David Oates
In The Streets of Liverpool
It is only 900 metres from Everton’s Goodison Park to Liverpool’s Anfield. In the streets between, there live priests, drinkers, hairdressers and soldiers. For them, the football is both close by yet a million miles away.
Seite 4: Evertonians in the houses of Liverpool FC
The door of her house is red, painted long before she moved in. The Ellisons, her next-door neighbours, are Liverpool supporters but curiously, they live behind a blue door. Both of the clubs could not exist without one another. They share too much history to untie. The rivalry is based on banter like that of siblings tend to hoax one another. When Everton opened a store in the city’s new Liverpool One shopping centre, they named it so it’s postal address read, ‚Everton Two, Liverpool One‘.
Eileen Snell listens to the radio commentary during the games. Whenever Everton score, she knocks at the wall adjacent to the Ellisons. This supporter of the Blues lives behind a red door in a house owned by the Reds. And when Liverpool is playing at the bottom of her garden, she pulls the curtains.
A picture of a young boy and girl is stuck in her window, they wear the jerseys of Everton and Liverpool. The numbers on the back: 96. Eileen Snell remembers the day of Hillsborough when the families returned from the disaster and grieved at Anfield Stadium. ‚I still hear them crying when I lie in my bed. I will never forget it‘.
Behind her garden, beside the terrace, one can find the Hillsborough Memorial. Paul Cassidy’s eyes are reddened, he glances into the distance unable to look directly. The body of this small, tubby man works, he whips from one foot to the other, clutching his Marks and Spencer bag tightly. His eyes wander along the memorial plaque. Flowers, scarves, children’s drawings. Cassidy blows out, he needs fresh air as memory tightens his throat. ‚Just imagine that‘, he says, ‚Just imagine. Football, the thing you adore the most. You go visiting a game and then…‘ Shakes his head. Shakes it again. ‚Then you don’t come back home‘.
Cassidy wears a jersey not with a player’s name on the back but the word: ‚Remembering‘ the number 96 and ‚Y.N.W.A.‘ written below it. Initials of the famous Liverpool song: You’ll never walk alone. When he stands in front of the plaque to pause people turn and stare at him. Some even take photos of him. For Cassidy’s jersey is not red, it is blue. It is one from Everton FC.