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Stephen, who was a reporter at the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo at the time, obtained his incredible touchline vantage point that day by working as a photographers’ runner, collecting the film from the cameras and carrying it to be processed at the on-site dark rooms tucked away inside the twin towers of the old Wembley Stadium.

While doing the leg work for his colleagues kept him busy, it also ensured he was able to take in the action up close as Kevin Keegan bagged a brace and Steve Heighway also netted in an emphatic victory that would mark the end of the reign of legendary Scottish manager who had transformed the club, with Shankly’s retirement announced at a shock press conference two months later.

Stephen Oldfield raises his arm in delight behind the goal after each of Liverpool's goals in their 3-0 win over Newcastle United in the 1974 FA Cup final

Stephen was born on October 15, 1944, and made the first of his many appearances in the ECHO just three days later when his birth was announced in the newspaper’s classified section.



At a rate of 1/6 for every six words, his proud parents George Stephen Oldfield and Freda, told ECHO readers they had a son who would be “a pal for Alan,” his elder brother.

Taken to matches at Anfield from an early age by his father, who was old enough to recall when there was an orchard around the back of the ground, Stephen watched Liverpool at their lowest ebb but then went on to live through all of their subsequent major successes.

At the age of nine on April 17, 1954, he witnessed Kop idol Billy Liddell miss a penalty as the Reds were beaten 1-0 at home to Cardiff City and relegated from the top flight.

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As the full-time whistle sounded, he recalled asking his father: “Does that mean they’ve gone down, Dad?” and getting the reply: “Yes son, I guess it means they have.” Despite this chastening experience in his formative years, with decades of later triumphs behind them, Stephen insisted he was able to look back on Liverpool’s eight-year exile in the Second Division with fondness as they toiled to try and regain their place among football’s upper echelons.

Just six months shy of his 18th birthday when the Reds finally won promotion back under Shankly in 1962, Stephen was still able to toast their success with his match-going friends and, after enjoying the first of 15 League Championships he witnessed in 1963/64, he made his maiden trip to Wembley the following year to watch the first FA Cup victory in Liverpool’s 73-year history as they defeated Leeds United 2-1.

While on a hospital visit in recent years, he once recounted the tale of going down to London to watch his team succeed on that momentous day to a young nurse and said she reacted like he’d told her he was at the Battle of Agincourt!

Although football and music were two of his passions away from work, and as a fan of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Tom Paxton, and many more folk and jazz artists, he was an obsessive collector of vinyl with more than 40,000 records in his collection, Stephen’s illustrious career as a journalist also ensured he was present for many other pivotal moments in Liverpool’s history through his job.

While they had bonded over their shared love of the Reds and match-going experiences together, Stephen railed at the idea of being pushed into following his accountant father in the world of finance.

On leaving Quarry Bank High School for Boys, where he remembered John Lennon, who was in the fifth year when he started and would terrorise first years like himself, calling them “newts”, Stephen had the briefest of forays in an insurance office.

After that, with a second daughter Manda born, it was a stint at his home city newspaper, where he became crime reporter for the ECHO and shortly before he left to go and work on the nationals, he went to Rome to cover the first of Liverpool’s six European Cup final successes against Borussia Monchengladbach in the Eternal City.

Stephen Oldfield wrote the front page lead for the Liverpool ECHO both before and after Liverpool's first European Cup final win in 1977

From then on, Stephen would enjoy a stellar reputation writing for the Daily Mail for over two decades.

I was Stephen’s son-in-law.

Some 35 years on from being taken to my first game at Goodison Park with my own Dad, and his work colleague ‘Billy from Maghull’, I’m Everton reporter for the ECHO.

In something of a mirror image to Bill Kenwright’s “six worst words in the English language speech” when the late Blues chairman recalled Nick Barmby telling him: “I want to play for Liverpool,” my new father-in-law recalled the moment when Chloe had first described me and told him: “Dad, he’s a teetotal Evertonian.”

Stephen Oldfield and wife Jean with their youngest daughter Chloe on the day she married ECHO Everton reporter Chris Beesley

Despite this apparent wedge between us, Stephen and I subsequently attended many of the same games, just never together.
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