BELLEFIELD

BLINK and you missed the outpouring of emotion in the press but Bellefield is no more.
The venerable old training ground hosted the final training session of Everton’s first team last Tuesday.
And while I was hacked off at the distinct lack of headlines, especially locally, I’m more melancholy that, excuse the cliche, it really is the end of an era.

Bellefield was part of my life from the age of 10 when we moved to West Derby.
I went to school round the corner and spent long, happy summer days waiting about outside desperate to spot a player.
While a certain sibling of mine would head to nearby Melwood to watch his boyhood heroes train, I’d be up Bellefield drive hanging around outside those shabby blue gates.
It was where I chatted to Duncan Ferguson when he still played more than two games on the bounce and before Barlinnie.
Where I was jealous of the kids who lived in homes overlooking the pitches.
It was where David Burrows gave me a lift home even though I only lived ten minutes walk away and where I was allowed in by sympathetic groundsmen to watch the reserves train.
It was where I saw Anders Limpar perched on the wall outside flicking through a bluey while waiting for the team coach to an away game.
Me and my brother still laugh about how he (post conversion) was photographed on the back of the tabloids chasing after Andrei Kanchelskis when he drove out of training on the day he signed for the blues.
It was the only place to be when Everton were on the brink of a summer signing. Appetite whetted by a Dave Prentice story in the day before's Echo we'd wait for hours.
We saw so many players drive by from the sublime; (Kanchelskis, R**ney, Gary Speed), to the ridiculous; (Amo, Madar, Thomsen....Muller!!!!)
There’s no doubt we had to go.
Like Goodison, Bellefield's ‘rustic charm’ could only last so long before it became a problem.
Bellefield as it was over the last five years is no place for a modern Premiership club to train.
No amount of summer licks of paint could disguise the lack of facilities and space.
I was sad last season when I played six-a-side on the inside pitches there and saw first hand how crap the facilities are.
It was a bit like a school P.E. gym.
The sort of place you could imagine being a deal-breaker when pampered foreign players finally decide to swerve the blues.
I haven’t been to Finch Farm yet and I’m sure the set-up there will be the requisite step-up.
Hopefully a generation of kids in Halewood will have some great memories in store for them too.
But long after it has become ridiculously over-priced housing, I’ll still get the same twinge of excitement and content as I walk or drive along Eaton Road and see the sleepy little road leading to the training ground.

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