Signed copies of Brian Reade’s latest book
THE Kop: A Fan’s History of Football’s Most Famous Stand is the latest book by Kopite and SOS member Brian Reade, out on Thursday 8 October.
Here, Brian tells us how he came to write it and how you can pick up a signed copy.
“The most famous stand in world football has just celebrated a landmark birthday.
“On 1 September 1906, Anfield’s Spion Kop burst into life in the middle of a freak heatwave and over the following 120 years, over many nights, it turned the heat on to Liverpool’s opponents so much so the cream of the world’s managers, players and pundits hailed its fearsome aura.
“As someone who admired it from afar (well, the Anfield Road End) in the mid 1960s before graduating to the hallowed ground in 1970 and staying there since (I’ve been a Block 306-er for the past 20 seasons), I’ve always been fascinated by the allure of the place that invented mass terrace singing, elevated a Broadway tune into the go-to global anthem of hope, inspired some of club football’s greatest comebacks and led the fight against injustice and supporter exploitation.
“So I decided to tell its story. I took a trip to the hill it was named after, Spion Kop, in South Africa, the scene of one of the British Army’s worst defeats, where so many soldiers were slaughtered that it was named the “Acre of Massacre”. And in visiting this eerie hilltop where many poor Scouser Tommies fell, I found astonishing parallels with a disaster 89 years later that changed the Kop and Kopites forever.
“I explain how it got its name and how, in the 1930s, Kopites took their first protest against the owners who were trying to sell their hero, Elisha Scott. How the arrival of three phenomena in the early 60s – a tannoy system, Merseybeat and Bill Shankly – made it completely different to any terrace that had gone before and drew in the world’s cameras.
“How Kopites became “too cool for school” in the 1980s and took a bollocking from Bob Paisley for not getting behind the team. How the colour returned with flag days in the 1990s and how its passion survived being seated to remain what José Mourinho described as “one of the only places to make the impossible possible.“
“The book documents Spirit of Shankly’s success in doing what Manchester United fans have failed to do. force out rogue owners, and also how it has kept the current ones in check, and through Spion Kop 1906, is passing the baton on.
“I speak to leading SOS members, plus players from every decade since the 1960s, such as Phil Thompson, David Fairclough, Jamie Carragher and Virgil Van Dijk. I relive our greatest triumphs and lowest lows and ask if Liverpool would have become Britain’s most successful club without the world’s most iconic football stand.
“It serves as a timely reminder of why we need to nurture and preserve Liverpool FC’s crown jewel.”
