Papering over the Cracks

Less than a week after I created this blog and cleverly called it Notes from the Armchair, circumstances dictated that I was to attend my first match at Anfield for almost five years. And luckily it turned out to be a game where the said armchair wasn't needed to hide behind due to the all too familiar horror show we have been treated to this season.

A seat in the Lower Centenary stand was an excellent vantage point, although somewhat disorientating after being used to watching from the roof of the main stand for so long. everyone seemed to be kicking in the wrong direction. And where were the action replays. We scored four goals for goodness sake, surely one of them was worth a second glance.

I've recently seen the official website have been plugging a survey on match day experiences. My first game was over 30 years ago in the same stand, albeit, without an extra few seats added to the top 18 years ago. Was my experience that different from then? I still got a thrill when emerging from the underneath of the stand and saw a lush green pitch lit up by floodlights (Your first match always has to be floodlit. It's the law). The smell was more of a sanitised aroma, probably because of an improvement in the toilets but also because the plastic facilities below the stands didn't have the character that they used to have.

In 1976 ,under the Kemlyn Road Stand, as it was then, it was efficiently lit, you could smell the Bovril (or was it Oxo?) and the pies mixed with the faint whiff of drainage. Coming out of the gloom into the radiant stadium was a sharp contrast that fair took a 5 year old's breath away (It might also be that I had been holding my breath whilst under the stand). Last night there was little aroma to tempt me to part with my cash. I could walk past the refreshment kiosk without turning to see what wares there were. And I hadn't even had my big tea. The lighting under the stand was as luminous as the floodlit turf outside so the contrast didn't strike the same resonance.

For me, progress has been made in the hygiene, health and safety standards of the match day experience but it has been made at the expense of tradition and character.