Newcastle team-mates John Beresford and Rob Lee were in a Liverpool hotel room on the morning of Sunday August 31, 1997, when they switched on the television. Diana, Princess of Wales, had been killed in a car crash in Paris.
The Magpies were due to kick off at Anfield at 4pm, the only Premier League game scheduled for that day as part of Sky Sports’ Super Sunday coverage. Given the previous two meetings on Merseyside had finished 4-3 to the hosts, it was a highly anticipated fixture.
‘There was no social media and I’m not sure we all had mobile phones,’ Beresford tells Sportsmail, 25 years on.