Steve Allinson on the emotions of a typical derby day

 Derby Day

Playing Liverpool at their ground guarantees it's going to be one of those occasions when I can't take an objective view even if I wanted to.

The night before, I can't sleep.  The whisky comes out and with a bit of luck I manage about two hours of the fitful and disturbed.

Saturday morning I was lucky — Sue did the driving while I hugged a pillow and blanket in the back seat for the two hundred mile journey up to Liverpool with an evil hangover — the sort that makes you despair.

The tension just builds through the morning; the Netley becomes Ticket Central and for a while there's the blessing of finally having something else to concentrate on.  Constant phonecalls; one objective — getting the tickets to everyone who's asked for them.  That REALLY does help.  Stressed out over who's been forgotten, who I should have tried harder for, tickets flying in and out... and then, doing your best for the 'casualties'.  The game's pushed right to the back of your mind until finally, with twenty minutes to go - its time to leave the pub.

The walk through Stanley Park is the time to settle myself.  I can't think of anything else in my life that remotely resembles it.  Personally I prefer to do it on my own — those of you that have done the walk with me will know I've got little to say, and less of it makes any sense.

It's the horrible feeling of impending doom, ingrained I guess by so many years of getting beaten and having to listen to the sort of shite I spend the rest of my life avoiding.  We're here, we've got a job to do, but in the end it will all happen on the pitch.

It really is about going somewhere you don't want to be, conditioned to believe its something you're not going to want to watch, and doing it because honour demands it.

Just about when I've made my peace with myself, that place comes into view.

It represents everything I dislike about Liverpool.  Grasping landlords, treachery and avarice.  This isn't football; this is good against evil, right against wrong.  A band of Blue against a sea of Red.

And the butterflies are back.

That's why I can't do a match report.  I'm a mess throughout the game — despair and hope fighting for the upper hand in whatever's left of my mind.

Only one thing will count when the final whistle blows, and its not really about the score.

Any other game I'd agree that watching it on the telly, listening to the radio, following on IRC — even reading about it in the papers — will give you just as clear a view of the match.

But not this one.  This is all about what happens after the game's over — because make no mistake EVERYONE knows who took the honours.

On Saturday, you couldn't hear a Liverpool voice in the first half, and during the second they were quiet.  With ten minutes to go they started filing out, and I didn't hear 'their song' all game except through the tannoys before kick off.

At full time they slunk away as we stood loud and proud.

Yes, a lot of it might have been relief, and with good cause — Martyn was immense and not since Neville's glory days have I seen a keeper show such command.  We absorbed the pressure, we had a little luck, so did they.  But make no mistake they couldn't break us down and we could have come away with all three points — we knew it, and they knew it.

We took it to them, and we shut them up.

On derby day, that's all that ever matters.

Steve Allinson

2 February 2004