Good post Billy. Would be great to hear some tales from the more 'mature' reds on here of the Old Boys Pen. It was before my time but I've heard a lot about it over the years and I have seen some old footage of all the boys in the queue to get in the Boys Pen on a match day.
Some of you may have read or heard this poem by David Kirby about the Old Boys Pen? I think it's on youtube somewhere.
Its fifteen minutes to kick off time
I'm in my seat, Block 109
I look around, I hear the noise
see lots of fathers with their boys.
The kids look happy, a marvelous sight
McDonalds burgers they all bite
they're all excited thats for sure
and with their dads they feel secure.
Although the surroundings have now all changed
the children's feelings are just the same
the middle classes have now arrived
but things were different for a sixties child.
I then look out across the Kop
to the right hand corner at the top
where up until the age of ten
I served my time in the old 'boys pen'.
For those of you who do not know
it was a place for kids to go
metal bars like a kind of cage
where little kopites came of age.
I remember the first time I went inside
Liverpool v Chelsea '65
a star struck boy who stood amazed
football was all we had those days.
You'd always see some kids from school
they came from all over Liverpool
little scousers every week
from Kirkby town right up to Speke.
The Kop was packed out in those days
but at half time, dad found a way
to fight his way through all the crowd
and feed his boy, he did me proud.
An 'Eccles cake' a sausage roll
a drink of Coke, god bless his soul
between the bars he'd pass it through
like feeding monkeys at the zoo.
And through those bars we used to stare
at all the kopites standing there
oh how we'd long to stand with them
and make that step from boys to men.
Some kids escaped now and again
it was a pretty dangerous game
it filled the kopites full of laughter
to see kids dangling from the rafters.
It had its own 'soprano' choir
you couldn't sing 'walk on' much higher
inside those bars kids sang with pride
but it sounded so funny from the other side.
When the match was over at 4.45
your dad would pick you up outside
dozens of kids , some big some small
stood opposite the pen by the old brick wall.
But that was how it was those days
no greedy players, no corporate ways
they recognized us 'kopite cubs'
we were the future of the club.
Then at last it came my time
to leave this little world behind
I was at an age when every lad
didnt want to go the match with dad.
And so I passed out to the kop
that love affair has never stopped
I take my son to the occasional game
but this 'dad and lad' thing's not the same.
You never see young lads no more
who go the match in three's and fours
this city's children rue the day
when they took the old boys pen away.
The money men arrived in town
and in their wisdom pulled it down
they called it 'progress' but we read their thoughts
who needs children when adults pay more.
I now drift back to present day
I take my seat, watch the redmen play
a diehard red , Im the real McCoy
because I was groomed from a little boy.
That golden era has now passed by
but we all have memories you cannot buy
from apprentice kopites, now middle aged men
who served their time in the old boys pen
Logged
