Time in Paradise: When to play ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’?

Dickie Felton

2 February 2022

One of the more obscure talking points ahead of tonight’s massive Glasgow derby revolves around the song sheet not the team sheet.

Sixty thousand Celtic fans will set a frenzied atmosphere for the visit of Rangers in a match of stratospheric seriousness.

A win for Celtic takes them top. A victory for Rangers puts them five points clear and in pole position for the title.

Just like it’s way too early to call the outcome of the 21/22 SPL title race, some Celtic fans are unhappy about the ‘premature’ public address airing of their terrace anthem.

‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ (YNWA) has been a vital cog in Celtic Park’s pre-match playlist for decades. The Gerry & The Pacemakers version played at both Celtic Park and Anfield and runs for just two minutes 39 seconds.

With a sea of green and white scarves aloft and voices soaring, it sets a sensational scene.

Try and imagine a hundred thousand vocal chords combining like flowing fjords…

It’s hairs back of neck, goosebumps, fist pumps and the ‘sweet silver sound of a lark…’ 

During YNWA it feels like every single person present has a scarf held high In the stands at Celtic. Scarf ownership seems compulsory not optional.

If there is a downside to YNWA it could be its pecking order in the setlist.

The players rarely get to experience it as they are still in the tunnel preparing to enter the fray. In the usual Celtic Park running order YNWA gets played ahead of the teams arrival on the pitch. The Hoops eventually emerge to the equally rousing ‘Celtic Song’.

I write ‘usual running order’ – because unlike 230 miles south at Anfield, where it’s played every single week – YNWA is usually only reserved for the big matches at Celtic Park. But something changed this season.

Following the covid-lockout of 20/21 when fans missed an entire campaign attending matches, YNWA has been played at every Celtic home game this term. But according to some fans, it’s being played too early.

Twitter user Celtic Symphony struck a chord with a direct plea about the playlist: “Could you inform the DJ at Paradise we need YNWA to start as our players are walking onto the park – not before”.

His view received a lot of traction – including from the club’s supporter liaison officer who replied: “A lot of fans asking for this. Especially for the big matches”.

“You’ll Never Walk Alone” is a show tune from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical ‘Carousel’. In 1963 it was Liverpool band Gerry & The Pacemakers who brought it to a more populist audience.

I have been singing YNWA for almost 40 years.

And without starting a debate about who sung it first (…Liverpool by the way), the words of this song were ingrained in me as a child.

In the mid 1980s my first visits to Anfield were spent gawping at the Spion Kop and a mass of 21500 fans singing in unison.

I then spent every other week for the next half century singing it myself from the most famous terrace in football history.

Singing that song is as important to me as breathing.

At Anfield, just like now at Celtic, there was period when it was played before the teams came out and not as they came out.

That all changed around 2004-ish when then LFC boss Rafa Benitez asked for YNWA to be played as the team entered the field – so the players could experience that song as they warmed up. (Please someone correct me if I’m wrong here).

I wonder if Celtic are at a similar crossroads with the anthem?

Will playing it a few minutes closer to kick-off have an even bigger impact on the players?

I think that Liverpool fans have a slightly different relationship with YNWA than Celtic supporters.

Obviously the band that made it a massive hit came from Liverpool. The song has been played at Anfield for almost 60 years.

After the Hillsborough disaster the anthem became a memorial to those that died.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been in tears singing it. Even after momentous victories.

I’ve sung it at FA Cup Finals, League Cup Finals, European Finals and at weddings, funerals and latterly at our Cumbrian village Christmas disco.

My visits to Anfield are more limited nowadays. But as a season ticket holder at Celtic Park I still get to sing YNWA all the time. For me the lyrics embody solidarity and strength in the face of adversity.

The links between Liverpool and Celtic fans are longstanding.

The clubs and cities don’t just share a song. There’s synergy in culture, politics, working class roots, sea, ships and socialism.

When I walk around Glasgow I feel like I’m back in Liverpool.

As a kid my favourite Liverpool player was Kenny Dalglish and he’d come to Anfield from Celtic so naturally a few of my school mates started supporting the Hoops. On the Kop in the mid-80s you’d see half-n-half bobble hats – one part LFC one part Celtic (or Rangers).

Liverpool has never forgotten the support and love from Glasgow after the Hillsborough Disaster in 1989.

Go on a tour of Celtic Park and outside the boardroom you’ll see a Kenny Dalglish shirt with ’96’ on the back. It was presented to Celtic on the 25th anniversary of the tragedy: “Thanks for 25-years of support” signed by King Kenny.

For me to be able to sing YNWA regularly at Celtic  – and these days occasionally – at Anfield – is dreamlike.

I’ve sung it thousands of times and every single time it gets me. It’s a form of football communion.

Celtic fans sing it a little bit different to Liverpool supporters with a deeper part of the chorus – if it’s even a chorus?

Maybe this is something to do with the difference in accents?

While LFC fans will sing the song themselves at the end of matches. I can’t recall too many times I’ve heard Celtic fans sing it in open play – or in the closing stages of a game.

But when Celtic Park is in full ‘Walk On…mode’ I equate it to being a wonder of the world.

The best time I’ve experienced YNWA was at half-time 2000 miles from home some 17 years ago.

Hands on head contemplating humiliating defeat I stared into the Turkish night sky as a handful of voices started singing “Walk On, Walk On…”

It took a little time before we all joined in.

We’d just seen our beloved Liverpool go three nil down to AC Milan in the 2005 Champions Cup Final.

Half-time in the Ataturk’s north Tribune had been a bleak place until that moment.

A handful of fans stormed off into the evening. They’d seen enough and weren’t hanging around for the inevitable armageddon.

The rest of us considered how bad the scoreline really could get in what was meant to be the greatest night of our lives.

But as more and more lungs joined in, the anthem roused within us a collective call to arms.

“It always sounds best when we’ve been beaten,” said mate and fellow fan Kevin Carrigan that night.

Not that Kev had totally given up the ghost on the Reds getting back into it.

And as around 35000 Kopites sang “Walk On, Walk On, With Hope In Your Heart….” strange things began to happen that half-time.

Deep within the stadium walls Rafa Benitez and his bruised troops could hear the Liverpool fans singing their hearts out.

What followed was the greatest comeback in Champions League history. Liverpool fought back to three-three and eventually won the match on penalties.

Was there something in the fact that players could hear the song while bunkered down in their dressing room?

Did that leave more to the imagination? and stir their emotions in an even greater fashion?

I wonder if maybe that’s the idea at Celtic Park these days?

The players hear it from the dressing room and the tunnel but they don’t actually see the spectacle of 60000 scarves aloft.

Does it put a fear of God in the opposition? About to walk into the abyss?

Tonight I get to sing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ again when The Hoops take on Rangers.

And I’ll sing it like I aways do – with a stomach like a washing machine.