THAT SLIP KILLED ME, I COULDN’T STOP CRYING

I SAT in the back of the car and felt the tears rolling down my face. I hadn’t cried for years but, on the way home, I couldn’t stop. The tears kept coming. I can’t even tell you if the streets were thick with traffic or as empty as I was on the inside. It was killing me.

I felt numb, like I had lost someone in my family. It was as if my whole quarter of a century at this football club poured out of me. I did not even try to stem the silent tears as the events of the afternoon played over and over again in my head.

April 27 2014: one more victory and we would be almost certain to win the league for the first time since May 1990.

But in the last minute of the first half against a cagey Chelsea, set up to stop our rush to glory by Jose Mourinho, it happened.

A simple pass rolled towards me near the halfway line. It was a nothing moment, a lull in our surge to the title. I moved to meet the ball. It slid under my foot. The twist came then. I slipped. I fell to the ground.

The ball was swept away and the devastating Chelsea attack began. I clambered to my feet and ran with all my heart. I chased Demba Ba as though my life depended on it. I knew the outcome if I couldn’t catch him. But it was hopeless. I couldn’t stop him. Ba scored. It was over.

We lost 2-0 and Manchester City went on to win the title. I had wanted to win it with Liverpool for so long that, now it had gone again, I could not hold my emotion in check.

I beat myself up. My head was all over the place. I had lived through many great moments in my career and achieved success beyond my most fevered boyhood dreams.

I had played and scored in games and tournaments which belonged to another world from the Bluebell Estate in Huyton where I had grown up. I had done things that would have shocked me as a kid.

I had also given absolutely everything of myself to Liverpool: in training, in almost 700 games, off the pitch, around the squad and as part of the club, the community and the city.

I could not have done any more. I had squeezed out every last ounce of ambition and desire and hope inside me.

Instead of hitting a long crossfield pass to set up a goal, making a decisive tackle or curling the ball into the back of the Chelsea goal to seal our victory, I had fallen over.

The Kop, and the whole of Anfield, had sung You’ll Never Walk Alone again, of course, but, in the car, I felt isolated. I felt very alone.

The Liverpool anthem reminds you to hold your head up high when you walk through a storm. It reminds you to walk on through the wind and the rain, though your dreams be tossed and blown, and to walk on with hope in your heart.

I did not feel like I had much hope left. It seemed like I was heading for suicide watch instead.