Retiring groundsman Reg Summers looks back on 44 years with Liverpool FC

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After answering an advert in the ECHO, Reg - an Evertonian - spent 30 years at Anfield before working at Melwood and Kirkby

In all his time with the club, there is one game which lingers long in his memory. It was a win which defined a team, a performance to last a lifetime.

Liverpool FC 's 5-0 triumph over Nottingham Forest was, for many Reds, the game of the 1980s. A footballing masterclass, executed to perfection and remembered by all.

For Reg Summers, the memory of that April evening lingers. As Anfield's head groundsman at the time, Reg had looked on in awe as Kenny Dalglish's side passed their way through a more than decent Forest side with ease.

Slick, stylish and ruthless; it was a display which embodied 'The Liverpool Way', and produced on the turf he had worked so hard to prepare.

"After that game, I said to a colleague 'that's the best football I've ever seen by an English team," Reg remembers. "That night, Sir Tom Finney was on television and said the same. He stole my line!"

The following morning, Reg was back at Anfield, repairing the damage from the previous night, when he bumped into Roy Evans.

"I was made up with myself," he remembers. "A game like that, and I'd prepared the pitch!

"So I walked up to Roy and said 'I'll tell you what, that's the best football I've ever seen Roy'.

"Quick as a flash, he replied: 'It was, and imagine what we could do on a decent pitch'. Burst my bubble, well and truly!"

Reg can expect a tad more appreciation this week, when he is honoured for the 44 years' stellar service he gave to Liverpool.

Having answered an advert in the job pages of the ECHO, he spent 30 years at Anfield , before winding down his career on the staff at first Melwood, and then the Academy in Kirkby.

"I was due to retire a couple of years ago," he says. "But I was enjoying it so much down at the Academy, I stayed on. The atmosphere and the people are first class."

Despite being born an Evertonian - "I have always just wanted both Merseyside clubs to be successful," he insists - Reg prepared the surfaces on which some of the greatest ever Liverpool sides performed.

"It was a lot of pressure at times, but it was a privilege to watch them play".

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