'I've lived for LFC but you have to follow the advice' - Anfield stalwarts on supporting from home

But Peter Millea remembers the meeting with Derby County at Anfield that Saturday afternoon as vividly as other people remember the moon landings or the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Why? Because it was the last Liverpool home game he failed to attend.

“You’ve got to remember, I was only 16!” says the 61-year-old from Garston, sounding genuinely remorseful for not making it along to a 2-2 draw in the bleak midwinter almost half a century ago.

“It was just typical teenage rebelliousness, we always had a blip at that time of year, so I thought, ‘This isn’t what I want to watch’ and declared I wasn’t going to the next game. I stayed at home and listened to it on BBC Radio Merseyside, but I thought, ‘You know what, I’m not half missing this.’

“So I made a pledge to myself: I’d never miss another home game. And I’ve stuck to that for nearly 46 years. League, League Cup, FA Cup, European competitions, friendlies, testimonials – anything with first-team players. I saw it as my mission in life. Along the way I’ve had arguments with my parents and employers and all sorts, but it was always just: ‘No, I’m going the match.’”

Peter Millea

There are others like Peter, people such as John Green, who has been a regular in the Kop ever since a 6-0 win over Ipswich Town in March 1964.

It’s no real surprise to learn that Peter and John know one another; for as large and as global as Liverpool’s fanbase has become over the years, the quota of those that have been going home and away, week in, week out for more than 40 years is still a relatively small parish.

Peter is the former chair of Liverpool City Council’s Ground Safety Advisory Group, while John works part-time as an Anfield tour guide. Their personal and professional lives have therefore revolved around that stretch of grass sandwiched between Anfield Road and Walton Breck Road for longer than they care to remember.

In normal circumstances, expecting these men not to turn up at Anfield on a matchday would be like expecting the sun not to rise, especially with a league title within six points of the current team’s grasp.

But with Liverpool’s Premier League campaign set to resume at Goodison Park this Sunday evening, and all nine remaining fixtures of 2019-20 being played behind closed doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic, both Peter and John are ready and willing to support Jürgen Klopp’s side from the sofa.

“You’ve got to follow the club’s advice, and all the sensible advice that’s out there,” states John, a 66-year-old from West Derby.

“If we win the league – and it is ‘if’ and not ‘when’, the pessimistic side of me is still saying we haven’t done it yet! – then we can celebrate with our own families or individually, and eventually a time will come when we all get together and party like we’ve never partied before. When the lockdown does ease I’m sure the first thing they will do is another parade, and this one will make last year’s one pale into insignificance. Jürgen has already said, it doesn’t matter when we celebrate it – we’ll celebrate together at some point.

“The way the weather is right now, it would be great to have a barbecue and a few beers with all your friends and family around, but it’s not going to happen, so we just get on with it. Myself, my wife, my daughter and my daughter’s boyfriend – who’s a Blue – will all be here on Sunday night watching the game and cracking open a few beers, hopefully in celebration.”

None of which is to say the transition will be an easy one.

Nerves will be frayed, carpets will be scuffed by restless feet, and for Peter in particular the idea of an unbroken run that he has sacrificed so much for over the years being interrupted by something out of his control is understandably disappointing.

“I’m absolutely gutted, I can’t really put it in any other words,” admits the former city council member for Cressington. “It’s taking a huge part out of my life, I’ve lived for Liverpool Football Club and put it before many other things. Tokyo, Monaco, Qatar… My dad saw the world because he was in the merchant navy, but I’ve seen it from being a Liverpool supporter!

“How it will be recorded, in terms of people like me with long runs of attendance, whether those runs now come to an end or we accept that they’re on hold for the duration of the behind-closed-doors period, I don’t know. I suppose one way of looking at it is, if I could get in, I would! But the rules say you cannot congregate. I won’t be turning up and I don’t have any friends who plan to, because it just isn’t the right thing to do and it isn’t safe.

“I’m still only 61, there’s people in their 80s and 90s that have been going longer than me, and they’re just as entitled as me to want to go to games. I don’t expect any favouritism, I accept the same terms and conditions as everyone else. We have to be positive, look at poor Tranmere Rovers, relegated when they were on a good run and only three points adrift with a game in hand.”

• Fans Supporting Foodbanks: Support from home

Like every fan of their generation, Peter and John have a lot of residual affection for the Liverpool sides of Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan and Kenny Dalglish, yet both consider the one making its long-awaited comeback in this weekend’s Merseyside derby potentially the best Anfield has ever seen.

“It’s hard to compare, but looking at modern football, what Liverpool play under Klopp is probably the closest thing we have nowadays to the Dutch ‘Total Football’,” suggests Peter, who calls Block 126 in the Anfield Road stand home.

“We’ve got players who can play different positions, full-backs and centre-backs that can score goals, and we don’t rely on any one player for goals as we maybe once did. I’ve never seen a team like them for never contemplating defeat, expecting to win even if we’re losing with seconds to go.”

If Klopp’s men can clinch top spot at some point during the next five weeks, the emotional release will take many different forms for long-serving fans.

The emotion for parents of seeing children who were born in the 1990s finally get to enjoy what you once took for granted – being champions of England. The emotion of excising the ghosts of those close shaves during the intervening 30 years. And, perhaps most poignantly of all, the emotion of remembering those devout supporters who are sadly no longer here to experience the one moment they pined for more than any other. Combined, those factors would surely be too powerful to be overshadowed by the delay or the empty stands.

John Green

“I was 35 when we last won it, it was my 36th birthday a couple of days later,” says John. “I’m 66 now, and I never thought I would see us win the league again. One of the lads I used to go with, Dave, he used to turn around like, ‘Oh, won the league again, have we? Yawn. Onto next year.’ So you did take it for granted, and it was a shock when it all came to an end. We’ve always been just a little short over the years. I think the nervousness I’ve got at the moment comes from when I was in London for the Crystal Palace game in 2014. That was like a knife through the heart.

“My son and daughter were born in 1992 and 1995, so it would be their first, and you do see it through their eyes. But it’s about the people too. A lot of the people we sit with now, we used to stand together in what was called ‘the pulpit’ up at the top of the Kop on the right-hand side. There are so many that aren’t here now to see it.

“You’ve probably heard of Bobby Wilcox [a famous member of the travelling Kop and the man who invented many of the songs still sung by fans today]; I knew Bobby well, and so many others that have sadly passed on now, and there’s a bit of me that would be thinking about them. It’s going to be an emotional time for all of us older Reds.”

Peter adds: “All I can say is, I think they’re shining down on us, and I think they made an extra effort for us this year. They didn’t quite get it done for us last year, but they’ve pulled out all the stops this time! I hope we do it for them.”