I looked at Jack Dudley nervously. He glanced at his wristwatch, and parted what had once been an admirable quiff; for two weeks now it had hung pomade-less across his forehead, but he was not, as he had been doing for most of those two weeks, whistling the harmonica riff to The Beatles’ “Love Me Do”. There was no time to whistle between the constant puffs on his cigarette: it was already a quarter past two and our train was still stuck in Runcorn.

The delay would have been frustrating on any away day, but the architecture of Anfield gave the problem a further twist. Almost ten years since our last visit, we had literally no idea what the ground was like, or whether we’d get in.

It is written that the principle architect of Anfield was Archibald Leitch, and this is true, but for many years Leitch retained the services of a mysterious Andalusian engineer by the name of Ignacio Almeda de Tejada, about whom very little is known or written. He appears to have studied at universities throughout the Spanish and Arabic world from a very young age, played chess to grandmaster standard, inherited a considerable fortune while still in his early career, and befriended Leitch through Masonic connections. His intellectual footprint is not always visible on the grounds he helped Leitch to construct, but when present always displays the same purpose: to increase home advantage. Everton’s Main Stand contained two separate players’ tunnels which converged in a single exit – the home side had a short walk from the dressing room, while the visitors faced an arduous wander through a torch-lit subterranean labyrinth which would see them emerge late and disorientated onto the Goodison turf; the pitch at Ibrox was laid over a fulcrum construction and tilted so that Rangers were always kicking downhill. While the Middlesbrough players were summoned from the dressing room to the pitch by a polite automated bell, visitors to Ayresome Park were alerted to kick-off by very low frequencies which induced uncontrollable defecation and vomiting – a practice which ceased only after structural engineers suspected the frequencies were affecting the North Stand’s integrity.

At the yank of a lever located by the directors’ seats, powerful engines would rotate, wind, fold, bury and raise a multitude of pulleys, panels, false doors, moveable terracing blocks, reversible wall fittings and collapsible roofs in order to totally change the appearance of the other three sides of the stadium.

The Trinity Road Stand at Villa Park is considered Leitch’s masterpiece, but Anfield was Almeda’s crowning glory. An extra-large boiler in the Main Stand provided not only hot water for the central heating and players’ baths, but also steam to drive the Andalusian’s unique “Ground-Changing Mechanism” [GCM]. At the yank of a lever located by the directors’ seats, powerful engines would rotate, wind, fold, bury and raise a multitude of pulleys, panels, false doors, moveable terracing blocks, revolving walls and collapsible roofs in order to totally change the appearance of the other three sides of the stadium. This had to be carried out at least once a fortnight in order keep the mechanisms in good working order, and the coal bill at the club was crippling, particularly during the Reds’ lengthy stay in Division 2. Almeda’s thinking appears to have been to guarantee the home side a full house, but by the sixties, some considered the structure a white elephant, and Bill Shankly felt the metamorphic architecture was, rather than increasing home advantage, actually causing confusion in supporters and players alike which allowed the visiting team to seize the initiative. In desperation, the Scot even placed a sign saying “This Is Anfield” in the exit to the tunnel, to remind the disorientated Liverpool players that the unfamiliar stands and terraces beyond were, indeed, home.

It so happened that the architectonic permutation that the lever-pull had thrown up that 16 February 1963 saved the day for Jack and me, and the dozens of Wolves supporters delayed by British Rail. While a small seated stand ran along Kemlyn Road and a compact terrace at the Anfield Road end was already tightly packed and locked to latecomers, there was plenty of room on an enormous terrace (slightly smaller than the South Bank but fully covered), at the Walden Breck Road end of the ground. We arrived panting and paid our ninepence. As the game went on, Jack and I filtered down, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes pushed by the surge of a bouyant crowd, until we were at the kind of distance we usually enjoyed in the North Bank.

Liverpool looked a very good side, and were comfortably avenging our 3-2 victory in September when the real drama unfolded. Bill Slater cleared a wet ball towards the main stand so powerfully that, upon contact, it threw the GCM lever; within seconds, a terrifying creaking and whistling began to emanate from the bowels of the stadium. A scouse lad next to me, who lived on nearby Lothair Road, recognized it immediately: “Bleedin’ ‘eck – de ground-chinjin mechanism’s been activasis!” The boiler having been fired up for players’ baths at full time, there would be enough steam to drive the engines, and no time to evacuate the crowd before the mechanisms initiated. The directors were too busy smoking cigars and drinking fine wines to realize what was going on, and a plan had to be devised quickly to alert them.

The boiler having been fired up for players’ baths at full time, there would be enough steam to drive the engines, and no time to evacuate the crowd before the mechanisms initiated.

“What if we all shout?” suggested Jack Dudley, “They should hear us from here!”

“We won’t keep time,” said the man from Lothair Road, who called himself Aggie, “and se werds won’t be intelligible.”

“What if we sing it?” I suggested. “That’ll keep everyone in time!”

“Greet idea!” said Aggie. And before long, everyone in that huge terrace was singing, to the tune of the Beatles’ smash hit “Please Please Me,”:

Come on, Come on!

Come on, Come on!

Come on, Come on!

Come on, Come on!

Turn the GCM off

So we don’t die!

Eventually, the directors heard our tuneful petition, and attempted to throw the lever, but their pen-pushing, money-counting hands were too soft and they couldn’t find the strength.

“How long does it take to start up?” I asked Aggie, the man from Lothair Street.

“Maybe anuzzer soo minutes?”

“Let’s go!”

We began pushing our way down the terrace. Around seven rows from the front, a young scouser took exception to our haste.

“Yous wanna wash where yous’re pushin.”

“There’s a certain amount of hurry-up involved,” replied Aggie, “we’re srying to seev your life and the lives of all prazent.”

“I don’t need seevin’,” squaring up to Aggie and me, “I jus’ need yous to get lost.”

“You gonna make me, like?”

“Am I gonna have to?”

This stand-off was proving costly, a timely resolution came about as Ian St. John scored a fourth goal for Liverpool and the crowd surged forward; our aggressor was left either behind or underfoot, and we scrambled on our way.

We climbed onto the pitch only to be confronted by a policeman. “You can’t come on here like this,” he said, “Get back.”

“We trying to…”

“Get back,” he ordered. There was a couple of seconds contemplation and then Aggie decked him with a potent right hook and we raced across the pitch. A couple of bobbies from the Kemlyn Road side started to chase us, but we soon reached the Main Stand and headed up the steps. Here we were confronted by stewards. “Directors only,” the biggest one of them said, we headed back down the steps and into the tunnel, following the sound of steaming and pumps, which had to be coming from the boiler room. Once there we found a locked wooden door. I grabbed a fire extinguisher and began pummeling it.

“Hurry up, meet!” cried Aggie desperately. The rozzers hadn’t arrived yet but we both knew they wouldn’t be long. Finally the door split at its edge and we rushed through and surveyed the scene.

“We nees to cut off the steam supply,” said Aggie. We looked around frantically.

“There!” I shouted, “the sledgehammer!”

Aggie grabbed it and attacked the pipes – he made quick progress but soon tired, as the sound of the coppers’ shoes came up the corridor. I took up the hammer and Aggie leaned against the door in anticipation of the rozzers’ arrival; with six or seven more blows the hot-water pipe was breached, steamy water pouring out onto the floor. The policemen, whom Aggie had managed to hold off during the last two crucial blows, burst through, and we had some explaining to do in the hot, echoing room, but eventually one of the soft-handed directors arrived at the door and confirmed that we had saved the lives of thousands. He offered us both cigars (I swapped mine later for a packet of Craven ‘A’) and a glass of single malt in the boardroom, and we then searched out Jack Dudley, the last man standing on the huge terrace, and the three of us headed to the King Harry for a pint.

□ □ □ □ □

After taking stock, the Liverpool board decided they liked the two ends as they were, and built a larger Kemlyn Road stand with cantilevered roof instead of repairing and continuing to fuel Almeda’s intricate Ground Changing Mechanism. The fans on the large, now-permanent terrace enjoyed singing our version of the Beatles song so much they carried on with songs of their own, and within a year were featured on television – Kop culture was born, and helped to drive Liverpool’s enviable success in the next decades: Shankly finally had the home advantage he had long craved. Wolves fans present on the “Kop” that day would bring the idea of singing simple tunes during the match back to the North Bank, too, but the real story of how one game changed so much about English football is rarely told. I bumped into Aggie years later in the King Harry and he seemed rather bitter about this; he even talked about teaming up with Pete Best to record a single about it. That sounded like a total waste of time to me and I haven’t seen him since.