A 1-1 home draw against second tier opposition would not, indeed probably should not, live too long in the memory. But not for a then 12 year old boy quite literally on a pilgrimage to The Kop.
On 22 November 1983 Liverpool took on Fulham in a League Cup replay.
With a very different climate surrounding the game then it was the type of game parents were relaxed about allowing their young to cut some football teeth on.
At least so long as advice about going to close to the front was followed.
The crowd was a relatively meagre 15,783. Even The Kop, as was to be found in a very painful way involving the folly of not standing pitch side of a crush barrier at a league game some months later, was more sparse than usual.
As a spectacle the game was fairly scrappy but drinking in the atmosphere albeit muted, chanting and seeing the likes of Bruce Grobbelaar, Graeme Souness, Phil Neal, Ian Rush and especially Kenny Dalglish in the flesh outweighed any lack of flair.
Except for Dalglish netting from short distance memories of the game are few. In fact the goal mirrored events before us. The build up is lost to any effective recall except that the build up came down the Liverpool left - probably.
But that didn’t matter King Kenny had provided something any first match would be complete with - a goal from one of his sainted boots - and one witnessed without a Match of the Day camera intervening between the viewers eyes and the scene.
There was disappointment in a late penalty award and Kevin Lock equalising to take the tie to a third game at Craven Cottage which Liverpool won in extra-time.
More than anything else it’s the sights and sounds in and around the ground which still linger.
Outside the single most striking was The Kop. Approached from Oakfield Road and lit up like a beacon.
Closer in a steep bank was visible with bodies seeming to surge up the steps like ants.
Just before the ground came the smell of onions hit the nostrils. They would accompany hot-dogs and burgers on offer to anyone with a hunger for that type of food or perhaps a desire to run the gauntlet of a stomach bug - ask yourself where a man operating a small unit with a hotplate run on butane gas canisters (a) goes to the toilet and (b) how he washes his hands if he does so.
Golden goal ticket and programme sellers punctuated the air with calls to purchase their wares.
Once in the final few steps of my own journey were an impatient clamber before the scene which had greeted millions of fans or just over 90 years met my own eyes - the lush Anfield turf. Inside there were no men with rolled up copies of the Echo just piss running down the terraces as the excesses of pre-match refreshment made its inevitable way out of the body.
Compared to the Premiership era it may feel like football’s dark ages but in truth it was a golden age. There was something special about the old Kop terrace and those who stood there.
Even though it has been has been demolished for 16 years there remains a residual spirit of what Bill Shankly termed a twelfth man. Thousands of people thinking, acting and supporting as one mind and voice.
Reduced in its powers maybe but nonetheless but still backing its team and its manager.
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