never leave him, adding: “I was standing on the Kop and it was just amazing. I always remember the atmosphere. It was special from the word go.”
He also talked about the banter he has on the golf circuit with Rory Mcilroy, a dyed-in-the-wool Man United fan.
One of the more unusual displays of fervour for Liverpool on this side of the Irish Sea can be found on a podcast produced by two ex-scousers living in Northern Ireland.
Shaun ‘Amo’ Hamilton and Danny Roberts met when they played football in Belfast and decided to kick off their Amo and Danny’s Irish Anfield Road podcast during lockdown.
The two men and their guests talk about football in general but Liverpool in particular with fans tuning in from as far away as India, Chile and the USA.
It’s thought that there are currently around 30 Liverpool supporters clubs in Northern Ireland and a number of Facebook pages are also run by fans here and some are already selling badges, flags and caps proclaiming Klopp’s men as the champions.
One fan who posts regularly online is Jacqueline Donaghy from Belfast and she can hardly contain herself with her admiration for Klopp’s team.
She said: “In my more than 45 years of supporting this amazing club, this is the first time that I have no favourite player. I love every single player, I love the entire team. Thank you Jurgen.”
Fans in Liverpool have already started decorating their homes with champions’ banners and in Belfast similarly-themed plaques have begun appearing on front gates of fans who down the years have occasionally been able to watch their team playing in Northern Ireland, in friendlies and more serious clashes.
On September 28, 1976 Liverpool packed out Seaview in Belfast for a European Cup game against Crusaders who had held their full-time opponents to a 2-0 scoreline a fortnight earlier at Anfield, earning the scorn of the critics who said they had been embarrassed by the Irish League part-timers.
In Belfast, Bob Paisley’s men, including the likes of Kevin Keegan and Emlyn Hughes, hammered the Crues 5-0.
The Reds beat Linfield in friendlies in 1968 and 1969, but in 1983 they lost 4-3 to Manchester United in a testimonial game for IFA secretary Billy Drennan.
Liverpool also packed Windsor Park for friendlies against the Blues in 1995 when they won 1-0 and in 1996 when they drew 2-2 in a match that marked the closure of Windsor’s Spion Kop.
One of the most emotional visits by Liverpool came three years later in October 1999 when they played Omagh Town. The match was designed to raise money for victims of the Omagh bombing and to raise the spirits of people in the town. And despite all the adversities Liverpool fans certainly know a thing or two about humour. One website called the Belfast Kop regularly takes tonguein-cheek pops at the club’s rivals, especially now that the league trophy is within touching distance.
One message recently warned Man Utd and everton fan sofa new pandemic called Livid 19 with symptoms that included‘ a bitter taste in the mouth; eating one’s own words, and a jealous rage ’.
It warned: “There is no known cure, you’ll just have to grin and bear this one.”