My Liverpool Home (15 page)

More than Rushie’s lethal instinct was on parade at Goodison that extraordinary day in November 1982. Liverpool’s requirement that forwards close down defenders found a wholehearted disciple in our new No. 9.

‘When they have the ball, everybody becomes a defender,’ Bob said. Blessed with such pace, Rushie suddenly swooped on a defender, hustling him into losing possession. Rushie and I often went on the pitch armed with the knowledge of which defender felt most uncomfortable with the ball. We’d close down the others so the weakest defender had the ball and then we’d pounce on him. Down the years, Liverpool forwards hunted in packs, a tactic started by Shanks, carried on by Bob and, in 1983, by a new manager.

9

ROME

I
NEVER
sensed Joe Fagan was at ease with management. When Bob stood down, Joe was the reluctant successor. Asked by the board to climb the stairs from the Boot Room to the manager’s office, Joe took the steps wearily. ‘It’s lonely up there,’ he once remarked. Joe felt isolated and missed the banter of the Boot Room, but as a conscientious employee of Liverpool Football Club, and a man with humility running through his veins, Joe thought it would be wrong to refuse the job. Liverpool meant that much to him. I completely understood the thinking of a board who valued continuity. The good principles laid down by Shanks were carried on by Bob, whose assistant was the obvious man to maintain a great tradition.

Joe stuck to the old routine, keeping things simple. At times, he pulled me a bit deeper, but otherwise Liverpool’s tactics never really changed. Joe was observant and straightforward. Like Bob, he lived life simply and had the respect of everyone in the dressing room. We knew his heart was in the right place – in Anfield and in the pursuit of more silverware. Joe was slow to rile, so when he did become angry, raising his voice, we knew we’d transgressed.

‘You’ve let the club down and the fans down,’ Joe said. The look of disappointment in his eyes really hit us hard, making us regret any lapse, however minor, such as being late.

‘I don’t care what your excuse is,’ Joe declared, ‘if you’re told a time, you get here for that time.’

If anybody messed about at Melwood, Joe chilled the blood with the tone of his rebuke. One day, Terry Mac volleyed the ball at Tommo and Joe immediately stopped everything.

‘Don’t ever take the mickey out of the session,’ barked Joe.

Discipline mattered but he could be relaxed. When he was Bob’s assistant, Joe knew about the ‘walk’ before the Middlesbrough game. The alcohol on some of the lads’ breath must have been a wee bit too strong.

‘Have you been out?’ Joe asked. Our sheepish looks betrayed our guilt.

‘OK, OK,’ smiled Joe, who was no stranger to drink’s charms. During testimonials, Joe and Ronnie Moran kept a half-bottle of whisky in the dug-out.

‘We’ll have a wee nip if we score,’ Joe always said. If the game went on without a goal, Joe said, ‘OK, we’ll have a wee nip if we get a shot on goal.’ When the game meandered on with Liverpool still not threatening, Bugsy said, ‘Joe, why don’t we just do it for a free-kick?’ Still no joy. ‘Let’s just settle for a throw-in!’

Joe was a worldly-wise man who understood footballers and certainly knew how much my legs ached after matches. The thought of pushing my body through training early in the week was too much, so I put my concerns to Joe, who listened intently.

‘Kenny, you don’t need to train as often as everybody else because you’re getting a bit older,’ Joe said. ‘I can give you until Wednesday off.’

‘Come on, Boss,’ I replied. ‘I need longer.’ Joe wouldn’t budge, so I rested until Wednesday, and after we won the next game, I said, ‘Same again next week, Boss, or do you want to make it Thursday?’

Liverpool’s marathon involvement in cup competitions meant we had plenty of midweek games, so the opportunity to rest up presented itself infrequently. Still, I was grateful for Joe’s appreciation of my need to take a break, spending time sleeping or relaxing on the golf course. The only time I fell out with Joe Fagan was when he dropped me for a Spurs game in 1984. He had every right to pick whatever team he wanted, but Joe should have informed me before telling the newspapers.

‘Kenny’s not been at his best and there’s no room for sentiment,’ Joe told the Press. I resented learning about my demotion from the papers rather than from the manager. After training that morning, Joe called me in.

‘I’m not going to play you tomorrow,’ he said.

‘I know.’

‘What do you want to do about it?’

‘What can I do? You’ve picked your team. I’ve seen it in the paper.’ And I walked out. It wasn’t a pleasant moment because I usually had so much respect for Joe. And Liverpool lost.

Otherwise Joe’s attention to detail served Liverpool well as we fought our way along the road to Rome for the 1984 European Cup final. The start could not have been smoother. Bob’s big and small strides were no longer a feature of Melwood life but our first-round draw against Odense would have been worthy of a giant’s steps. Denmark’s champions hardly sent fear coursing through us. Odense was the home of Hans Christian Andersen and having Liverpool as guests on 14 September 1983 was inevitably portrayed as a fairy tale for the natives. Many Danes follow Liverpool. When I picked up the match programme, I immediately noticed a picture of Nealy and Clem holding up the European Cup in Paris. Liverpool were big news in Denmark, bigger than Odense, and when I scored the only goal, the number of Liverpool fans, some visiting, many local, became readily apparent.

The Anfield leg was always going to be a formality, so only 14,985 turned up. Joe again picked an attacking team, including Rushie, Michael Robinson and me. The night proved of particular significance for me, and I still reflect on it with pride because my two goals took my European tally to 15, eclipsing Denis Law’s British European Cup record. Setting a new mark was prestigious enough but overtaking such a legend as Denis sprinkled even more stardust on the achievement. For my generation, Denis was every Scottish boy’s hero. Denis Law! Goalscorer! Style and panache! I became a 10-year-old again just thinking of the great Denis Law. As kids, we all admired Denis, adored his Jack the Lad swagger on the pitch. I loved that goal celebration, fingers holding the shirt-cuff. When he scored against England, young Scots like me felt like we’d ascended to heaven. In one game, Denis scored at the Mount Florida end of Hampden Park, which some people know as the Rangers end. From a corner, Denis whipped it in at the near post. He was a hero to everybody, not just for his goals but because there was a humility to Denis, a lack of pretence, and he’s never changed. Among my proudest possessions at home is Denis’s Manchester United shirt from Bobby Charlton’s testimonial.

My record-breaking brace against Odense was matched by Michael Robinson. Robbo was a good alternative for Liverpool up front, a change for Rushie or a complement to him with me dropping deeper. It annoyed me that people felt Robbo was never really a Liverpool player. After one game, I was walking up the corridor to reception when I passed a group of journalists and overheard one talking dismissively about Robbo in comparison with me. I was furious. Robbo wasn’t there to defend himself, so I did the honours.

‘Michael Robinson has attributes that I don’t have,’ I said to this reporter. ‘Don’t you come down this corridor and shout your mouth off about a player not being able to do it. If you want to stay in this corridor, you keep your mouth shut and your opinions to yourself.’ Robbo was just round the corner and heard everything.

‘Thanks very much, Kenny,’ he said.

‘If he comes down here, he should bloody behave,’ I replied. ‘It’s a privileged position. He shouldn’t be mouthing off. And don’t worry what he thinks anyway.’

I meant that. Michael was bigger, stronger, probably quicker than I was, and certainly better in the air. One night in 1984, Liverpool beat Newcastle 4–0 in the Cup and Michael was brilliant, selling his marker a dummy and cracking the ball in.

‘The whole stand moved when you dummied, Robbo!’ I told him.

Another reason I stood up for Robbo was that he was a good lad, who loved a natter about anything, and it never surprised me to learn he became a popular chat-show host in Spain. Robbo’s always got something to say, particularly over a meal. Most Liverpool players had pretty basic tastes but not Robbo or Souey. They liked seafood and a glass of Champagne, and Robbo loved an oyster.

Robbo started again in the second round, an awkward tie against Athletic Bilbao. A first-leg stalemate at Anfield didn’t perturb me because Liverpool were always capable of scoring an away goal, but I knew how careful we needed to be in Spain. They had tough players, such as Andoni Goicoechea, the defender known as the ‘Butcher of Bilbao’ for that horrendous tackle on Barcelona’s Diego Maradona at Camp Nou just a few weeks before we arrived in the Basque country. Watching the footage of Goicoechea storming into Maradona, ripping his ankle ligaments, made me wince.

‘Don’t retaliate,’ Joe warned us. I’d actually faced the Spanish defender before in the international arena and found him no problem. Nor did Goikoechea prove a physical threat at the San Mames Stadium on 2 November. For all the talk about hostility on and off the field, the moment Rushie headed in Alan Kennedy’s cross, the Basque fans were really good to us. Bilbao were protecting a long unbeaten home record in Europe but the 47,500 crammed inside San Mames gave us a standing ovation for the quality of our performance.

Frustratingly, my prospects of facing our famous quarter-final opponents, Benfica, seemed badly compromised on 2 January 1984. The setting was Anfield, the time three minutes into the second half. Coming up in the inside-left position, I went up for a header with Manchester United’s centre-half, Kevin Moran. My trade involved countless moments like this, manoeuvring a ball away from a determined defender, but not this time. The lights went out. I was on the floor, my vision blurred, my head filling with excruciating pain. I was always advised by medical people that the adrenalin accompanying competitive activity dulls any hurt. Not on this occasion. What the hell happened? I learned later that Moran’s elbow hammered into my face, fracturing my cheekbone, a challenge that enraged Liverpool. Souey was furious and tried to get at Moran. I admired that in Graeme, that desire to take revenge for a team-mate’s suffering.

As I lay in hospital, I reflected on whether Moran’s attempt to disfigure my face had possibly been deliberate. Surely not? That would just be too reprehensible and I genuinely believed no professional would commit such an offence on another. No bad blood flowed between the two of us. Only Kevin Moran can possibly know whether he intended putting me into Accident and Emergency. A centre-half rarely far from the fray, Kevin had enough stitching in his head to make a knitting pattern, so perhaps he threw his arm up to protect himself and it caught me. I never asked him. Kevin certainly never apologised and I never expected him to. If he had shown some contrition that could be construed as an admission of guilt. In later years, Kevin was my captain at Blackburn Rovers and proved a particularly able leader who served me well. That’s the nature of professional football. We all move on. Kevin’s a good man, and nobody ever said sorry to him when his eyes were cut.

All the relief I took from an immediate prognosis of a full recovery disappeared on being informed how much of an important season I’d miss. ‘Nine weeks,’ predicted the medical staff for my convalescence period after surgeons completed the jigsaw that was my face. Fortunately, they were able to put all the pieces back in the right place. It was mid-season, my fitness levels were high, but it was still a considerable time to be on the sidelines. By all accounts, I was hardly a picture of athletic health when my Liverpool team-mates visited me in hospital. I knew my face was badly swollen, a point confirmed by the players’ reaction.

‘You look like the Elephant Man,’ Graeme remarked charitably. I laughed. Why should I mind? I’d have been unhappy only if he’d made the comment before the accident. When the Southport boys popped by to see me, Lawro never lasted long. He took one look and slipped out. ‘It was the hospital that made me queasy,’ Lawro insisted later, ‘not your face.’ Apparently, Lawro was taken round the corner and given a cup of tea to restore him.

However short, I appreciated the boys’ visits. Every morning, Joe came by with the newspapers but I noticed he always seemed to avert his eyes and never seemed prepared to stay.

‘See you later, Kenny,’ Joe said each morning.

‘Oh, thanks, Boss,’ I replied as my manager disappeared quickly out of the door. My face must have been a mess. Looking in a mirror has never been a regular pastime of mine but I became curious, and slightly alarmed, about my team-mates’ concerns, so I sneaked a glance. Moran’s elbow had made an almighty mess. My cheekbone was held together with a chunk of wire.

Fortunately, no permanent damage or scarring occurred and I began plotting my comeback. Thinking big, I targeted the Benfica tie at Anfield on 7 March. I knew I’d be rusty but I managed to get in a warm-up game, turning out in the Liverpool Senior Cup against Southport at Haig Avenue. Joe rightly decided I was not quite ready to start against the Portuguese champions, keeping me on the bench until half-time. Replacing Robbo, I received great support from the Kop, a gesture further strengthening my determination to make up for lost time. The pleasurable feeling of actually playing again was enhanced when Rushie headed in. Benfica left Anfield making noises about how 1–0 was still a good result and how they’d turn the tie around in Lisbon.

‘We’ll see,’ I thought. I’d spent too long in a hospital bed to surrender lightly in Europe.

Before stepping out at the Stadium of Light on 21 March, Joe gave us an important instruction.

‘It’s a massive stadium and if the fans are on their side, it really helps Benfica,’ the Boss said. ‘If we can turn their fans, it’ll be a real burden on them, so get on top of them early.’