50 Years of Shankly - Ian St John

In the summer of 1961, the cornerstone of the first Shankly revolution was in place with the arrival of a highly-rated Scottish duo. “The very beginning of Liverpool’s rise,” was how the legendary Kop boss described it, “Yeats at the back, St John at the front.”

Costing a bargain £37,500, Ian St John joined compatriot Ron Yeats at Anfield and the striker admits that his first meeting with Shankly took him by surprise after he Newcastle United had shown a keen interest in the then 22-year-old.

“My first meeting with the boss was in the dressing room at Motherwell where I'd just finished playing a game,” remembers the Saint, now 71.

“The manager came in and said “just you hang on a second, there’s somebody here to see you”. I didn’t know who the person was, so the lads all leave having showered and left and I’m just sat there on my own.

“Then a very dynamic man and smart dresser came in and said “Hello son, “I’m going to take you to Liverpool.” I never knew about that. The next day our baby went to my mother-in-law’s as we got in a Rolls-Royce and set off all the way down to Liverpool.

“I didn’t know of Bill Shankly because 50 years ago there was no football on TV around and only the odd magazine but I learned about him once I had met him, by talking to people in England and everybody had a good word about him as a player and as a guy so I realised that he was a genuine character.”

Having netted one of the fastest hat tricks of all time in two-and-a-half minutes during his time at Motherwell, St John signalled his intent with three goals on his debut. Unfortunately for the Saint, Liverpool lost 4-3 to Everton in the Merseyside Senior Cup final at Goodison Park.

“They were known back then as The Millionaires Club,” he recalls.

“I know other teams have taken over that mantle in recent years but Littlewoods’ John Moores owned them back then so they were the millionaire club and the rivalry was great between the two sets of fans.

“Ours supporters were stuck in the Second Division but under Shankly were feeling that they were going to go somewhere because he convinced them that we were going to be the team and he was true to his word and he was true to his word and we got ourselves up and out of it and into the top flight.”

Despite the defeat, Melwood’s newest recruit found out how positively different life was football-wise south of the Highland boarder.

“At most clubs, not just Motherwell, training was running round the pitch or up and down terracing. It was nonsense, absolute nonsense. It was fitness work but that was it. There was no ball work.

“When I arrived at Liverpool, we got to the training ground which was an old cricket pavilion that needed pulling down but the pitches were lovely and goals everywhere and bags of balls.

“Everything was done with a ball at Liverpool; there was no silly running up terraces. For me it was like being a kid at Christmas because it was completely different to what I had left up in Scotland.”

St John speaks fondly of the golden era during which Shankly took Liverpool from the lowly Second Division to the summit of English football and beyond. He also remembers the manager’s philosophy that bitter rivalries and religious bigotry had no place in the dressing room.

“Liverpool’s history was very much Scottish because the first chairman was a Scotsman and they have always had a lot of Scots in their team but it was great and the boss encouraged us.

"One thing he did say though was 'I don't want to hear anybody talking about Celtic and Rangers in here.' He put the frighteners on us even though I would never do that myself as an ex-Motherwell player. He was talking to all the Scots and he meant it. He would have no bigotry at all.

"He said 'There's only one religion, and that's football'. That was it - football was our religion."

St John believes that Shankly’s legacy has stood the test of time due to his obsession with the game which becomes more prominent with every year that passes.

He said: “He certainly had an aura. He’d walk into a room and people would immediately say ‘there’s Bill Shankly’. He was an outgoing man so he liked an audience; he liked to talk to people.

“He could never have gone in, got a newspaper and had a quiet read. He would go in looking to see who was there and if people wanted to talk football, he would talk football.

“If he got a guy who was a football fan, that was it; it didn’t matter who his team was, he would talk to him about the guy’s team. And he’d know everything about the guy’s team, never mind Liverpool so he was a very exceptional man.

“He was the biggest football fan in the world. He was quite amazing. A lot of people get enough of football and say ‘shut the door’ for a day or half a day but he was there 24 hours a day talking it.”

“He could be a hard man when he needed to be and give people a bollocking. I’d been on the receiving end of it myself! But at the same time, you could tell he had a love for his team and his club.”

50 Years of Shankly - Ian Callaghan

Bill Shankly, like virtually every English club manager of the 1960s, did not believe in signing players from overseas. It was an alien concept to the game at that time.

The legendary Liverpool manager’s teams consisted of many foreigners but they were not showboating Portuguese wingers cheating their way to league championships and European crowns. Instead they were home-grown English players to whom he added to his Scotch mix.

Like his future team mate Chris Lawler, central heating engineer Ian Callaghan trained at Melwood two nights a week with the junior sides before Shanks intervened and made plans to turn the young amateur into a fully fledged Liverpool player.

“He saw me playing in the junior sides and asked me if I would sign professional. I told him that I had an apprentice and that he would have to go down and see my mum and dad, which he did,” recalls Cally, Liverpool’s record appearance holder.

“He came down to the tenements where I lived (in Toxteth) in his big car and parked outside; I think it was a Ford Corsair. All the kids gathered round it because Bill Shankly was here. He came in, spoke to my parents and that’s how it all started really. I signed pro and it was the best thing I ever did.”

Callaghan’s progression through the ranks was rapid upon Shankly’s arrival and he made his debut, aged 17, in the 4-0 win over Bristol Rovers in April 1960 when he deputised for a Kop legend.

“I was playing in the A, B and C teams at Melwood. Then Mr Shankly arrived and I quickly started playing in the reserves but I didn’t play too many games for them. The next thing I knew it was coming to the end of the season in 1960 and I was in the team replacing the great Billy Liddell.”

Realising the potential of the young Callaghan, unlike managers in today’s game, Shankly chose to nurture that talent until midway through the promotion season of 1961-62.

“I think he saw me as a youngster who had just come into the game who needed to gain experience by playing in the reserves,” he said.

“In those days you had a big squad like they do now so you had a lot of older professional players playing in the reserves so you did get experience which was a learning period for me.”

Shankly described Callaghan as being “a real player” and “a fantastic man to have in your boots” and revealed that he never had a cross word although he did confess to have to curb the Toxteth-born midfielder’s tireless work ethic during training for fear of burning himself out.

“I loved training; I used to pinch myself every day going to Melwood and Anfield and when I was training with the lads,” Callaghan beamed.

“It was just a fantastic life getting paid to be a professional footballer but it got to the point where he would slow me down in training if we had a couple of games in the space of a week.”

Under the guidance of Shanks, and later his successor Bob Paisley, Callaghan lifted five League Championships, one Second Division title, two FA Cups, two UEFA Cups and one European Cup during his Anfield career as well as being part of England’s World Cup-winning squad of 1966.

Despite the Reds only lifting three major trophies during the swinging sixties, the football they played was captivating and one of their finest performances came in the first leg of the 1965 European Cup semi-final.

Inter Milan travelled to Anfield just four days after Shankly had led Liverpool to their first ever FA Cup triumph and Callaghan believes that of all the European nights the famous old ground has witnessed, the visit of Inter was the greatest in the club’s history.

“If I had to pick out a game at Anfield, it would be that,” he said.

“I was lucky enough to be playing in the St Etienne match in 1977 but I think the Inter match was better because it was on the back of winning the cup and coming back to Anfield.

“Gordon Milne, who didn’t make the final, and Gerry Byrne, who broke his collarbone, parading the cup around and the fans went wild.

“At that stage, Inter Milan had just become World Club Champions and on the night we hammered them 3-1. Chris Lawler scored a goal which was disallowed but we played really well on the night.”

Despite retiring in 1974, Shanks became an imposing figure at Melwood during the early days of Paisley’s tenure and Callaghan remembers the awkwardness of the whole situation as the great Scot was told to stay away from the club’s training base.

“Even after he’d retired, he was that sort of character that you still called ‘boss’. It was a bit embarrassing at the time because Bob was the boss but we still called him Bob instead of ‘boss’ and we were still referring to Mr Shankly as the boss so it was a bit funny really.”

Despite the difficult end to his association with Liverpool Football Club, Callaghan still holds an abiding memory of Shankly as being a second father to him throughout his career.

He added: “I think he became like a father figure. When he met my mum and dad he promised to look after me and he did.

“For all the time until he resigned really I never had a cross word with him. I never asked for a pay rise, he would always approach me and offer me a rise so he was like a father figure to me in a big way.”

50 Years of Shankly – Chris Lawler

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.”

FLIM 2009 - Part 2

Today on FLIM 2009, we look at a biopic about a man who split the opinion of the footballing nation.

Whilst the supporter aspect of football culture has been a key theme in the majority of footy flicks, players and managers are overlooked somewhat.

In April, the BBC broadcast 'Best: His Mother's Son' which gave a harrowing insight into the alcoholism of his mother Anne. Prior to this there had not been any other film documenting the life and times of a player or manager, until now.

Brian Clough was a manager a lot of football fans loved to hate. Liverpool fans have few kind words to say about 'Old Big Head' following his comments about the Hillsborough disaster in 1989.

Indeed, very few had a good word to say about Mr Clough and his smarmy persona which was perfected to a tee by Michael Sheen in The Damned United.

The film goes back and forth between Clough's ill-fated 44 days in charge of Leeds United in 1974 and happier times as manager of Derby County in the late 1960s. In the early stages, then Derby manager Clough (Sheen) is celebrating drawing First Division heavyweights Leeds in the FA Cup. He goes above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that the Baseball Ground is as spick and span as a home to a Second Division club at the time could be.

However Clough takes measures on the border of sycophantism until Leeds manager Don Revie - then regarded as one of the best in the top flight - snubs him at every turn before, during and after the game. This sends the Derby boss into a single-handed crusade to create a team to challenge Leeds and replace them at the top of the First Division. In 1972 he achieved this and, despite unintentionally resigning at Derby, went on to join Leeds two years later via a very brief stint at Brighton.

The Damned United shows Clough up as a man hellbent on gaining revenge after Revie's snub to the point where he alienated the only true friend he had - Peter Taylor, who was his deputy at both Derby and Nottingham Forest. With this in mind, the closing titles that branded Clough as 'the greatest manager England never had' is baffling having portrayed him as a little upstart who wanted to create his own legacy that would have Leeds fans asking "Don who?" Fortunately, it never happened.

FLIM09 rating: 7/10

FLIM 2009 - Part 1

In recent times the UK film scene has been 'blessed' with a vast array of football-related films.

The screen adaptation of Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch enticed the masses during the hedonistic Britpop days of the mid nineties, aided in part by the national hysteria whipped up by England's exploits in Euro '96. That was followed in 2001 by Mike Bassett: England Manager. Several years later, violence was the order of the day when John King's The Football Factory was brought to cinematic life by Nick Love - the heir apparent to Guy Ritchie's throne as the leading Cockney director.

Continuing in the theme of terrace disorder is the screen adaptation of Kevin Sampson's gritty and culturally reflective novel Awaydays. The billing on the front cover describes it as being 'like Catcher in the Rye with Stanley knives' but, having read the book cover-to-cover, it's the Scouse alvernative to A Clockwork Orange.

The film centres around the life and times of Paul Carty, a middle class Birkenhead youngster in 1979 who yearns to be part of the kudos that comes with being a member of Tranmere Rovers' firm The Pack. His ambition is fulfilled when he meets Elvis, a impulsive art student who offers him a route into the firm.

In short, this is a film about sex, punk and adidas Samba. It focuses on the casual culture that emerged from Merseyside in the late 1970s; a craving for football violence, foreign jaunts and picking up a pair of Adi Dassler's finest in between.

Unfortunately the film is an anti-climax to the best-selling novel. The graphic nature of the book is what made it a best seller and Sampson, on board as an executive producer, stuck closely to the storyline - something other screen adaptations have failed to do.

But there was just something about Awaydays that didn't quite feel right. The actors have been touted as some of the best upcoming ones in the country and they lived up to their billing. However the film, for all the gratuitous violence and sexual content, had a watered down feel to it. The friendship between Carty and Elvis was, as in the novel, the focal point as was a punk-orientated soundtrack. The problem with penning a best-selling novel is that readers' imaginations will overshadow the version on the big screen. Credit has to be given to Sampson and his team for making this a crediblefilm off their own back but, as I was told repeatedly by people after seeing The Football Factory, the book's better.

FLIM09 rating: 8/10