[Football] Liverpool F.C.

[Weststander]

Its nothing like the Celtic v Rangers thing today though. Liverpool sing that Fields of Athenry song every time I watch a game. An irish folk song, with different lyrics admittingly.

Liverpool and Everton fans in modern times have each taken a long established song sung by Celtic or southern Irish, and completely adapted it for a new club song.

 

[Gregory2Smith1]

Its nothing like the Celtic v Rangers thing today though. Liverpool sing that Fields of Athenry song every time I watch a game. An irish folk song, with different lyrics admittingly.

confused folk they are

remember going to Sunderland in the 70's

and they sung "England,Scotland"

some people just like to be different

 

[Doonhamer7]

First started watching footie in late 70s, apart from going to see QOS (all 750-1000 of us on a good day) we all had an affinity to another club - which if you were Protestant was Rangers and Catholic Celtic - I didn’t want either so where was all Scotland’s best players - Dalglish, Souness, Hansen so went with Liverpool. My boss c8years older supports Man U because of same reason Buchan, Macari, McQueen and Jordan. I

 

[rogersix]

you're a bloody good bunch and I'm chuffed to be on here.

welcome!

an accident of birth!

my father was west am/brighton,

and his father was alifax town*,west am, brighton

support your local team!

*so long ago they won the thing! over and over!
dour yorkshire git moaning about the quality of the albion!
it's not like when i was a lad! they used to run around!

 

[Triggaaar]

Whilst they have had a similar level of success, Liverpool F.C. do not seem to be disliked as Man U. At worst people seem ambivalent to them whereas Man U often engender hatred.

Maybe because Liverpool's success here was quite a while ago. I don't like any team winning all the time. Liverpool won the title 10 times in 15 (ish) years from the 70s through the 80s, so I imagine they were disliked by a fair number of fans, but then they stopped winning and Utd took over and did similar through the 90s and naughties. Since Utd's success is still pretty recent, a lot of us still don't like them, and the plastic fans they attract.

 

[Thimble Keegan]

Everton’s Grand Old Team song was pinched from Celtic in 1983/84. Not because there’s any of Celtic connection or anti Rangers thing ... there wasn’t. It had been sometimes sung by kids in Liverpool since the 50’s.

According to research published on toffeeweb:

“However, it must be said that my research, and the majority of the more detailed research into the fans of Everton FC, conclude that the sectarian divisions of Glasgwegian, and even to some extent Mancunian, football supporters, are in no way matched by football supporters in Liverpool.

There, in fact, is overwhelming evidence to suggest that the fan base of both clubs is non-sectarian.
Although the Irish community had a flourishing amateur football leagues by the early 20th Century, this didn’t translate into professional football. There wasn’t the emergence of a catholic club as was the case in Ulster, Glasgow, Dundee and Edinburgh. Both clubs in Liverpool had emerged from the Methodist New Connexion chapel team of St. Domingo’s. Although Liverpool FC was criticised in the Socialist press for not allowing a collection for striking Dublin transport workers, there is nothing in the local catholic press of the time to denote a specific sectarian attachment in the pre- war years. Of the Irish national party councillors in the city, Taggart had shares in Everton, while Austin Harford did in Liverpool. [12]

The question of why a similarly Catholic-based club, such as Glasgow Celtic, didn’t emerge in Liverpool is key to an understanding this issue. The detailed research of David and Peter Kennedy into this issue explains why this didn’t happen in Liverpool even though Liverpool had the greatest proportional immigration of Irish in the late 19nth century of any British city – in 1871, Liverpool had 15.45% of its population of Irish origin. The nearest to it was Manchester with 9%. [13]

Crucially the Kennedys have discovered that, despite the development of many Catholic football teams in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, none of them developed into an equivalent of Glasgow |Celtic. They have given two reasons for this. Firstly, none of the teams lasted or were part of an organised league. Secondly, the local Catholic hierarchy actively discouraged the development of such a team for their own political reasons.

It was the policy of the Liverpool Catholic hierarchy to integrate the Irish into British culture, whilst maintaining their Catholicism. This was due to the perceived threat to the native population of their poverty and passive support for Irish nationalism; to counter this, the hierarchy tried to cultivate respectability through constructing a network of charitable organisations. It also tried to emphasise British, rather than Irish, culture in its schools.”.

I never suggested that Merseyside football fans are out rightly sectarian, I was drawing from information learned from friends and from my own personal knowledge. But Everton's support is drawn mainly from the catholic area of the city and they do have a song containing the line, "to hell with Liverpool and Rangers too". But to stress again, Liverpool & Everton is nothing like the Old Firm and never will be.

I also doubt that, despite Liverpool and Celtic sharing an anthem, there are any strong links between Merseyside and the Old Firm in the same way that Man Utd and Celtic share a "friendship" and the link-up of Rangers and Chelsea.

Albion & England forever.

Thimble Keegan
Worthing BHA

 

[tomfitz12]

I used to dislike them massively but since moving there for uni I really like the club, and the city.

I haven't been to any city that embraces a big game day as Liverpool does and I cant get enough of it.

 

[GT49er]

I used to dislike them massively but since moving there for uni I really like the club, and the city.

I haven't been to any city that embraces a big game day as Liverpool does and I cant get enough of it.

I was exactly the same, and had exactly the same experience, 50 years ago.

 

[chimneys]

Less than that, I think. The person I was replying to (who said away days up there in the70s were grim) was apparently using the 'We' word to mean Palarse. But we (Brighton) didn't, I'm pretty sure.

Lovely city, lovely people, great club. Went to Uni. in Liverpool, and really loved standing on the Kop (for some of us Shankly did a brilliant PR job by playing University undergraduates in his team - lads we could identify with!). Haven't been back and done it since (well you can't these days anyway). Don't get me wrong, the Albion are my team; I don't like Liverpool FC anywhere near as much as I like the Albion, nowhere even close, but I still like them. I also think some of the more rabid anti-scousers are very wide of the mark, and a bit sad really.

So what did you make of the cheeky scousers’ behaviour at Heysel, which repeatedly gets forgotten about in discussions about LFC? Oh yes, I recall, it was all the stadium’s fault! Always the victim.......

 

[Weststander]

I never suggested that Merseyside football fans are out rightly sectarian, I was drawing from information learned from friends and from my own personal knowledge. But Everton's support is drawn mainly from the catholic area of the city and they do have a song containing the line, "to hell with Liverpool and Rangers too". But to stress again, Liverpool & Everton is nothing like the Old Firm and never will be.

I also doubt that, despite Liverpool and Celtic sharing an anthem, there are any strong links between Merseyside and the Old Firm in the same way that Man Utd and Celtic share a "friendship" and the link-up of Rangers and Chelsea.

Albion & England forever.

Thimble Keegan
Worthing BHA

[MENTION=12875]harry wilson[/MENTION]’s tackle nailed this subject, reminding us that scouse families going back at least 60 years contain both EFC and LFC supporters. This has always been well known.

 

[Weststander]

I used to dislike them massively but since moving there for uni I really like the club, and the city.

I haven't been to any city that embraces a big game day as Liverpool does and I cant get enough of it.

As much as Bournemouth, Reading, Milton Keynes?

 

[Mr Putdown]

Although palaces win was a real moral dilemma...

Surely your real moral dilemma is when Brighton play Liverpool?

 

[Mr Putdown]

I'm not keen on either, different sides of the same coin but I really don't like Southern reds.

You hear excuses like "my dad supports them", yeah, well, your Dad is a plastic **** too then

I don’t think I have ever met a southern Liverpool supporter who has been to Anfield as often as I have.

(It’s 20 times now, god I’m getting old)

 

[GT49er]

So what did you make of the cheeky scousers’ behaviour at Heysel, which repeatedly gets forgotten about in discussions about LFC? Oh yes, I recall, it was all the stadium’s fault! Always the victim.......

Your recall is somewhat twisted. A bunch of Juventus fans were engaged in the rowdiness too (not the innocent victims - they were caught in the crossfire, as it were). Bad behaviour, but not murderous. But of course, if you're going to label them 'cheeky scousers' in a sarcastic way, that says it all, really. Sad.

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

My least favourite club and supporters.

Media is filled with ex players and fans which means every programme is turned into a Liverpool love in.

Phill Thompson ffs

 

[Southern Scouse]

Surely your real moral dilemma is when Brighton play Liverpool?

Actually no I’m really happy whichever’s team wins, depending on who needs it more...
Plus I’ve just realised it’s Xmas day ����

 

[sussex_guy2k2]

To be honest, where I grew up in West Sussex every kid at my school in the 90s supported Man Utd. As a Brighton fan, I loathed everything they stood for and still do. Just to wind them up I often claimed Liverpool as a second team of sorts (I was between 5-11 years old then and no one knew who Brighton were!). I’ve not really ever had the pleasure of humble, pleasant Utd fans either, so it’s always been them that have bugged me substantially more than Liverpool.

 

[Thimble Keegan]

[MENTION=12875]harry wilson[/MENTION]’s tackle nailed this subject, reminding us that scouse families going back at least 60 years contain both EFC and LFC supporters. This has always been well known.

Liverpool & Everton fans used to mix quite happily on The Kop and at Goodison Park during Merseyside Derbies...They even used to stand side-by-side at Wembley during Cup Finals.


But this has severely waned in the Premier League era and there is real loathing between the teams now.

Albion & England forever.

Thimble Keegan
Worthing BHA

 

[piersa]

Really like the current team, but their supporters are the most deluded in the land from my experience. Liverpoolitis is an epidemic.