Make Us Dream

It's the best thing

that can ever, ever happen to a Liverpool kid.

Being that local boy and everyone's looking to you.

I achieved things that I-I didn't dream of achieving.

I had nights and experiences

that I didn't think would ever happen to me.

I've also had some incredible,

cruel setbacks along the way, as well.

And I didn't think I'd have

to live with the feelings of them, moving forward.

But I just think it's part of it.

I mean, it's part of the game.

Football is not about turning up and playing.

It's about dealing with everything that comes with it.

I just felt it was time to come out

of not just the club, but the city.

Go and have a break from it all.

Me brain was still frying from what happened.

Just try and find answers, and try and find reasons,

and there was none.

There was none.

The big difference here: I can escape from football.

I never played for fame.

It was in me before I knew anything about all this.

I was brought up in an environment

where I was ready for the pressure

and I was ready to be a footballer

for Liverpool, for my people.

I was born for it, I know for a fact.

In Liverpool,

football is the consuming passion.

It's hard to persuade people to talk about anything else.

You walk into the ground, you go in on your own,

and you know you got 28,000 mates

with you there singing, you know.

[indistinct chanting and cheering]

Liverpool scored five goals

and could have scored more.

Their poor, sacrificial victims were Arsenal.

Southerners.

And out comes the trophy,

which is awarded to the League champions.

-Fairclough! -

Since I come here to Liverpool,

I have drummed it into our players

that they are privileged to play for you.

Four European cups are proudly displayed

in the Anfield trophy room,

collected by Britain's most successful football team.

Liverpool are European champions!

What joy!

Last Saturday, Liverpool

made sure of winning the League title,

thanks to this goal from Kenny Dalglish,

keeping up a record of consistent success

for an area suffering

hard times off the football field.

It's, uh, one of

the highest-unemployment areas in Britain.

And I think, uh, football is, like, uh,

a get-out for a lot of them from disappointment.

Huyton is only a small place.

It's like a pinhead on the map.

And we lived on a council estate

called the Bluebell Estate.

We were in a place where you had to look after yourself.

You know, everyone was getting finished up from work,

and, you know, it wasn't a nice time.

But the people just got on with it, you know.

And we'd go to the end of the earth to watch Liverpool.

We breathed it. Breathed football.

Merseyside has dominated

English football in the '80s.

Liverpool has won the First Division championship

six times this decade.

The best-supported club in the country.

They watch a side which is often untouchable,

driven by ability, but also enormous determination.

What a goal! A magnificent goal by Dalglish!

Their dad, he went to all the games.

Wembley and the Cup Finals and all that.

And then nearly everyone I know was Liverpudlian.

Everyone was close.

Everyone would watch out for each other.

Steven was a great kid.

Lovely temper.

Always laughing.

You know, they were our world.

We didn't want them to ever come to any harm,

so we liked them where we could see them.

And we were lucky there.

We never had to go hunting for them, looking for them.

They didn't want to go anywhere but to play football.

He played junior football.

And I've took him on a Saturday morning.

They've won 27-nil, and he scored 12 of the goals.

Like nothing to him.

- -

They say it's a gift.

And he had it, he had the gift.

He was born with the gift.

I used to go and have a pint in the local pub,

and my mate who run the football team said,

"He's gonna go all the way, him, you know that, don't you?"

I used to go, "You can't say that.

You can't guarantee nothing."

And he said, "I'll guarantee it,

Steven will go all the way."

Think he was eight when he first went to Liverpool.

This is Liverpool's training ground.

Like Fort Knox, the value of what's in here is incalculable.

The most successful club in England

for the past generation,

and there's no sign of it letting up.

HUGH McAULEY: He was very small.

Very small, very slight.

He was everywhere in the game.

He'd gone past one or two players straightaway,

as if they weren't there.

You think, "My God."

- -

McAULEY: At Liverpool, the winning mentality

was the all-important thing.

And he was fiercely competitive.

He looked at you and listened.

Eyes that were focused all the time.

You were looking at him, thinking,

"Yeah.

: This kid's got a chance."

I just loved playing football

and supporting Liverpool. It was all just fun to me.

If you could lead the squad forward.

That's Steven Gerrard, Phil Thompson, Kevin Hannon...

I think they knew from eight, nine years of age

I had a chance.

I didn't have a clue.

Maybe I was in me own little world. I don't know.

I just loved it.

I just couldn't wait to play.

Liverpool going into the semi

on a run of good results, and the confidence high.

People are saying it's-it's a great season up to now,

but it's not over yet.

That day, I went to put a bet on.

And I called in to see me dad in the pub.

Let's go now to Hillsborough...

Next minute, I see it on the telly.

A major incident there...

He went, "Oh, there's trouble there."

I looked again, and I went,

"Oh my God, that's... looks heavy, that, whatever that is."

There's total confusion there.

The police have brought in as many reinforcements...

Steven was only nine, he was only a kid, and...

I was telling him, you know,

there's been people killed here.

The worst disaster

in British sporting history

happened at the start of the FA Cup semifinal

between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.

Casualty figures now stand at 94 dead.

24 of them have now been identified,

including a boy of ten.

Paul's mum knocked us up out of bed

at 7:00 the next morning

and said that Jon-Paul, one of Steven's cousins,

had died at Hillsborough.

It was one of the saddest days of our lives.

At that age, you don't understand it.

You're still a baby.

I remember going to the ground when all the flowers

and scarves were all over the Kop.

Football gets parked up.

It becomes about people and about families

and about emotions and people grieving.

He'd ask questions like,

"What really happened to Jon-Paul, Mum?

And how did he die?"

It was just a sad thing.

Everyone knew somebody who'd died at Hillsborough.

I've stood on that Kop for getting on 28 years now,

and I've just made him throw me hat and scarf in,

'cause I'll never go again and he certainly won't go again.

In a terrible way, we've fallen off our bicycle, haven't we?

And for some of us, we'd like to, perhaps,

walk away and never ride again.

Uh, others want to get back on soon

because they-they... because they love it.

John Williams is a sociologist.

He, too, was at Hillsborough

and witnessed the disaster with Rogan Taylor.

I think it reaffirmed for a lot of people

that football was one of those things

that really brings people in the city together.

That helps us talk to each other

and be emotional with each other.

But the club was in complete flux.

One minute to go.

McMahon has got the word from the Kop, obviously.

We were playing the last match of that season