On This Day - 1892: A meeting in Neptune Hotel, Clayton Sq drew up the rules of a new football club...
For those of you who were planning to celebrate 120 years of Liverpool Football Club today, we're about to spoil the party.That's because today - contrary to popular belief - is not our birthday.
Instead you'll have to wait until June 3.
LFC museum curator Stephen Done explains: "People think the club was formed on March 15 but it wasn't. March 15 is incredibly important but it is not when the club was born.
"That day is important because it was the day Everton Football Club, as we now know it, booted out the people who became Liverpool Football Club. That was the critical moment when Everton broke up.
The first ever Liverpool side
"On that day there was an Everton general meeting during which a man called George Mahon, one of the directors, was voted in to be the new chairman, having decided that John Houlding was not a fit and proper person to run the club.
"Mahon went over and sat in the chairman's chair and was about to then proceed with the meeting when John Houlding burst through the doors. And there was a stand-off. It's real, real drama. It would make great TV."
The disagreement had been years in the making.
Season ticket for Liverpool Football Club's first campaign
In 1885, Houlding, then owner of Everton Football Club, bought the land for an Anfield stadium from a friend, Joseph Orrell, so that his team could play there. An important aspect of their deal concerned a strip of the land on the plot where the modern day Centenary Stand is now in place.
Done continues: "Joseph Orrell said, 'At some point I might want to put a road on this plot of land and if I decide that a road goes there, you've got to pay for the costs of this road. That's part of the deal.'
"So things went amicably until 1891, when Orrell said, 'I want that road built now' and Houlding went to a meeting of the Everton board. The letter he read informed the board that Orrell wanted his road building and they'd have to move the stand they'd built on that land.
Liverpool's first ever shirt: The Reds played in blue
"The board of directors, led by George Mahon, believed they could get a better deal elsewhere and it would cost them too much to move the stand. So they proposed moving to a piece of land on the other side of Stanley Park called Mere Green. They could have that for £50 a year so they thought, 'Why don't we just move down there and build a new stadium?'"
On March 15, after a stand-up row, Mahon decided to split with Houlding and his close advisers Edwin Berry, William Barclay and John McKenna. Mahon was to be the chairman of a new Everton Football Club and he was going to take his team over to Mere Green and build the stadium which would later come to be known as Goodison Park.
"One - but not the only - important date as far as Liverpool fans are concerned is March 30, 1892," says Stephen. "In the Neptune Hotel, in Clayton Square, Berry, Barclay, McKenna and Houlding sat down and drew up the rules of a brand new football club.
The 'rules' of Liverpool Football Club, drawn up by Houlding
"And they knew that they had to change the name from Everton because Mahon and his lot wanted to be Everton. So they had this idea for our club as we know it now. And rule one was: 'That the club be called Liverpool Football Club and shall play under the Rules of the Football Association.'
"So you could say March 30 was the key date. However, it's all very well doing that, but the club had to be registered and the funding had to be gathered and so on. And so on June 3, 1892, the Board of Trade finally sent a certificate saying that the club formally constituted a company. It could now trade.
"And so the birth certificate we have for the new club that would play at Anfield says June 3."
The official Liverpool birth certificate
