Liverpool and Mayo have never been closer, thanks to Knock Airport: Celebrating 30 years of Westport Liverpool Supporters Club

Irish Independent

11-07-2025

Back then, devices like the one you're using to read this article did not exist anywhere in the world, never mind in John Pat's native Aughagower.
In a time before Sky Sports, dodgy boxes, push notifications, social media and accumulator bets, the physical newspaper was the only way to follow the old First Division.
'All you had was the Irish Independent ,' John Pat, a founding member of the Westport Liverpool Supporters Club, says from a high stool in the pub behind the shop from which he sells the aforementioned publication.
'I was interested in soccer at the time and the Irish team weren't doing that well, I remember reading about this guy called Steve Heighway, who was making his debut for Ireland, but he was playing for Liverpool as well. And when I seen him play for Liverpool I thought 'Jeez, this guy is magic'. I couldn't believe it. Then he started playing for Ireland.'
A seed was sown in the mind of an impressionable young soccer fan from west Mayo.
In 1971, Heighway stormed down the left wing to score from a near-impossible angle against Arsenal in the FA Cup final.
'From then I was hooked, with Heighway and with Liverpool,' says John Pat.
When not running Aughagower's only shop, pub and post office, John Pat follows Liverpool FC.
But he had been following them for well over a decade before he actually got to see them play at Anfield.
Back then, before Ryanair and Knock Airport – which did not open until 1986 – it took much longer to get to games, no matter what part of Ireland you lived in.
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John Pat Scott's first trips to Liverpool involved driving Dublin to get a six-hour long ferry to Holyhead to get the bus to Liverpool – and back again.
'You were literally going for 24 or 36 hours,' he says.
Knock Airport changed everything. Now, there are days when it's possible to leave Aughagower at 3pm and be strolling along Anfield Road at 6pm.
'You go to any match here during the season and the planes are 75pc filled with fans going across. If the Liverpool thing wasn't in it, I'd say the planes wouldn't be half full.'
John Pat finally made it to Anfield sometime in the 1980s. Liverpool, who'd been cresting an unprecedented wave of domestic and European success since the mid-70s, were playing Manchester United. The game finished in a draw. It is a long-forgotten memory for most who witnessed it. But not the young postman from Aughagower.
'I remember the first time I was at Anfield, I says: 'God, I'm home'. I could feel the hairs rising on the back of my neck,' recalls John Pat.
Liverpool was not always the thriving, resplendent, metropolis it is today.
'It was a dreary place really. Because it had been abandoned by the Tories that time,' says John Pat.
'The old owners were still there at that stage. The place was a bit ran down, but the atmosphere was still absolutely unbelievable. That was the thing about it. That's what everyone told me, compared to any other ground they were in, be it in Old Trafford or down in London, that the atmosphere was just so lightning and so magic.'
John Pat is flanked by two fellow Liverpool die-hards on the Tuesday evening the Irish Independent called to Aughagower.
Peter Flynn, Darryl O'Toole and John Pat and over 120 other Liverpool supporters are in WhatsApp group used to organise and administer the 30-year-old, Westport Liverpool Supporters Club.
The idea to found it came when John Pat Scott had an unlikely encounter with the late Christy Moran.
'Christy was in the army. I remember going to Galway to the camp. I had a Liverpool bag with me at some match out in Renmore,' recalls John Pat.
'I seen this guy coming up to me: 'Howya Cove. Are you a Liverpool supporter?' I hadn't a clue who he was. He says 'Wherever you are, I'll look after you. I look after all the Liverpool lads'. Then later on I met him around town a few times and we were talking about it and we just said 'Jesus, we should have a supporters club'.'
In 1997, a gang of 30-odd headed east to watch Liverpool play Aston Villa. Their itinerary was as follows: train to Dublin, bus to Dun Laoghaire, ferry to Holyhead, train Liverpool, lodgings five miles outside the city and a fortune on taxis.
The great Christy Moran was in tears walking into Anfield, Jamie Carragher scored, and a good time was had by all.
Little did they know just how well this new supporters' club would stand the test of time.
'At that time, a supporters' clubs used to get about 30-40 tickets for five or six games. It was easy to get tickets,' explains Peter Flynn.
'It has changed so much over the years. It has become near-on impossible to get tickets. If you get tickets to four or five games a year, if we get 15 tickets, we're doing awful well, even though our membership has gone from 30-40 to 120-plus.
'That's the only reason we get tickets is the longevity of the club,' adds Darryl O'Toole. 'New clubs starting up now, they are wasting their time. They have no entitlement to a ticket at all.'
Darryl well remembers the struggle for match tickets before he joined the Westport Liverpool Supporters' Club.
'Many a time you'd be in a phone box – you had to ring in back then to buy the tickets – I often remember going in with 20 quid in 50 pences, and you'd be hanging for an hour waiting to get through to someone to say 'Oh ya there's tickets left. Give me one!''
Times have certainly changed. The Premier League is now a multi-billion-pound juggernaut that captures the eyes, ears and spectators from around the world.
Back in the 90s, a crowd at Anfield would be typically 90pc Irish or English. These days, you could see 5,000 Scandinavians at a Liverpool game.
But the one thing that has never changed about Liverpool is her people.
'The people are lovely, that's the one constant, I'll always say. The people of Liverpool are the nicest people you will ever meet,' says Peter.
'We are going there for 30 years and we haven't had one incident, in all the years. Not one person has been in a row, been robbed, nothing, despite the stuff that you hear. It's an amazing city.'
'The Irish-English thing, that would never be cast up to you in Liverpool,' Darryl adds. 'I think most people in Liverpool have some kind of Irish relation. They would always say, 'What county are you from?' 'Mayo' 'Oh I have a cousin in County Clare, do you know County Clare?' They are so friendly, in fairness.'
These three crusaders can recall the days when Liverpool captured 10 league titles and four European titles between 1975 and 1990.
But for a long time, following Liverpool was a bit like following Mayo. Thereabouts, but not quite there. Nearly always in the top five but never top of the league. Rarely a match for Ferguson's United or Mourinho oligarch-bankrolled Chelsea team.
'At least with Mayo, it's Mayo, but when I was growing up, I'd say 90pc of the lads I grew up with were all Man' United fans,' recalls Darryl.
'They were giving it to you all the time and you were saying 'Jeez, will we ever have our day?' It was tough going at times, I can tell you, especially in the Fergie years.'
In 2005, the nearly-men from Merseyside produced 'The Miracle of Istanbul'.
Enough has been said and written about that Champions League final to fill several books.
There's been far less said what John Pat Scott did to behind the goal where Jerzey Dudek denied Andriy Shevchenko to secure Liverpool's greatest, most unlikely and most audacious European victory.
Not long after Liverpool beat Chelsea in the semi-final thanks to Luis Garcia's 'Ghost Goal', John Pat booked flights and accommodation in Istanbul.
A bit like getting from Aughagower to Anfield Road in the 1980s, there were a fair few swings and roundabouts to navigate.
Direct flights to Istanbul were up to €1,100. So John Pat logged onto some obscure website to book flights from Dublin to Gatwick, Gatwick to Athens, Athens to Alexandroupolis, for less than half of that.
But there was one major problem.
'I remember going home [from the Chelsea game], we were on a high. I said to Darryl, 'I'm going to try and get a ticket'. I knew I hadn't a hope in hell of getting a ticket. There wasn't enough credits in the club to get a ticket,' explains John Pat.
But off he went on Monday, May 23, 2005, with no ticket for Wednesday's game. En route from Gatwick to Athens, he met a man from Dundalk on the same mission as him.
'He had a ticket, but no accommodation, I had accommodation but no ticket. So he shared with me,' says John Pat.
On Tuesday, he reached Istanbul with his new mate from Dundalk after a five-and-a-half-hour bus journey from Alexandroupolis. Still no ticket.
But there were plenty of tickets around on Tuesday night – many selling for €500 or €600.
'As the night was going on it was getting a bit cheaper,' explains John Pat.
'I remember meeting these Italians. I was talking to this guy, he had good English, he had a ticket, but it was for the Milan end into the ground. He was looking for €250. But I beat him down to €150. I said 'If I get into the ground, I don't give a damn. If I get inside, I'm sound'. So that's the ticket that's up there,' he says, pointing to the freshest of five fading Champions League tickets framed proudly above the bar.
'I got in. A €50 face [value], but paid €150. But to get out there was the problem. It was about nine miles outside the city and sure it was mayhem.'
But he made it. The barely finished 80,597-seater Atatürk Olympic Stadium was 'like a building site' with security fences and concrete blocks all over the place.
The fella from Dundalk took take his place on the Liverpool end while John Pat went the other way, down into a flock of Milanos and a handful of Liverpudlians.
He made his way up behind the goal for what would prove to be the best seat in the house.
'I was up near Dudek's goal for three first half goals, three second half goals and the penalty shootout, the whole lot. It was unreal, especially when it came to half time, we were saying 'What's going on here?''
As you probably know, Liverpool went 3-0 to a team of superstars. Shevchenko, Maldini, Kaka, Nesta, Pirlo, Gattuso, titans, legends, world-class players.
The Liverpool fans that trekked to Turkey could barely watch.
'Annihilated, we were literally annihilated,' says John Pat. 'We could have been five- or six-nil down.'
The lads watching back home in Westport were just as devastated.
'Most of the club was in The West,' recalls Peter Flynn. If someone had said to me 3-0 at half-time, we'd take 3-0 at full-time. It looked like we were going to lose about 10-0, Milan were that good.'
Darryl O'Toole and his wife, Siobhán, watched the game in Shane Moran's on Mill Street from two seats under the television.
By the time Paolo Maldini and Hernán Crespo (twice) scored, he had seen enough.
'There was two Man United fans sitting at the counter giving me jib, and I said to herself, 'Come on. I'm going home. I'm not sitting here for the second half listening to that fella.'' Darryl recalls.
'We had a baby at the time, so I said 'No, I'm gone'. I went home and the young lady was very young at the time, she was hard to put down. I said I'd go up and lie in the bed with her and I'd watch it [the game] on the portable and I was lying there, she was kind of lying across my chest. It was the only time I could get her to go to sleep.'
Then Liverpool got two goals in two minutes; Steven Gerrard from a header, Vladimír Šmicer from outside the box. Then Xabi Alonso levelled with a rebound from a penalty.
'I was lying there watching it and she had gone off and I was afraid to move, and we started scoring,' smiles Darryl. 'And next thing Siobhán came up and she said 'Are you watching this match?' I was there with the sound down. I said 'Yeah, but I can't move the child will wake'.
'So eventually we managed to move the child off me and I went straight back up the town again! It was some night.'
It took Liverpool another 15 years to lift their first ever Premier League title - they'd won the old First Division eighteen times, but not since 1989.
Those 15 years brought plenty of highs and lows. Gerrard's screamer in the 2006 FA Cup final, his slip that cost them the league in 2014, the Hillsborough inquest in 2018, a controversial club takeover by American investors, two Champions League final defeats followed by a win over Tottenham in 2019.
But being crowned Premier League champions was a day that John Pat Scott, Darryl O'Toole, and Peter Flynn had longed to see.
But the pandemic intervened. So Jurgen Klopp's troops lifted the trophy in an empty Anfield in the middle of July while John Pat, Peter and Darryl watched from the recluse of their own homes.
'It was so much of a downer. It just felt like we never won it,' says John Pat.
'That's why I think there was such exuberance this time.'
He is, of course, referring to the million people that thronged the banks of the Mersey to see Liverpool crowned Premier League champions in April – for real, this time.
Damped by bad weather and general disorganisation, the occasion was marred when several people were hospitalised after a car ploughed into crowds as the victory parade snaked its way through the proud old city.
'Everyone was horrified, you couldn't believe it that such a thing that happened on such a huge, joyous occasion for everyone,' John Pat told the Irish Independent in the aftermath of the incident back in May.
Last week, John Pat was away from Aughagower went his phone started pinging. Diogo Jota and his brother, Andre Silva, had died in a road accident.
Jota was 28, and left behind a wife, three sons and legions of adoring Liverpool fans. Tragedy had befallen Merseyside yet again.
'The club members have been all shook,' John Pat told the Irish Independent this week.
'It's just crazy. It takes a while to sink in, but it's only when you see the funeral and you see the actual pictures. He was only married two weeks ago, and he has three young sons with him there and his wife and childhood sweetheart. You just get a drop. It just, it's a kick in the stomach, it just knocks you out of your step for the day.'
Liverpool FC's connection with Ireland is a rare one. While Man' City, Man' United and Chelsea supporters come and go with the tide, Liverpool's appeal endures through good times and bad. Times.
'I think it's the connection with the city, honestly,' says Peter Flynn, when asked why the Irish hold such a grá for the club.
'I'd always say even in the bad days when the football was rubbish and the results were rubbish you still always had a great time over in Liverpool. It's a great city and the people are so nice, so easy to get on with and I don't think you'll ever lose that.
'Football is obviously what we all go for, but it's the other piece of it as well.'
Thanks to Knock Airport, Mayo and Liverpool have never been closer, geographically or metaphorically.
'I'll tell you what I love to see, is young kids going to their first match in Anfield,' says Peter. 'None of us got to do that because it was different times. But it's lovely to see young kids going into a match for the first time and enjoying it. It is magical. There is no beating that, just the camaraderie as well.'
'There wouldn't be a time when you'd go to a match, win, lose or draw, that you'd be on the plane or in an airport and you'd be booking your next trip,' adds Darryl.
'You never came back saying 'I had a bad time' or 'I'm never going again'. You were always within a few days; you were kind of looking 'I might get a ticket for that one'.'
The new Premier League season starts on August 16.
With Mayo gone, that day can't come quick enough for the Westport Liverpool Supporters Club.