Pooling their resources

IN my hotel in Bootle the morning after Liverpool had knocked Barcelona out of the Champions League at Anfield, a large group of Asian supporters, resplendent in red, were happily chatting away over breakfast.

Nothing strange about such a scene, you might think, since all the big Premiership clubs command a worldwide fan-base. But it is wasn’t until I bought the Liverpool Echo later that I learned there was something a little different about this travelling red army.

All 12 of them, it turned out, had made a 13,643-mile round trip from Singapore to Liverpool — just to watch the match on the telly in the hotel bar. Then they departed for home again the next morning. Said Park Hotel manager Mike Dewey: “I can’t get over how happy they were to be here — I thought, that’s true support.”