Wednesday March 7 - A Special Brew night at Anfield

My name's Will and I'm a social alcoholic. It's been two months, six days and 18 hours since my last drink.

If you'd told me three months ago that I could sit at Anfield, among 40,000 jubilant Liverpool fans in full 'God's chosen people' mode, without a fortifying drink, I'd have choked on my Bovril.

Don't get me wrong. Some of my best friends are Liverpool fans. But, like a grumpy old shopkeeper with a 'three schoolchildren at a time' notice, I can only abide them in small numbers.

Aside from anything else, if you put more than three in the same room, they'll insist on doing one of those cardboard 'mosaics'. Or at least pass around a giant flag.

Part of my resentment is caused by envy. I spent Sunday morning watching Birmingham and Cardiff thrash it out on a pitch that resembled a paddy field. The half-time entertainment was an event dubbed On My Shed Son!, in which Blues fans kick a ball at a roofless garden shed. (One point for hitting the shed, three points for chipping the ball into the shed.)
Two days later, I was watching Liverpool-Barcelona play some of the most stunning, exciting, flowing, mesmerising football I've ever seen, on a pitch that resembled a billiard table. OK, so Ronaldinho and Gerrard weren't man enough to try to chip a ball into a garden shed, but it was still a fairly obvious step up from what I was used to.

An element of the animosity, however, is caused by the smugness of Liverpool fans. Aided and abetted by a fawning media, they seem to think they are the only fans to sing songs and cheer their team. They also boast a lot. (Yes, I'm thinking of that annoying "We won it five times" song about their European Cup victories. So what? We won the Leyland Daf Cup once, and you don't hear us singing about it.)

Bearing all this in mind, I thought I might have needed a drink last night. Not so much "one of those special nights at Anfield" (Copyright all fawning commentators and sports hacks) as one of those Special Brew nights at Anfield.

To increase the temptation, I was in an executive box, where the free booze was flowing. Had I been on the sauce, I could have had my wine topped up more often than a teenage girl on a night out with Xxxxxx Xxxxxx.*

Not only that, but I had a bet on John Arne Riise to score first, at 20-1. The Norweigian ginge had a shot cleared off the line and struck the woodwork about three times. Talk about a tease. Every time he hit the bar, I wanted to.

Despite all this temptation, I manfully resisted all alcohol. A boast that could not be made, I suspect, by Neil 'Razor' Ruddock, who was in a nearby box and looked like he had entered a Johnny Vegas lookylikey contest.

To be fair, staying off the booze was fairly easy, particularly as the spectacle was so entertaining and the atmosphere was indeed electric. (I doff my caps to the Liverpool fans for living up to their own hype.)

For me, the real football-related sobriety test will come nearer the end of the season, when my own team face possible promotion joy (champagne all round!) or another season in the Championship (a bottle of gin and a revolver please, barkeep).

A final observation about not drinking last night is that it was great to be able to drive. Not only did my four-year-old Ford Focus put the Porsches and BMWs in the Anfield carpark to shame, but it was fun to cruise past the scores of people searching in vain for a taxi outside the ground, and hundreds more who gave up and were heading back to town on foot. I thought it was just a song but it turns out they really will never walk alone.

* Please insert name here of latest Premiership footballer to be accused of rape/roast/rogering a girl he picked up in a nitespot.