{insert balls joke here}

Went to Everton with the boy and a mate on Sunday. I'd have taken 2-2 before the game but after being 2-0 up and missing a hatful of chances it felt like a defeat in the end. Defoe's penalty miss just rubbed salt into the wound.

Much more interesting was what we saw as we walked into the ground and found our really uncomfortable terracing/ seats. (both me and the boy came out with rotten back ache from standing on narrow tilted terraces the whole game- it was like going back 30 years; the whole ground is like that though- charming and nostalgic but ultimatley pretty crap). We saw what we took to be the Everton mascot doing the rounds along our side of the pitch."Dad....what does their mascot look like to you?" There was no context, no explanation, just a giant pair of bollocks with big eyes, a smiley face and pretty grotesque hairs poking out the top dancing around behind three women who (again inexplicably) were wearing Gazza-esque plastic arses. Of course it transpired that it had something to do with testicular cancer awareness which is no laughing matter but they could have flagged that up a little. I'd have loved to have made jokes about the appropriateness of this as a mascot but they came back well and made mugs of us even though it was only 12 mins of the game. Before their first goal you could hear Spurs fans suggesting Moyes bring on Mr Testicles to give them a bit more up front (damn I knew I couldn't get through this without a crap joke) in place of the rubbish Jo. Instead he opted for Saha and Yakubu and they (Saha especially) made all the difference.

The mascot is actually called Mr testicles. We didn't catch his first name but the boy thinks it's probably Dave.

Their fans were pretty poor I have to say. I can recall them beating us at the Lane and coming away feeling pretty crap about our noise levels but it wasn't half as quiet as it was at Everton for the first 80 mins. 'Just like the library' echoed round the ground along with 'We've got Jermain Defoe; you've got our stereos'. You could see the players buck their ideas upwhen the crowd got going. prior to that it seemed to be one 12 year old girls squeeking 'USA, USA, USA' .

The other thing that amazed me was how close Anfield and Goodison are. I've only ever been on a coach before to either ground and had no idea they were spitting distance away from each other. Makes the whole ground sharing thing seem to make sense. To be honest Everyon could play in Stanley Park (which sits between the two grounds) and the ice cream stand there and the public toilets would mean the faciliies were better.

apparently Mr Testicles has his own blog (thanks to best mate for flagging that up- it's in his favourites list) http://mrtesticles.blogspot.com/2007_07_03_archive.html