Aaron's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘everton’

I was very, very luck in that I won 2 tickets to see Everton vs Man Utd in the Premier League at Goodison Park at the start of March by entering a competition with Barclays!!  I was very excited!! So, we decided to make a weekend of it in Liverpool.  It was decided that Ben was going to go to the game with me whilst Kelly took Aaron and Coby to the cinema, so they were all very excited then as well!! heehee

We booked a Premier Inn for the Saturday and Sunday night just off the main road into Liverpool and I took the Monday off and Kelly rang the boys in poorly, as the game kicked off at lunchtime on the Sunday.  

We drove up on the Saturday morning as Ben’s Plymouth Kolts match had been rained off (like most of them this year!) which was a blessing in disguise really!! We made good time and went to the Everton Superstore at Goodison before going to the hotel, to have a look around.  We weren’t meant to be buying much but we (myself, Ben, Aaron and Coby) ended up spending a bit too much money and came away with the current home shirt, joggers, other kits and other bits such as Everton Top Trumps!! Well, we aren’t there very often and a lot of it was selling off as it was coming to the end of the season!!  We then headed to the hotel, unpacked and went to the Beefeater next door for tea.  We had basically booked the Beefeater beforehand and we were glad we did as it was full!  The food was nice as well!

We went there again in the morning for breakfast, which was nice, and ate plenty to keep us going through the day.  We then relaxed in our hotel room until it was time for Kelly to drop me and Ben to Goodison to watch the game.  We got there a fair amount of time before kick off so we could take in the atmosphere and have a good look around the pre-match entertainment which included a band playing, people in costumes such as Darth Vader and The Predator, and we also had a look around the Everton memorabilia in the Church, which was very interesting.   We did buy a couple more things as well!! tut tut!  It was a nice day as well, sunny and dry, which was ideal, though it was quite cold!  

When it was time to find our seats, we walked around to the Main Stand (as the tickets were for there) and eventually found our way to our seats, which were situated towards the back of the middle section of the stand.  They weren’t brilliant seats but we weren’t complaining at all!!  We were so excited! We took plenty of photos whilst we were there and settled in for the game and tried to pick out as many people as possible, including Richarlison, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Sigurdsson, Tom Davies, Bernard, etc, etc.  All the best players played, even Andre Gomes, who had just come back from a horrific ankle dislocation break, so that was a bonus!

As for the game itself, well, VAR robbed us of a perfect ending unfortunately.  We were very gutted at the end and the 1-1 draw felt like a defeat!  Dominic Calvert-Lewin scored in the first few minutes when David De Gea kicked the ball out and it hit DCL and rebounded into the net.  Ben and I were jumping up and down ecstatically, and the stand was literally rocking!!  Unfortunately, half way through the half, Bruno Fernandes scored when Jordan Pickford should really have saved it.  It stayed like that right up until the end of the game when controversy struck.  There were a couple of attempts on goal, one by Sigurdsson and he ended up lying on the floor in front of the goal.  DCL then got the ball, went past a defender and struck a shot which deflected off another defender and wrong footed De Gea in goal and went in!!  Ben and I, and the rest of the home supporters went crazy excited, and the referee and linesman gave the goal only for VAR to interrupt things several minutes later.  The Everton players were all celebrating as it would have been a great win but then it was announced that VAR had ruled it out as they said Sigurdsson was in an offside position in front of De Gea which impeded his sight of the ball.  So the stadium went quiet for a moment before a load of boo’s rang out at full time, at which point Carlo Ancelotti went and confronted the referee and got sent off.  So it was a really bad end to the game even though it was a draw.  But, like I said above, it felt like a defeat to me and Ben, and the rest of the Evertonians.  Oh well – we had still had a great time at our first match at Goodison Park!!!

After the game, we made our way away from Goodison and waited for Kelly and the other two to pick us up.  We then got back and headed over to the Beefeater for tea again before heading back to the room and having a quiet evening.  Kelly, Aaron and Coby had gone to see the new Sonic The Hedgehog film and said that it was really good, so I was pleased that they had had a nice time as well.

The following morning, we had breakfast at the Beefeater again, before packing up and heading home.

We all had a nice weekend away, and were stuffed with all of the food that we had eaten, but it was just a shame that mine and Ben’s first trip to watch a Premier League game ended in VAR controversy, but it was great watching Everton live!! 🙂  We will definitely have to do it again, if we can get tickets!

On the way back from our holiday in Scotland, our overnight stop was in Liverpool as we had booked a stadium tour of Goodison Park without Ben, Aaron or Coby knowing about it! 😉 We didn’t tell them until we were literally parked up in the car park next to the stadium when Ben said ‘are we able to go inside?’ so we said ‘yes, we are having a proper tour of the stadium’. At which point, they all got extremely excited!

The tour was brilliant though and I could easily have paid for another one straight after! Everyone thought it was really good and enjoyed it, even Kelly! Coby was a little bit naughty when we were in the lounge being told about the history of the trophies on show and didn’t like the brightness outside (it was clear blue sky, very sunny and really hot!) but overall they were very well behaved.

The tour started in reception before heading to the lounge where members pay £3000 per season to be allowed in. Here the guides explained the history of the lounge and the trophies that were in a large cabinet there. We then walked out into the main stand, in the area where all the directors sat and were told more information about the club and how it was the first club to do this and that. Then it was down to the dressing rooms where we had a good look around and I managed to find a programme from the friendly the previous day against Valencia, which was Marco Silva’s first home game in charge (lost 2-1 though) and had a good look at the players shirts that were all hung around the dressing room. We then walked out through the corridor and out on to the side of the pitch next to the dug outs to the Z Cars theme that is played when the team walks out onto the pitch. This was the favourite part for me, Ben and Aaron! The pitch looked in great condition and the boys sat in the dug out before we walked along the middle of the stand and into the media room, where the manager does his press conferences. We were allowed to sit on the chairs where the manager sat and had a photo with a life size cut out figure of Marco Silva.  Unfortunately, this was the end of the tour but it was very awesome. It lasted about an hour but it could have done with being a bit longer to be able to soak the atmosphere in of the different areas that we visited.

As part of the tour, we got 20% of in the Everton shop so after taking a full walk around the stadium, we went in the shop and spent too much money! I bought the new home shirt and a mug, Ben bout the new away shirt and a key ring, Aaron bout a training top and a key ring and Coby had a full training kit and a key ring. I/we could have spent much more in there though as there was loads of stuff that was awesome! 😉

We then went back to the car and started the drive home. The tour had been amazing and was one of the things that I wanted to do since I started to support Everton in 1988 so I was extremely glad that we did it and the boys really enjoyed it as well. Everton will be moving to a new stadium in a few years, so we will have to do it at the new stadium as well! 😉

Here are some various photographs of Aaron et al from January to June 2012 –

[Show as slideshow]