It’s said the only constant in life is change itself.
Due to this permanent flux in life we find comfort in familiarity, which for some reading this may be a bi weekly habit – and occasional nights – at St Domingo’s Weekend Club. Maybe you were introduced to it with love by someone else who was a member, or maybe it’s something you didn’t get to until later in life. You’ll never forget your first time though. Nor, would I guess, shall you forget your last.
The very first purpose built football stadium in its country is more than a creaking circa £700 annual bill because of all the memories and people you associate with it. And often Everton gets in the way a good time there but when they get it right, well, those times. When the investment of lesser enjoyable weekends yields a bounty that’s so much more because of that struggle it validates the persistence, and with the shared experience of a few tens of thousands of likeminded others losing their mind in one euphoric shin twatting blissfuck.
Yet change pushes on. As years, decades rolled there was that constant of L4 4EL, all within it and around it. Tucked away down side streets like our little secret. Copy and paste stadia may have popped up around us but Goodison was our thing so the shiny new things didn’t hold too much sway. Pele, Eusebio and Kevin Sheedy played here, so you can keep your generic bowl shite, this is our place.
Until Everton got shit, didn’t win stuff for decades and fans turned into P&L obsessed budget-biffs fuming that others had money to buy that snazzy foreign sexballer they wanted. So a mad new owner made a compelling case to move into the Mersey with the beautiful help of Dan Meis, nearly bankrupting the club while somehow circling the drain of an abyss relegation and with a guest appearance of Rafa Benitez as Everton Manager. Which brings us neatly to this, the last game before Everton (men) leave Goodison Park for Bramley Moore.
Yes, that turn there was the end of the whimsical nostalgia fest as you’ve got plenty of that going around, and truth is I’m made up we’re not at Goodison anymore, so let me try to not convince you why.
Essentially it’s this: 1- Goodison is a place of anxiety ridden PTSD that gives opposition a slight competitive edge, 2- I want a better half time pint and snack experience and 3- Bramley Moore is fucking ace.
For Point 1 let me start by saying Goodison is a place of connections, thousands and thousands of shoulder to shoulder knee to back, back to knee connections. Connections – over time – usually merge. Give it three decades of hard luck stories and you’ll find frustration builds as much as narratives. Come the inflection point of keenly matched contests you’ll find your average Evertonian waiting expectantly for it to go wrong. Even predicting it with great vigour. Any sign of that impending doom, a misplaced pass or spell of opposition possession invokes a deep guttural moan I’ve not heard the like of in any other stadium – it sounds something like off War Of The Worlds. Interspersed with the odd dar now at the abusive stage it just sweeps slowly down the stands, onto the pitch, and into the adrenal glands of substandard footballers wearing royal blue. Suddenly there’s doubt, anxiety and an aversion to risk in those Everton players that manifests itself cruelly in tiny moments of fate. And so a new pain is born and the story continues on and on.
So, moving somewhere that isn’t haunted by those ghosts of Everton past and splitting you all up – so you have to be pretend to be alright in front of strangers – gives a chance of writing a few new, different chapters, maybe even with happier endings. Sometimes we’re really really good, a bear pit even, but it usually takes someone fucking us right over or extreme adversity to invoke it. Needing pain to get aroused makes us all masochists, mate.
Point 2 is self explanatory, the pints are shite and it’s crammed at often the place of sanctuary away from the game above. Give me somewhere alright to hide out and muse why I don’t make better life choices please.
The Final Point is as those lucky to visit Bramley Moore will testify: it’s an outstanding home of soccer. Feels like a real football ground, not one of them copy paste sports arenas. We’re getting a significant upgrade and it’s smack bang on the banks of the royal blue Mersey – holy ground for anyone who uses “lad” in a superfluous manner when conversing. If you wait five years for an upgrade on your car you really notice the difference in all the little things, so imagine waiting 133 years.
Anyway it’s not even as if Goodison is gonna get smashed by JCBs anymore so if you miss it too much or decide the new place isn’t for you then crack on with the Everton Women games.
Get me the fuck out of side stepping horse and dog shit in pristine white trabs and give me the closed off full road experience of Everton Boulevard on the walk up to that new place, with those weirdos stopping fans crossing the bridge to give it a breather. Get that sea air right to the bottom of my bronchia and all them little bars popping up along the dock road doing a decent pint, munch and some music for when I want to sway.
Give me more legroom and being able to watch the game without repetitive strain injury from looking around crude iron trunks. Give me sunsets over the Mersey on days the disappointing bastards in blue surprise me with something good. Give me away fans lashed in the Mersey until occupational health and safety fence it all off. Give me a gigantic screen showing me stuff I’d missed as my eyes slowly fail me or someone to my side wanted to express how they’d change the shape or personnel to fix the vulgar shitshow in front of us. Give me 12000 extra Evertonians to share stuff with. Give me steep steep stands to bellow below at. Give me space to move when having a half time pint. Give me hideous weather painfully lashing my face as I leave 20 mins early at two down to head to the Denbigh Castle and dry off. Give me somewhere nice to piss. Give me a giant octopus slithering onto the concrete and consuming the fella two rows back who needs therapy not Everton. Give me Meet Her At The Love Parade on brand news speakers with the bass nice and tight. Give me 5G throughout the ground. Give me an ambitious entrepreneurial street food merchant pushing their offerings on me outside. Give me a stadium so loud that when we’re really up for it it makes the scruffy bastards tucked away in shit away seats wish it was their home. Give me better ways to get home Rotheram you bad middle aisle Ginola. Give me more sexballers. Give me blue sauce. Give me mates reminding me of this diatribe then we’re still shit years later and there’s 15000 empty seats as it just isn’t Goodison. Give me a better Everton.
Oh yeah there’s a game of football against a relegated team on the day. I’d usually spend a bit of time here critiquing their travelling scruffy noodle armed small town Stone Island biffs, but they’ve suffered enough this season so smell you later you painfully English dorks. And a bunch of their sound fans on here have restored my belief in adult males into football not being completely lost to thin skinned try hard banter bells. Hope they win the toss and kick to the Gwladys second half just for perfect send off.
There’s been a lot of words written this week so there’s no better testimonies I can add hence me not trying. It’s been forty years since I first went to Goodison Park, I fell in love on minute one. Truth is it still gives me goosebumps. But this isn’t about my story it’s about our story, so I’ll save you the eulogy. I won’t be there tomorrow but for those who will, enjoy. That we get to enjoy the day without fretting over relegation is a welcome feeling, perhaps we can leave those experiences with the past. I’ll remember shiny cups over heads, games that made the place shake and loads of happy moments with people I’m really, really fond of.
Say your goodbyes, nod to those who once shared it with us, and then let’s turn the page onto a new chapter. And write some really good fucking stories.
Bye.
