Beers, cheers and tears: How lockdown Liverpool came to life to celebrate historic title win

The pubs were shut and Anfield's gates remained locked as Liverpool celebrated the end of a three-decade wait to be crowned champions. But the unprecedented circumstances could not dampen spirits, finds

Liverpool fans have been condemned by Merseyside Police for travelling to Anfield (AFP/Getty)

Not long after Liverpool had won their last league title back in 1990, Harvey Morrison’s older brother mentioned to the then 12-year-old how the club’s northwest rivals Manchester United had not been champions for more than 20 years.

“I said to him, ‘Twenty years? That’s ancient history’,” he recalls today. “I went, ‘That could never happen to us’.”

The Anfield season ticket-holder thought about this conversation while sat alone on his doorstep at 1am on Friday morning.

Three hours earlier, the Reds – once the dominant force in English football – had been crowned champions for the first time since that 1990 success.

In the celebrations that followed, almost everyone on Morrison’s Bootle street flooded into their gardens to sing and cheer. Most put up flags and bunting. Harvey’s son, 7-year-old Tom, brought out a life-sized cutout of Mo Salah and stuck it in the front lawn. Someone a couple of roads along was letting off fireworks.

“But when it was all done and we’d got the kids in bed, I just needed a moment to myself,” says the father-of-two.

He sat out in the warm night with his last beer of the evening. “I was trying to savour it, mate,” he says. “Thirty years I’ve been waiting for this. It was overwhelming.”

Did he cry? “No comment. Let’s just say I was emotional.”

Such stories – of cheers, beers and tears – come thick and fast in Liverpool on Friday, the day after the glorious night before.

This may be a country still officially in coronavirus lockdown – the pubs were shut and Anfield remained locked up – but such restrictions did not dampen spirits here. An estimated 2,000 fans had turned up at the stadium to toast the title on Thursday night, while hundreds more had descended on the squares and parks of the city centre. Those who followed lockdown guidelines and stayed at home – the majority it’s worth saying – turned suburban streets into late-night carnivals.

“Come head, mate,” one lad, Mike Pinnington, a 21-year-old railway worker, had told The Independent in the city’s Concert Square. “It would have had to be the plague to stop us having a bevvy a night like this.”

By the next day, it was clear this was not a unique view: after three decades – as well as a wait of 14 weeks while the season was suspended due to the Covid-19 crisis – the release was palpable. On Friday, Liverpool was a city of sore heads and shadows lifted.

“When I was leaving the house this morning, I saw a neighbour just getting home,” said Morrison, a council transport officer, as we spoke in the city’s Liverpool One complex. “That was 9am. I’m not sure where he’d been all night. He wasn’t in the best state to talk.”

The unbridled joy was perhaps because this felt bigger than mere sport.

Liverpool is a place whose identity is entwined with its club. For it not to have topped the English league for 30 years was a burden here. In a city which has long struggled with deprivation – one in three children live in poverty in Merseyside according to a 2019 report – the fall from grace of their mighty football club had felt, to many, like insult added to injury.

“It’s massive,” said Scott Craven, a 21-year-old joiner. “It puts a spring in the city’s step. You look round and people are happy.”

Even Evertonians? “They might as well be happy about it because they’re never going to win the league themselves.”

Many believed that this was now the beginning of a new golden period for the Reds.

“The start of an era,” as Mo Abdul, a research scientist who spent the night with hundreds of fans gathered outside St Luke’s bombed-out church, put it.

Harvey Morrison and family (Harvey Morrison)

That may be but some fear it may also be the start of a second coronavirus spike. Concerns have already been raised that the spontaneous gatherings – where social distancing was decidedly not observed – could ultimately end up going down in history as a series of super-spreader events. Certainly, city authorities and club manager Jurgen Klopp have now urged fans (again) to hold off holding further celebrations.

“I agree with that,” said Abdul, 25. “Perhaps there should have been more social distancing last night. But I think people got caught up in the moment. We’re a city obsessed with football. No one’s saying there should be a bus parade until it’s safe but this was just a release, I think.”

It was a view shared by Carl McDonald, a Liverpool fan and A&E care assistant who had been working the night shift at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital.

“We had a couple of people come in who’d been hurt falling off things they’d been climbing,” the 38-year-old said with a shrug: “It happens”.

As a supporter and NHS worker, how did he feel about the mass celebrations? “I’d preferred them not to have happened,” he replied. “I’ve seen what coronavirus does to you. But people have been waiting to win the Premiership for so long – I think it would have been hard to stop.”

He himself was able to keep up with the night’s unfolding events because patients across his wards were listening to the all-important Man City match. It was their defeat to Chelsea which sealed the Reds title. “I had to stop myself shouting out when Chelsea scored,” he noted.

Mo Abdul outside St Luke’s bombed-out church in Liverpool (Mo Abdul)

Katrina and Abigail Baybutt had no such concerns.

The mother and daughter – who have travelled across Europe supporting the club – watched the game at home. “We were pretty loud, pretty hyper,” said Katrina, a 42-year-old accounts officer and mother-of-three. “Jumping around the living room, texting friends, singing.”

The kids, she means? “Mainly the kids, but perhaps me a little bit too.”

Yet she admitted – in common with most fans here – that there was a tinge of sadness that this was not a normal season; that the club will ultimately end up being presented with the trophy at a game which fans cannot attend. “It’s a real shame,” she said.

“But it’s okay,” perked up Abigail, 14, as the pair started to make their way in to the Liverpool store. “It means we’ll just have to win it again next year.”