George Sephton, the world-famous "Voice of Anfield", has revealed what a day in the life as Liverpool's stadium announcer involves - after over 50 years in his role.
The 78-year-old landed the job in time for his first game on August 14, 1971 as he made his debut on the same day as a certain Kevin Keegan. Since a first outing for that home fixture Nottingham Forest over 53 years ago, his dulcet tones have reverberated around the Anfield terraces as an accompaniment to some of the most fabled moments in the Reds' history.
Over the course of the past five decades, he has been witness to six European Cup-winning teams, alongside 12 league title-victors from across the Reds' history. He also enjoyed the best seat in the house for legendary wins over St. Etienne in 1977, Chelsea in 2005, Borussia Dortmund in 2016 and Barcelona in 2019.
Forming part of the furniture at the Merseyside club, Kenny Dalglish even once claimed that it would be "more relevant" if the stadium announcer left the club than if he was to depart. Now, Sephton has taken a retrospective look at how he first was handed the opportunity of a lifetime by ex-chairman Peter Robinson, while detailing what his job actually entails at Liverpool's home ground.
In an exclusive interview with Liverpool.com , he recalled how an exchange with his wife at Anfield inspired him to offer to take over on the mic. He said: "It was quite simple, the guy who was doing it before me was Alan Jackson.
"I didn't know him at the time but he took a sabbatical at the end of 1969. The following season, they had this guy standing in for him who really didn't know what he was doing. I was at the match one midweek evening and he did something and I said 'this is embarrassing]', to which my wife turned around and said 'it's alright for you standing down here, I bet you couldn't do any better'.
"I wrote a letter to Peter Robinson, I don't know what possessed me - I think just out of pure spite to prove my wife wrong! But the next thing I knew I got a letter asking me to come and see him," he continued. "Apparently they decided to sling the previous guy out and my letter landed on his desk.
"They got me in and he decided I didn't have two heads and could speak English and decided to give me a trial. In theory, the trial is still going on! Nobody has ever come to me and said 'son, the job's yours'."
That first game against Forest back in 1971 was the start of over half a century in his post, with Sephton remembering back to how he felt before his maiden outing in the role. He admitted to being wracked with nerves, saying: "Looking back, my first day I was nearly having a nervous breakdown but it's like how they say about players on the day of the cup final - the nerves disappear.
"I was the same. I remember turning up there, getting to the top of the stairs and looking out thinking 'I'll either have to get on with this or pack a back and emigrate because nobody will ever speak to me again otherwise'."
Fast forward to the present day and Sephton acknowledges that the demands of the job are a lot different now than they were when he first was installed in the role during the Bill Shankly era. He explained: "It's completely different now to the way it was, I have to get there very early now because they do all the soundchecks.
"Nowadays, I compile a playlist during the week leading up to a match, put it onto Spotify and give it to a sound engineer. On the day, all the world must think I'm sitting there doing nothing but I've done all the grafting beforehand.
"People don't really realize but for the first 25 years, we didn't really announce goalscorers, a lot of other clubs started but I always say I can say for a fact that it only really came in when TV coverage came in the way it is now. When every game started having cameras there, all these guys at the smaller clubs realized they could get themselves on the TV and started announcing goalscorers!
"I have to turn up to a match four hours before kick-off now, which is really tedious with all these sound checks. I share a room with the sound engineer and the guy who does the scoreboard and VAR. So they have to make sure that VAR is talking to the outside world at some point. Touch wood, it's never failed yet!"
Sephton confessed that the introduction of VAR has meant that his role has adapted even more in recent years, revealing that he enjoyed a humorous conversation with PGMOL chief Howard Webb on the subject recently.
He said: "I had lunch with Howard Webb at Anfield recently and was talking with him saying 'Nowadays, I don't do the team anymore, I do substitutions, goalscorers etc- and a ball will go in and I'll wait ten minutes for VAR to decide it was a goal'. He was glaring at me, trying not to smile!"
As for his ability to keep calm under pressure during major moments at Anfield, Sephton admitted that it is rare that he gets overawed these days. However, he acknowledged that even he struggles to keep his emotions under wraps every so often, saying: "It's very hard but I very, very rarely get emotional - it's so stressful nowadays keeping your eye on things going on.
"I'm probably more concerned about going through the rigmarole of what I'm supposed to do. The last time I got really emotional was in 2004-05 against Olympiacos."
He added: "We were nearly out of the Champions League and Steven Gerrard scored that blinder. I went hysterical- and I don't do hysterical! You can still see it on YouTube. The Chelsea game [in 2005], at the end I banged on 'You'll Never Walk Alone' and you can hear me giving a speech saying 'I've been coming here 3000 years and it's the best atmosphere ever'. I was gone, I was just so chuffed."
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