100 years of The Kop

Post your experience of The Kop as it celebrates 100 years in this post.

Article can be found here:
http://www.anfield-online.co.uk/features/indepth/100yearsofkop.htm

gr8 to see that old footage if you look close the 1st person that is zoomed in on is liverpool comic stan boardman.

I didn't see that...  :shock:

Gonna have to have another look.

One of my favourite memories was the 3-3 draw against the Mancs - bout 93/94??

We were 3-0 down, Clough 2 and then Neil Ruddock scored the equaliser.

Remember it well because of the atmosphere which was electric that day.

Destroyed a pair of my mates glasses in the celebrations.

Mancs getting thrown out of the Kop and everything.

Seriously - how did they ever manage to police that stand?

Liverpool Correspondent CHRIS BASCOMBE captures the essence of the most famous stand in football in part one of a five-part series marking its 100th anniversary

WHEN former Liverpool ECHO Sports Editor Ernest Edwards attended Anfield in 1906 and glanced at the new, vast mount of terracing to his right, he was blessed by inspiration and premonition.

Edwards would write in this newspaper howthe structure evoked images of Spioenkop - the notorious hill in South Africa whichwas the scene of a British massacre during the Boer War six years earlier.

Christening the terracing Spion Kop would not only be a fitting memorial for the 300 casualties, many of whom served in the Lancashire Fusiliers, it would reflect the brutish appearance, as it cast an intimidating shadow across all before it.

Edwards drew from the recent past in identifying the as yet unnamed, still roofless, section of the ground as a shrine to those lost in tragic circumstances, and a suitable venue for the pitch battles to come.

Little could the scribe have known how poignant his vision would become.

In the 100 years which have followed the building of what would later become Anfield's Spion Kop, its purpose has far exceeded those original, noble intentions.

Today, the stand and those who occupy it sit in tribute to those lost in different circumstances.

The battles fought at its foot are of a less bloody, gruesome kind, but are as notorious in the sporting arena as those which inspired its name.

Rightly or wrongly, for a whole generation the name Spion Kop no longer summons visions of brave Lancashire soldiers trying to reclaim territory in a far, foreign land.

Now the immediate thoughts drift to thousands of red scarves and banners, waving in unison while a cacophony of noise inspires one of the most successful teams in Europe to another victory.

The Anfield Kop is much imitated by opponents, but never replicated.

Its uniqueness has been fed by the series of extraordinary circumstances which led Liverpool FC to the peak of European football triumph and the depths of human despair, while the city's social history has played its role in moulding a fanbase which has brought a particular, once peculiar way of behaving into its football stadium.

The arrival of Bill Shankly, allied to the Merseybeat boom and coming of age of singing Kopites, triggered a revolution on the terraces as well as on the park.

At Anfield fans not only roared their team to victory, they interacted with the players. They tried to be funny, and often were, and had Panorama

documentaries made about them. Without an all-conquering team to follow, it's doubtful The Kop would have found the niche which has inspired a plethora of books investigating its phenomenon.

The 1960s and 70s are widely regarded as the terrace's glory years, coinciding with many of the most memorable home victories.

Tales of Inter Milan, St Etienne and the rest can't be recalled without reference to the contribution of the supporters who queued for half a day to pack into the stadium, and sent the fear of God down the spine of the opposition (and the legs of the fans who knew the true origins of the smelly liquid squirting from the rolled up ECHOs).

As players lined up to thank their followers, the Anfield edict was set in stone that both needed each other for success to continue. The mythical '12th man' was unveiled.

"You'll Never Walk Alone," just like the name Spion Kop, became an anthem dripping in symbolism, foretelling the emotional repercussions of the Hillsborough tragedy which followed some 25 years after the song was adopted.

To Liverpool fans, The Kop and its anthem are astatement of what the club represents. Unity of purpose, passion, humility, endurance, pride in the past and the craving for a golden future.

When you're a member of the club, it's inevitable you'll get sucked into the sheer romance of it all.

Inevitably, what Liverpudlians cherish most is also a source of ridicule for rival supporters, who claim contradictions lie within the values preached by The Kop.

There's no question The Kop is selective inits application of its anthem. A self-congratulatory pat on the back is never far away, particularly when Gerry Marsden's epic is revived at the end of a particularly painful home defeat.

But a more honest Kopite would admit the sentiments of the tune would be more honest were a verse penned inserting the get-out clause Man United or Chelsea fans can walk a solitary path through the wind and rain from here to eternity.

After the halcyon days of the 1970s, the weekly nights of passion became more occasional. So consistent was the arrival of the League Championship or European Cup, Liverpool fans were struggling to fight off the symptoms of being too blasé, and the atmosphere suffered

long before The Kop's capacity was reduced for safety reasons, and eventually filled with seats in 1994.

There were those who feared the noise and passion had gone forever.

However, it could be argued the enforced period of abstinence from Premiership and European glory throughout the 1990s proved a necessary evil.

Theslightest hints of aLiverpool revival since the start of the Millennium have provoked scenes of euphoria which have matched, and some argue eclipsed, anything heard in the last 100 years.

Gerard Houllier's return from illness against Roma in 2002 was instantly compared to the atmosphere against St Etienne in 1977.

Liverpool's Champions League semi-final win over Chelsea in 2005 stands alone. For younger Kopites, it's that night which is the barometer for all those triumphant evenings which may follow.

Undoubtedly, The Kop is a different beast today. It's not better, nor worse, it's just a lot different.

All seater stadia have extracted the sense of camaraderie which queuing for four hours provides, but supporters are now treated like citizens, not cattle.

True, large portions of the ground are now filled by stargazers and the occasional fans who have timetabled the game between visits to the club shop and museum.

But Liverpool continues to be one of the few top clubs actively trying not to alienate its local following, whether they achieve this or not.

The wit is still evident with the banners and banter, even if, sadly, the most regularly heard retort to provocative away fans these days is the witless 'who the fxxxxxx hell are you?'.

However, as the most recent victories ably demonstrate, when The Kop's on form the 12th man is as visible today as at any point during the last 100 years.

Nowadays, it's not the appearance of the stand itself which is unique, but those on it who are aspiring to capture and retain its spirit. That task may become more demanding if plans to move half a mile across Stanley Park are ever realised.

If Ernest Edwards had not allocated the name at the start of the last century, it seems inconceivable the world' most famous terrace could have been known as anything else.

The origins of Anfield's shrine may be found in a notorious battlefield, but with all due respect to the good people of South Africa, as far as one half of Merseyside goes there is only one Spion Kop.

ECHO chief photographer Stephen Shakeshaft is affectionately known as 'Shakey'.

But there's nothing shaky about his recollections of working in front of the most famous football terrace in the world for more than 25 years.

Stephen's memories are vivid, etched onto his consciousness, and not all of them are happy!

"I was the meat in a Kop sandwich," he recalls. "And while I wouldn't have missed it for anything, I don't miss it one little bit!"

The problem for working photographers in the days of the standing Kop was that only two football grounds in the old First Division had a terrace which started below pitch level, meaning that snappers had to lie flat on the ground to avoid obstructing fans. Molineux was one, Anfield the other.

"Photographers couldn't decide which end they were going to take their pictures from until the coin had been tossed," recalled Stephen "and obviously we were more interested in the Liverpool action.

"Fans who had arrived hours before kick-off to claim a prime spot on the Kop, would suddenly have their view obliterated by a photographer's backside. The only way to avoid that would be to lie completely flat but that was where our problems started.

"If an opposition player decided to clobber a Liverpool player - and Billy Bremner was very good at that - the Kop would react by throwing coins at him. In the sixties and seventies coins were a lot heavier than they are now - and it would really hurt.

"The only consolation was that if the Kop was really upset at a player, you could end up with enough money to buy a round of drinks after the match!

"Quite often photographers would get their shoes dragged off and have to beg a fan to get it back, and the shout of "Ey mate, you're on fire!" was a regular one, as cigarette ends would tend to get discarded in your general direction.

"There were unexpected bonuses, though. On wet days when you made your way from the Anfield Road End towards the Kop, usually for the start of the second half, it would be like approaching a giant hair-drier such was the heat which came from the terrace.

"It was an incredible sight and a great place to spot human nature at work first hand. Andrew Lloyd Webber couldn't have composed songs with more spontaneity or more originality than the Kop.

"There's no way they could have been rehearsed because often they would be instant reactions to something that had just happened on the pitch."

One of the most moving sights he witnessed at Anfield was the day the Kop was struck eerily silent. Peter Robinson had taken the decision to open the stadium gates as more and more fans turned up following the Hillsborough tragedy.

"Nobody raced in, like they would have done normally," he said. "Everyone was in single file and silent, and they instinctively headed for the spots on the Kop where either they stood, or a friend they had lost in the tragedy had stood.

"The Kop became a natural shrine. It was a mass of colours, which eventually stretched onto the pitch and up to the halfway line and it was the most natural remembrance there could have been."

Best moment for me has to be when we played celtic

in the old ecwc  when the kop  was singing and chanting

who scored  due to the visability t hat night