Читать книгу How Did All This Happen? - John Bishop - Страница 7

FOREWORD

I looked around the dressing room and all I could see were legends. There were jokes and shared banter between people who had won European Cups, FA Cups, League titles, international caps: men who were known to be part of the football elite.

The home dressing room at Anfield Football Stadium is smaller and more basic than you would imagine; it could easily pass for a changing room in any sports hall across the country. Yet few dressing rooms have been the birthplace of so many hopes and dreams; few dressing rooms have felt the vibration of the home crowd roaring ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ in order to inspire those within to prepare for battle; and few dressing rooms have ever held the mystique of this one, and been the place where millions of people would want to be a fly on the wall.

I was one of those millions of people, but I was not a fly on the wall. I was a member of a squad who was about to find out if he had been selected to play. Kenny Dalglish stood, about to read out the team sheet. So this was what it felt like sitting in the home dressing room at Anfield waiting to hear if you’d been selected. All of my dreams rested on the next few moments as King Kenny read out the team.

I was substitute. I had expected to be substitute. Surrounded by such legends as Alan Hansen, Gary McAllister, Jamie Redknapp, Steve McManaman, Ian Rush, Ronnie Whelan, Jan Mølby, John Aldridge, Peter Beardsley, Ray Houghton and Kenny Dalglish himself, I had never expected to be in the starting line-up. But at least I was putting a kit on. The magical Liverpool red. I was going to walk down the famous tunnel and touch the sacred sign that declares to all the players before they walk onto the pitch: ‘This Is Anfield’. It had been placed there by the legendary manager, Bill Shankly, as a way of gaining a psychological advantage over the opposition, a way of letting them know there is no turning back.

Having first been brought to the ground by my dad as a small boy, I had always fixated that, one day, I would make that famous walk. As a child, a football stadium was a place where men shared their passions, their ambitions and their dreams with those who played for them on the pitch. You could tell that within the confines of a football ground the stoicism that reflected how most working-class men approached their lives was left at the turnstile. Football was a place where you could scream, jump for joy, sing along with strangers, slump in frustration and hold back tears of joy or pain. Anfield to me was the cathedral through which I could pass to heaven because I knew if I could be successful there, then nothing on this earth could beat it. Within a few minutes, I was going to touch that sign as home players do for good luck and warm up in front of the famous Kop. And there was a chance, a very real chance, that I was going get to play in the game itself. This would be my début at Anfield, something I had dreamed about since I was a boy.

I was 42 years of age. The match was a charity game between ex-players of Liverpool and UK celebrities versus a rest-of-the-world team that included ex-professionals and international celebrities. The game was in aid of the Marina Dalglish Appeal and the Hillsborough Family Support Group. Sitting in that dressing room, where only a few people knew who I was, I realised things had changed for me, but little did I know I was about to embark on the craziest four years of my life.

After hearing my name being read out by the legendary Kenny Dalglish, and putting my boots on in the Liverpool dressing room, I said to myself something I often say these days: ‘How did all this happen?’