We'd been in the pub earlier with a few Evertonians, as my dad supports them and it was his first visit to Filbert Way. He caught up with the Scousers before the game in the Counting House, and had a good laugh with them, making sure we spent plenty of time laughing at Man Utd and Liverpool, and slagging of Jeffers and Sicknote Ferguson. Most of the Everton fans seemed to think the Leicester lads had been well set up in la Manga.

Dickov was in the starting 11 and got plenty of support from the home fans as he warmed up and then came out for kick off. The Everton fans didn't make a big thing out of it, but made a fair bit of noise at various points in the game.

The City fans were geed up by Birch and held their"Keep the Faith" posters high and proud.

Duncan Ferguson had made it into the team for them, although we don't know why he bothered. He obviously couldn't be arsed and was in a right strop, out-grumping Rooney. Just. Cos the boy wonder was also in a mood.

City had most of the possession in the first half, but never forced anything special out of Keeper Nigel Martyn.

Rooney only had a couple of shots, both well wide, causing the City fans to chant "You fat bastard" at him a lot.

City fans went loopy just before half time as Bent hit the bar from a Muzzy freekick and sent it in over the line from the rebound. We celebrated and the players celebrated...and then we noticed Everton kicking off from the goal area and running at us? Eh? What was going on? The bleeding ref had disallowed it for handball apparently. We shall wait until we see the replays but aint convinced!

Ferguson meanwhile was elbowing and strangling any Leicester player he could. Steffen Freund was particularly getting a hard time. Eventually Big Dunc picked up a yellow card for trying to take Dabizas's head off. So what does he do next? He does what all fine intelligent football captians do...and immediatly tried to strangle Freund in front of the ref. No choice and he had the red card waved at him.

Everyone piled in and had handbags as Ferguson went and whacked Freund. Rooney, still in an arse, got involved and had a go at the ref. Eventually Ferguson left to the usual cheerio chants from the Leicester fans.

Rooney, still being a big girl's mardy arse decided he'd take it out on Heath and picked up his own yellow card.

Half time saw Sir Geoff Hirst on the pitch which was nice. Dunno why, but nice of him to come.

Everton started to attack more and the pace of Radzinski made a difference in the second half. Rooney started to play better, and had the last laugh as he smashed home past Walker after 75 minutes. Why doesn't he lose the grumpy side of his game and just do what he's good at? When he's at his best he's awesome.

I'd managed to talk dad out of wearing his Everton shirt to the game, but he couldn't help applauding the Rooney goal til I whacked him. Dirty looks from some people. Tough. If I want to bring my dad to use one of my season tickets I bleeding well will. His wife died three weeks ago and he needed cheering up. I'm not quite sure how these two teams were supposed to do that on today's performance, but at least it got him out of the house.

We tried to get one back but just couldn't gat a good ball in to finish. Martyn saved a couple and the post got in the way again from a lovely Scimeca strike. Plenty of defenders and midfielders had a go...and put it in row z.

2 minutes stoppage time and the City fans were steaming out thinking we'd blown it again. Suddenly a bit of a goalmouth scramble from a Muzzy corner saw Bent squeeze the ball unbelievably into the bottom corner. Woohoo!!!

Many thanks indeed at this point to the coward 2 rows behind who decided that he would then punch my father in the head as he stood applauding our goal. Must make you feel real good to whack a 64 year old from behind does it, you big hard man? Dad was most bemused that he couldn't applaud good goals and was baffled as to why someone would hit him when he was cheering a Leicester goal rather than when he was applauding the Everton goal.

They'd hardly kicked off again and the ref blew the whistle. We at least deserved a point out of the game. Losing would have been hard to stomach with all the possession we'd had.

Apart from getting a whack, FFS's dad's verdict was Everton were rubbish, City made plenty of chances and might just stay up, and the stadium was fantastic. Sounds fair enough to us.

As we left the ground the sad announcement came over the tannoy that a fan (An Everton one apparently) had been hit by flying debris (steel?) before the game (on Upperton Rd) and had later died. Suddenly winning doesn't seem as important when you think about his poor little lad who saw it happen. Our thoughts go out to his family and friends. He was just doing what he loved, taking his lad to the footy.