GWLADYS
I
was sat about twenty odd rows back in
the Top Balcony at the time. The iconic
third tier of the Old Lady, better known
as Goodison Park. The first of its kind
in world football, the Top Balcony was,
and still is, both a steep and high beast
and standing while everyone sits will
fast bring on a bout of vertigo. It didn’t matter
though. In that moment my latent fear of
heights was nowhere. I’d never felt safer.
You see it was May 1998 and the situation was
that if we were to stay in the Premier League,
we needed a better result at home against
Coventry than Bolton needed away at Chelsea.
Thanks to a Gareth Farrelly worldie only seven
minutes in, we’d been 1-0 up for most of the
match. That early goal though, hadn’t stopped
a tense afternoon for my thirteen-year-old
self, as Chelsea had stayed level with Bolton
for what seemed like forever. Then my dad’s
little transistor radio let me know it was all
going to be alright. Bolton were losing and we
were winning. Gianlucca Vialli had put Chelsea
in front and I exploded in a moment of pure
joy and relief screaming the Italian’s name
at the top of my voice. As the rest of the top
balcony got onto it, and all of Goodison too,
cheers started erupting all around as just under
40,109 Evertonians started to really believe that
we weren’t going to go down.
“...a piece of
Goodison Park
that they’d be able
to own and have
forever.”
By Patrick Devaney
Its all ups and downs as a blue though. You
wear your heart on your sleeve and you can
end up with no more than a lump in your
throat. After a while of relative safety Coventry
equalised against us and we were back on the
razor’s edge, staring into the abyss. I’m not
ashamed to say that I was an absolute mess.
Even as word came through that Chelsea had
scored again, I was hyperventilating through
floods of tears balling at the ref to blow his
f***ing whistle.
Words by Patrick Delaney
Then he did. The whistle blew and the floods
of tears streaming down my spotty cheeks
were replaced with floods of fans streaming on
to Goodison’s hallowed turf. We’d stayed up,
our history was intact, my dad had grabbed me,
and we were both jumping on our seats three
tiers up. Goodison looked alive as the whole
of the ground was in rapture. From our seats
in the Top Balc it looked like the pitch below
was being swarmed by ants. The communal
relief was pure, everybody was breathing out
at the same time, and those that could were
clambering down onto the Goodison pitch. It
was pure elation.
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