Past Tense 

Past Perfect Tense: 

If two actions took place in the past, one action might have necessarily preceded the other action. The past perfect tense is used to indicate the action that took place first. To indicate the action that took place later, the simple past tense is used, like: 

• When I reached the station, the train had already left. 

• I had finished the homework before Richard came to meet me. 

Now let us look at the structure of a sentence that is written in the past perfect tense. Take the example of: 

I had played football. 

The structure of this sentence is: 

Subject (S) + had + Past Participle form of the verb (V3) + Remaining Part (RP) 

More examples: 

• She had sent me the books before I asked for them. 
• We had started out before it rained.