On a cold Monday morning in mid-December 1959, a gruff-voiced Scot arrived on Merseyside and set out his plans for a footballing revolution.
Within days of his arrival, new Liverpool manager Bill Shankly encountered a young member of the ground staff at the club’s Melwood training ground and had 16-year-old Chris Lawler training with the senior squad.
“I was there six months before Shankly came,” the defender recalls.
“I joined the ground staff with the idea that I would train with the pros at night and work during the day but it was more like slave labour!
“In his first week I bumped into the boss and he started asking me what my routine would be and in the end he knew my name.
“I told him that I trained two nights a week with the amateurs and worked all day so he said ‘Tomorrow morning you’re training with the professionals. I’ll have a word with the groundsman.' So as soon as he came it was a big change for me."
It was also a big change for the club as the visionary Scot rang the changes and brought standards up to scratch at the dilapidated Second Division club.
“The ground at Anfield was in a mess,” Lawler admits.
“The training ground was even worse but I could gradually see him changing things; from Anfield to Melwood, even to the players’ training kit because that was a mess as well so he set about putting that right.”
Despite famously remarking that he would never cheat anyone, Lawler remembers that Shankly ripped up the rule book during legendary five-a-side matches at Melwood.
“I used to play in the five-a-side games with him when we’d finished training. The youth team would play against the staff like Bob Paisley and Joe Fagan and all the pros would go back to Anfield. They would play the game until they won it by cheating all the time!”
After his chance encounter with Shanks, Lawler signed professional forms on his 17th birthday and made 549 appearances for the club and became a first-team regular between 1965 and 1973 during his 15-year stay at Anfield.
Known affectionately by Kopites as ‘The Silent Knight’ for his quiet, unassuming behaviour both on and off the pitch Lawler, now 66, was a key part of the Reds side that won the 1965 FA Cup and played in a back four alongside the injured Gerry Byrne, who ruptured his collarbone just four minutes into the match.
“In those days there was no substitutes so the normal thing if somebody was injured was to put them on the wing to stop them making a nuisance of themselves.
“We knew Gerry was injured but we didn’t know he was that badly injured so it was all pretty low-key. The Leeds players didn’t know even though we stopped him taking the throw ins because you can’t do them one-handed.”
With the cup won, attention turned to Inter Milan in the first leg of the European Cup semi final but for Lawler there were more pressing matters beforehand which interfered with Shankly’s plans for the visit of the World Club Champions to Anfield.
“Before the season started I had arranged to get married. I’d had a look at the fixture list. The FA Cup was the last game in the English season. I had arranged to get married on the Monday after the final.
“We were going so well in the European Cup that we were drawn against Inter Milan in the semi final. We were playing them in the first leg at Anfield on the Tuesday after the final.
“I was getting married the day before so with a week to go before the final, Shankly called me into his office and told me that when it came to the Inter Milan game I’d have to go away with the players so on my wedding night I’d be away with the lads.”
Lawler’s lasting memory of Shankly, half a century on from their first meeting, is that of a man who was a pioneer for the club and the city of Liverpool.
He added: “He changed things for me right from the beginning, from that very first day when I met him. There were other episodes in my career when he helped me like when he changed me from a centre half to a right back so he was been a big influence to me.”
