It’s nice to know that Rod Stewart did exactly what Pies would do with an excess hundred-thousand-pounds or so and had a full-scale football pitch built in the back garden of his mansion in Essex.
That very pitch was mentioned in passing on last night’s edition of Monday Night Football, when Jamie Carragher recalled the time the Celtic-supporting rock star offered the pitch to Liverpool for an impromptu training session ahead of an away game against Tottenham.
Carragher recalled:
We were playing Tottenham away. Rod Stewart lives in Essex and has an 11-a-side football pitch in his garden.
I don’t know who organised it. Roy Evans was the manager but on the Friday, we ended up training at Rod Stewart’s house.
The day before a game you don’t do much, little five-a-side games and we were practising set-pieces.
I was in the starting XI and we were defending them but the subs have gone in because they think they’re finished. Rod is on the side of the pitch and he only goes and takes the corner and scores!
Sadly the session in question is now shrouded in the mists of apocrypha, but footage of said pitch being used does exist.
Indeed, here’s Roderick the Moderick being put through his paces during a private training session with Wimbledon striker Dean Holdsworth on a drizzly January morning in 1996…
“Quick hands”.