Recalling that last visit to Knowsley Road before demolition

A couple of weeks before the Popular Side, Edington End, main stand, paddock and restaurant were razed to the ground to make way for Cunningham Grange, I was given permission to sneak in for one last time.

The staff had all gone, the last boxed roll of turf has been collected, the final scrap of memorabilia had gone under the auctioneer’s gavel and the keys had been handed to Taylor Wimpey.

This was finally is the end for Knowsley Road.

It was one last chance to explore every nook and cranny of the famous old arena.

Maybe it was a mistake, and would have been much better to have those final memories of this old ground to be a fitting one, shuffling out after a noisy, emotionally-charged, atmospheric and real encounter.

I say that, because within weeks of the finale, Knowsley Road was just a hollow shell – made worse by seeing where the lumps had been hacked out of it to satisfy the demands of souvenir hunters.

The visit did, however, afford me one last chance to visit places I have never been in 33 years of attending – climbing the rickety metal steps up to the gantry to get the best view in the house and sitting in a directors box where a layer of thin carpet on the floor qualifies as luxury.

I was able also to pen my final notes from the press bench at the back of the stand - and I still have that wooden backrest with the Star enscribed on it as a momento.

The posts had gone, there was the odd hole in the ground, and two long channels had been carved out of the pitch for turf sales and there is a slight yellowing from where the end of season jamboree marquees had temporarily stopped the grass photosynthesising.

Hopping on to the pitch for the first time since running on to ask Dave Chisnall for his tie-ups after an A team game in the late 70s felt odd.

But as nostalgic as we all still get, and contemplate what a few more licks of paint and a touch up would have done, it was only after you climbed up the Edington end terrace – after the harsh frost has got into the steps again – mooched around the stand, by then stripped of several rows of old wooden seats, and rooted around the back of the restaurant end in places you would not normally visit that you realise that the game was up for Knowsley Road.

And still it was a very sad day when it was taken apart and those bits, that felt like parts of our family home, were pulled apart, shattered, crumpled and crushed and then taken away.