February 2012 Archives

Sunday 25th February marked the return of Liverpool Football Club to it's second home - Anfield South, known of course to everyone else as Wembley Stadium, and what a return it was.  A return, that began, with the match against Exeter back in August.

Now during that game, a magnificent rainbow appeared in the sky and to those of you who understand the significance of this; it meant even back then, that the good times were on their way back. The rainbow too many is a sign of a turn in fortunes - my own reasons for believing in them was the arrival of my grandson Noah at the end of October 2011. 

Football wise of course, it meant that perhaps Liverpool would bring home their first major trophy in six years.  The last one was of course our FA Cup win against West Ham in 2006 and it had been played at the Millennium stadium in Cardiff as our second home had been knocked down and was being rebuilt.

Today was the day that the magic of the FA Cup returned to Anfield and with a added bit of fun at the end, it was one that will be remembered for many years to come.

Brighton and Hove Albion were our opponents and having faced them earlier in the Carling Cup, everyone wondered if it was going to be payback time or indeed if we would beat them once again. Since the arrival of their manager Gus Poyet they have made strides in the Championship and are just outside the playoff places, so if fate is on their side they may find themselves in the Premiership next season.

For most of the players, today was the day that they would find themselves on the Anfield pitch for the very first time in their career and one that they hoped would see them progress into the next round where they would meet Stoke.

Today will I hope go down in the history of Liverpool Football Club as the day when everyone, suddenly and finally came to their senses. We have as you all know been embroiled in a situation that from the moment it happened has turned football supporter against football supporter because of our differing views about the original incident.

It has also caused the media to be vilified for simply doing what they do and that is of course to report things as they happen.  Yes they have sometimes got things wrong, yes they have sometimes used the wrong headlines and the wrong pictures but that is part and parcel of the job and it will happen no matter what the subject or what the story is. 

What you have to remember is that without the media whether it be online or in the case of the newspapers in their paper editions, without them we would not get the news as fast as we do.  Today was a prime example of how everyone works together and gets the news that we have been waiting for since October into the public domain as soon as possible.

Over the last three days we have I believe all learnt several very important lessons and one of them was very humbling indeed.

The first and the most humbling one is what we have learnt about Craig Bellamy in the last couple of days.  Craig as we all know has a bit of a reputation on and off the football pitch.  A reputation that time after time has got him into unnecessary trouble.  But like everything else, sometimes it takes these things to happen in your life before you are either faced with or run into something that will trigger a change for the better.

Craig was going through a period in his life where he was between football clubs and a friend suggested that he visit him in a village called Kono in Sierra Leone.  Craig did this and was shocked to see the poverty and the suffering that was in front of him.