Due to the ardous road trip enjoyed by our lads heading to Spain this week I felt compelled to put finger to keyboard. This will be in parts as it is way too long: On a recent trip home my older brother took out some dated photos from our trip to Rome in 1984. European Cup final against a team in their own stadium! Gulp! In the photo, not only am I 26 years younger, but my hair is completely black and curly and I am wearing a stupid red and white cap. My stylish (!!) classic adidas t-shirt looks more orange than red (faded photo?) and I am waving a flag in front of my dad’s old Citroen Ami 8. The trip involved me, my brother Rob and my mate Gary. I was 20. My brother Rob had been to Rome in ‘77 and Wembley in ‘78 for two of our previous 3 European Cup wins. Gary and I were virgins when it came to European Cup finals. The tickets for Paris in ‘81 were rarer than a Man United title in those days. So that trip was a non-starter. Of course 83-84 had been an epic season; we already had clinched the title and won the League Cup for the fourth time in a row (beat Everton in a replay at Maine Road!). We played 66 matches that season and used just 15 players! The trip was going to take us first to Lime Street to the “Football Special to Rome”. Of course the train itself was not going to go directly to Rome. But you get the idea. I suppose my Dad must have taken us in his car to Limey, but I really don’t remember that part of the journey. It relatively early in the morning and I was missing a few days at Wolves Poly to go. We weren’t nervous at that point, excited, enthused and maybe a little anxious. We gathered at Lime Street Station in the heart of the city with loads of other Liverpool fans. There were not as many fans going in 1984 compared to 1977 but it was still a huge exodus. Estimates now say that in 1977 25,000 Liverpool fans headed to Rome, more like 10,000 in 84. Rumours of planned attacks by Roma fans on Liverpool fans put a lot of people off going and tickets were very hard to come by as the Romans snapped up any that came available in their own stadium. The train journey south was fairly uneventful, our train was packed with about 500 fans on each train. I don’t know how many trains went, but there was a convoy of them heading out of Lime Street towards Runcorn. A few songs struck up, but it was early and a long journey ahead and most of us settled in to read the sports pages, play cards and a few lads starting cracking open the beers of course! A quick aside on my mate Gary. Not one of my usual acquaintances. A decent enough lad (a year younger than me). He was one of those friends forced on you by your parents. You know the sort of relationship. My parents were friends were friends with his parents and we were only a year apart. Therefore we must be friends. Like I said he was a decent enough sort, we just didn’t have that much in common and I always thought he was a bit of an odd one.
Enough on that. Train wound it’s way south and we started to get to know some of the lads sitting near us on the train. We each regaled each other of various away matches and stories of crazy drunkenness and antics – my brother’s tale of us getting legged at Villa Park in 1979 always brought a laugh. The usual banter ensued, my mate Gary had blonde spiky hair and fancied himself as a punk. But he was about as punk as my 80 year old mum. So some of the older heads started to give him stick. Fair play to him he gave as good as he got and we all part of the traveling army together so the banter wasn’t too bad. Then an odd thing, after a couple of hours on the train we had got south of Birmingham, one of the lads we had got to know took off his shoes and socks. First off the smell – felt like someone had died , decomposed and died again. “Jesus H Christ, what in God’s name” etc….This lad waved us off, smiled, opened the sliding window on the train and threw his socks out of the window!! While the rest of us looked on incredulous, he opens up his bag and tears off some plastic to get another pair of white tube socks. “Don’t worry lads, I’ve got loads more where that came from. Only a pound on Church Street!” He must have had about 20 pairs of socks stuffed in his bag. For the rest of the journey, about every two or three hours, same ritual tore of his socks, threw them out of the window and put on another pair. We finally made it to the ferry. I honestly cannot remember where we sailed out of. Because it was a special train we didn’t have to change in London or anything like that. Went straight to the port. Probably Dover, but I honestly don’t remember. On the ferry, the beer started flowing properly and it wasn’t long before some of the lightweights were throwing up over the side of the boat. That wasn’t predictable was it!! The three of us took it easy, my older brother has a wise head and reminded us we had a long way to go. We had a few crappy beers, stood on the deck and peered out at the fast approaching French coast. Then it started pissing down with rain and fled inside the boat. The other parts of the journey we had the trains to ourselves. On the ferry we shared with the general public. A mixture of fear, apprehension and excitement emanated from them. Some wished us well, others avoided us like the plague. A few of the more drunk souls on our trip got a bit tired of the attitude and started singing profanity filled songs or yelling “we are going to eat your children” and other witty retorts. Arriving in France (Cherbourg maybe? Possibly Calais) we were quickly herded onto another train and before we left the French officials/police came through and did the obligatory passport check. A couple of smart alecks swapped passports to test out the French gendarmes – hilarity all around when they didn’t seem to notice. Spirits were high now. We were well on our way, we were well lubricated and a few songs started to break out more frequently. Some of that started on the ferry, especially as we were all getting off. “We going to Italy, tell me ma me ma…” We flew on the faster French train and headed south towards the French/Italian border. Some of the Liverpool police on board accompanied us the whole way along with one of the British rail conductors. Which we all thought was a bit odd. But he was a great fella, kept going through the train and letting us know what time we would be at our next destination and what to look out for on the journey. At this point it seemed to be just a whole lot of French countryside. A lot of the lads on the train had been to France before so nothing new to see. But there were a few like my friend Gary who was on his first trip outside of England. And certainly the first trip without his Mum and Dad. I was quite used to traveling with my brother Rob. Just one year before we had gone to Belgium for a Van Morrison concert! The first major problem on the journey came when we got to the French/Italian border. Although we were staying on the same train, the Italian officials wanted us all to get off the train before they searched it. Not a bad place to stop, great view of the Alps, beautiful weather and a good chance to stretch legs and wander about a bit. Then before getting back on we all had to go through the passport check again. This is when things started to go a little barmy. The British Rail conductor (George) was pulled to one side and not allowed back on the train. No-one was sure why, but there seemed to be some mutterings about whether he was authorized to travel with us in the first place once we had left England. After quite a bit of a shouting match he was marched away by the Italian police and our train got ready to leave. Before we knew it a group of fans who knew the conductor from previous trips started to pass the hat. Their goal was to raise some money for some sort of bribe to the Italian cops or at least bail money. Either way, the hat went around and money started piling up fast, just as another pair of socks flew out the window! We headed into Northwestern Italy without George and a few sullen angry faces. The countryside changed on this leg and we saw some fairly crappy parts of Italy as we inched closer to Rome. The songs started coming more frequently now as we were in the country of our destination. More and more the chatter turned to the match. Who were their danger men? Who was gonna be in our starting XI? The second question was easier to answer. Our first XI had been fairly consistent: Grobs, Neal and Kennedy at fullback, Lawro and Hansen in the middle. In midfield, Souness, Whelan, Lee, and Craig Johnston. My favourite was Johnston and some people didn’t want him in the team. I admired his energy and commitment. Up front was one of the best pairings on the planet, then and now – Rush and Dalglish. If I remember right Rushie had scored 47 goals in all competitions that season. Unbelievable!
Their danger men consisted of a couple of Brazilians and two Italians that gave us concern. Falcao and Cerezo, the two Brazilians were a worry. Especially Falcao. Our speed at the back wasn’t well regarded, while Barney Rubble (Alan Kennedy) was a crowd favourite after Paris he wasn’t very quick. Two Italians also were scary – Conti and Pruzzo. He thought that Hansen and Lawro could handle the latter, but height was certainly a threat. Conti was the bigger worry, quick, skillful, unpredictable. Gulp! There were also some grumblings about playing them at the home pitch, should be neutral some moaned, it’s a fix cos English teams keep winning the cup said others. No matter now – we had arrived in Rome! It had taken 24 hours and I honestly don’t recall sleeping at all. Maybe we didn’t. The Italian police greeted us a Rome’s train station and herded us onto busses to take us to the Olympic Stadium. No time for sightseeing except to peer out of the bus windows. It was about 2 hours before kick-off on Wednesday May 30, 1984. We had left on Tuesday morning from Lime Street. We let off the busses a little before the stadium and we were able to wander the streets a bit, dip into the fountains, buy pizza slices on the street and meander our way past the Coliseum and towards the Olympic Stadium. Cameras came out, flags and banners unfurled. Other groups of Liverpool fans merged with us as we marched towards the ground. Rome plays in a dark reddish shade so everything was red/dark red/almost purple. But Liverpool fans are recognizable and our shade of red distinctive. We gathered together outside and belted out the songs of the players and snapped up overpriced pennants, more impressive flags and the like from vendors outside. Next moment, we were inside the cavernous stadium, nothing like an English football stadium, all hemmed in all four sides. This was wide open, almost a bowl, not much roof to speak of that I recall. What do I remember the most? The Roma fans. They had already filled the stadium hours before, flares, banners, flags, a sea of that darker shade of red. Suddenly we realized what a home advantage they had. Think of a cup final at Anfield. We’d win every time even with Avi Cohen on the team. We found a decent spec on the terracing and noticed we were penned in by barbed wire to our left, more to our right and in front of us a large fence with Italian police, submachine guns and barking ferocious dogs. We were not at Prenton Park. It was one of those few occasions were the travelling Kop was being outsung. Not surprisingly, there were 80,000 Italians and 10,000 Kopites. However, that would change as the match unfolded. The match kicked off and we were quickly witnessing the Italians ability to keep the ball, play possession football and coupled with the fireworks, flares and noise from their 80,000 fans we knew very early on this was gonna be no picnic. However, Graeme Souness slowly got a grip in midfield and it was the Mighty Reds who carved out and took the first chance of the match. My hero Craig Johnston got down the right wing and whipped in an awkward cross. Ronnie Whelan pressured their goalie and defender. And even though it was at the far end of the stadium from us, the traveling Kop peering through the smoke from the flares, we were able to see Phil Neal (what on earth was he doing there!) get his second European Cup final goal banging it into the empty Rome net. Chaos reigned! You’ve all done it, you’ve all gone mad when Liverpool has scored in a cup final. But live, in person, with 10,000 of your best friends (!!) surrounding you, after 24 hours of traveling. The pent up emotion released, where we actually gonna win on their pitch. No doubt about it, the screams, the celebrations, WE WENT MAD! The celebrations carried on and on and the songs rang down and the Roma fans began to quieten down. Roma did start to pressure more and Conti in particular was looking dangerous. But their fans were getting impatient. They were expecting to give us a hiding at home and never in their wildest dreams did they think they would be 1-0 down after 15 minutes. However, as the first half was drawing to a close, the pressure began to build, a couple of corners and a few close shaves and then suddenly Pruzzo got free and looped a header over grobs, right towards us and it nestled in the net. 1-1. Of course, the Romans went mad and as the half ended their celebrations continued. It had been an even first half, Souness was majestic, Johnston a threat, Kenny a little quiet, Rushie harassing their defenders. Second half we expected an Italian onslaught, they had scored right before half time, crowd was fired up, go for the win. It never materialized. The second half got underway with some great possession by the likes of Whelan, Lee, Souness. Lawro was having a great game at the back and him and Hansen had locked things down in the middle. Rushie was pressing them whenever they tried to build from the back. Stalemate. There was the odd chance here or there, but no sitters, no remarkable saves. Two fantastic teams engaged in a chess match. Rushie was scaring the life out of them with his speed. But he was being man marked by at least two as they knew with his 40-something goals that’s where our winner would come from. The match went into extra time, biasely I would say we had most of the play. Souness was controlling the midfield with tough tackles but also great passing and vision. So to penalties it went. By then Stevie Nicol had come on as sub and we were surprised that he was chosen to take the first penalty, which he subsequently missed. Disaster. Tears started rolling down my face as anguish started to tie its knot on my emotions. Would we lose crept into my head? But then the Italians blew it. Unnerved by Grob’s antics two Italians missed and it was left for Barney Rubble to repeat his Paris heroics by scoring the winning goal again!
The relief, the joy, Souness with the cup, the rest is a blur. Coming out of the stadium we were herded onto the buses again only to bombarded by Italian scooters who threw petrol bombs, and a load of other things at our bus windows which shattered under the onslaught. There was no hanging around, the Italian police escorted us to the train station and about 4 or 5 hours after we had arrived we were back on the trains and headed north. Wild celebrations on the train are a fuzzy memory. The joy, the exhultation, “we had beaten them in their own backyard” and the songs. The most popular in Italian “Campioni, campioni …” over and over again and never tiring of it. And who was on the train? George, the conductor. Somehow he had gotten to the match, explained his situation and rejoined us for the journey home. I am sure the lads who passed the hat pocketed the money, but nobody gave a shit. The singing and celebrations went on for hours as we wound our way north and out of Italy. We finally made it to the French coast and onto the ferry where we drank the ferry dry…. Literally. There was not a drop to be had. For some reason we did stop in London on the way back and we all skipped off the train to buy papers to read about the match. It was now Friday morning and stories of the team touring Liverpool the day before greeted us. That pissed off some cos we wanted to be home to see the open bus tour. Aaaah well. Then fatigue kicked in as the train made its way to Liverpool. Once we hit Runcorn everyone livened up for the final leg. All the flags & banners hung out the train windows out as the songs hit full volume and we all craned our necks out of the window for the first sights of Liverpool fans waving at us from the sides of the tracks. My Dad (gone now for six years) was meeting as on the platform. He recalled hearing the songs for at least 10 minutes before the train arrived – “I could hear you singing from Runcorn” he said proudly. We were home and we had won the cup. Campioni indeed!
Great stuff, great memories, you had me remembering what it was like to be in with those fellers. Rough as guts, salt of the earth. You should have been in "Here we go Gathering Cups in May"
I should have added that the socks being throw out of the window continued the entire journey, both ways. My brother and I still laugh about that bloke whenever we see each other.
Kopite, Thanks for posting such a phenomenal read about your experiences going to Rome for the CL Final. I saw a news clipping today announcing that LFC is putting together a book of fans' experiences and immediately thought of this thread. Your story has my vote as it's a great read and would probably be included (speaking as a former editor, I'd certainly include it!). However obviously it's your call. Here is the info: Help Write a New Book: "We Love You Liverpool We Do" Either way, cheers man, always great to hear these stories of yesteryear.