Shortly before five o’clock yesterday evening, referee Phil Dowd sounded the last whistle on Havant & Waterlooville’s FA Cup run and as winners and losers shook hands and swapped jerseys, a surge of light brightened up a darkening evening. For after waiting a respectful minute or so, the Liverpool crowd gave the part-timers from Hampshire as thunderous and sustained an ovation as you’ve ever heard.

It was heart-warming to hear such generous acclaim from the Anfield faithful, and how richly it was deserved because Havant & Waterlooville played the game of their lives and for a long time entranced 42,566 unsuspecting onlookers.

If the case for the FA Cup still needed to be made, it was eloquently articulated through yesterday’s match: a capacity crowd, with 6,000 coming from the south coast to support the non-league side, and an occasion that was enthralling. “The FA Cup is like this,” said Rafa Benitez, the Liverpool manager, afterwards. “It is a fantastic competition. You can see a team come through the earlier rounds, play a team five divisions higher at Anfield. That tells this is an amazing competition.”

What was more amazing was that for 45 minutes, the part-timers gave as good as they got, goal for goal and more or less chance for chance.

“To come to Anfield,” said Shaun Gale, manager of Havant & Waterlooville, “and produce a performance of that magnitude, I’m immensely proud of my team. We were magnificent, and for the Liverpool support to give us a standing ovation at the end was fully deserved. I’d told them we were not here for a jolly-up, we can have a party afterwards. People laughed when we said we were going to come here and have a go, but we did just that.”

Leading 2-1 after 40 minutes, Havant brought on Tony Taggart for Phil Warner, a courier replaced by a refuge collector and it might be harsh to say the nonleaguers called for the binman because Liverpool were rubbish, but it was hard to avoid a little smile. The opening 45 minutes, at the end of which the game was tied at 2-2, was a delight for anyone who plays in a football team and works for living.

Havant & Waterlooville are 123 places below Liverpool in football’s pecking order and among their ranks there is a £250-a-week builder, a £350-a-week gas fitter and a £400-a-week cabbie and all of them count their wages in units that make sense to the rest of us. Day-jobs didn’t mean they couldn’t play. Quite the opposite, they seemed utterly at home in one of the country’s most hallowed football grounds.

Perhaps it was naivety, or a simple love for the game, but they came to play their game and through that first half they opened Liverpool’s defence with quite ridiculous ease. Wide on the right Mo Harkin cut inside John-Arne Riise with a dip of his right shoulder and a slick change of direction, Alfie Potter fancied his chances against Steve Finnan and the striker with the wonderful name, Rocky Baptiste, glided around Anfield Road as if he owned the place.

Far from the cruise they might have expected, Liverpool found themselves in a game that swayed from stressful to embarrassing. Why couldn’t they make their class tell? Perhaps their attitude wasn’t as fierce as it might have been. More worryingly for Liverpool, fringe players given the chance yesterday didn’t exactly seize the day.

Martin Skrtel, the £6.5m centre-back, was given his first start and it is one he will not easily forget. After eight minutes he rashly conceded a corner and from Harkin’s in-swinger Sami Hyypia and his fellow defenders seemed to think Tom Jordan was the only threat. Jordan is a big centre-back and as the son of Joe Jordan, he was always going to be a threat. But the ball flew over him and Hyypia to the unmarked Richard Pacquette who headed into the net at the Kop.

It certainly wasn’t against the run of play and though the Kop was temporarily silenced, the home side remained relatively calm. Riise got forward and twice just missed an equaliser with a firmly struck cross-shot and then with a deft chip. But it was far from one-sided and after Liverpool’s defence and back-up goalkeeper Charles Itandje failed to deal with a Harkin free kick, Havant’s centre-back, Neil Sharp could have put his team two up. His right-footed volley flew high over an open goal.

Liverpool were level soon after that. Finnan’s fine crossfield pass found Ryan Babel whose first touch forced him wide but when he played the ball back to Lucas Leiva, the Brazilian took one touch and struck the purest of right-foot shots into the top corner. Poor Kevin Scriven, Havant’s goalkeeper, only needed to get to the half-hour mark with a clean sheet to win a £5,000trip to the Champions League final in Moscow, put up by a tabloid newspaper. The shot flew agonisingly past him in the 27th minute.

But that wasn’t the end of it, not by a long way. Undaunted by the loss of their lead, the nonleaguers kept playing. Phil Wilkinson played a wonderful ball wide for Jay Smith and the full-back fired in a fine cross that caused mayhem in the Liverpool defence. Skrtel half-cleared it, Wilkinson headed it back in, Finnan failed to control the ball, succeeding only in teeing the ball for Potter. The left winger bore down on goal and as he attempted to lift the ball over Itandje, his effort deflected off Skrtel and bounced into the net. To concede one to Havant might have been careless but two was downright dangerous.

A minute before half-time, Liverpool levelled and that was a turning point. Jermaine Pennant played a neat through ball to Yossi Benayoun who picked his spot before firing into the corner of the net.

The story of the opening half was captured in the Kop’s loud booing of their team as it retreated at half-time and its ovation for the underdogs as they returned to the fray. Alas for Havant, they couldn’t sustain the tempo that lit up their first half performance. The trials of being a builder or a binman, a truant officer or a quantity surveyor, took their toll through a second half that Liverpool dominated.

Benayoun put his team in front in the 56th minute, getting on the end of Pennant’s excellent cross and just before the hour, he clinched victory with a simple goal after Scriven had parried Babel’s shot. Peter Crouch scored right at the death to make it five but Havant didn’t deserve to lose by three and Crouch might have been fractionally offside. Liverpool progress to the next round but the day belonged to the small men who made them work for their passage.

Player ratings: Liverpool: Itandje 6, Finnan 5, Skrtel 5, Hyypia 5 (Carragher 84min), Riise 5, Pennant 6, Mascherano 7 (Gerrard 87min), Lucas 6, Benayoun 8 (Kuyt 72min), Crouch 5, Babel 5
Havant & Waterlooville: Scriven 7, Smith 7, Jordan 7, Sharp 7, Warner 6 (Taggart 40min, 7), Harkin 7, Collins 7, Wilkinson 7 (Oatway 74min), Potter 7, Baptiste 6, Pacquette 7 (Slabber 57min, 6)

Star man: Yossi Benayoun (Liverpool)

Yellow cards: Havant & Waterlooville: Wilkinson

Referee: P Dowd

Attendance: 42,566

Explore Football

• Premier League

• Football League

• Scotland

• European Football

• International Football

• TheGame

• Live Match Tracker

• The Fink Tank

• Fantasy Football