The man who loved people

You will forgive me, I’m sure, if I speak a little about my football club, or rather, about the values and qualities that are at the heart of its philosophy.

Football is in the news at the moment, mainly because of the phenomenal amount of money spent on transfer fees before the window closed at midnight last night.  By anyone’s reckoning,  almost seven hundred million is a lot of money, and especially in a time of recession.  But that is what the game has become – a business which is about assessing players by their worth in terms of what it will cost to buy or sell them.  It is a far cry from the philosophy of the man who called it the beautiful game, and laid down his condition of entry into its higher echelons at Liverpool with the words:

“For a player to be good enough to play for Liverpool, he must be prepared to run through a brick wall for me, then come out fighting on the other side.”

That’s commitment.

His name was Willie Shankley, the youngest of five boys, all of whom became professional footballers.

His birth place was a small mining village in Ayrshire called Glenbuik, a village which was already dying when he thrust his way into its sheltering arms way back in September, 1913.   It would have disappeared without leaving a trace if it had not been for the fact that it had produced the man we now know as Bill Shankley.

If you have visited Anfield, you will have seen his statue and perhaps walked through the Shankley gates.  You may have even touched the sign which all players  have to pass on their way to the pitch, which says in large letters:

THIS IS ANFIELD!

That was the work of Bill Shankley.  “ It’s there to remind our lads who they’re playing for, and to remind the opposition who they’re playing against!”  he asserted stoutly as he put it in place.

That’s ownership.

He knew all about ownership and closeness.  He was brought up in a place so small that most of the families were connected.  In a population of about 3,000 people, there were about four surnames! It was common to say “Which one are you, a Brown, a Ross, a Shankley or a Smith?

It paid off dividends when the young Willie Shankley went down the pit at the age of 14.  Of course he had to spend an apprenticeship hauling down coal and doing all the running jobs at the pithead before he was considered responsible enough to go down into the cold, dark and dangerous world of the Ayrshire pit face.  Here the miners were mostly cousins, family members who acted as “muckers” for the younger ones,  standing behind them to protect them, seeing that they came to no harm.  Like Matt Busby and Jock Stein, also miners in Scotland who became famous Football Managers – Matt Busby in Manchester United and Jock Stein in the National side – he learned the hard discipline of toughness and togetherness which saved lives.

He never forgot his time in the mines.  He learned from it to appreciate the gifts he was given by God , particularly his football skills.  He brought to his management the same skills which he had learned as a lad; the value of togetherness, of respect, of getting on with the job and not allowing distractions to take his mind off what he hoped to achieve.

He once told a now-famous ex footballer who was limping, and showing him a bandaged knee which might prevent him from playing that day:

“Take that bandage off. And what do you mean about YOUR knee? It’s Liverpool’s knee!”

Tough love, which might not be appreciated today!

He took a club in the Second Division with no ambition, little resources, and no apparent desire to better themselves, into a club of iconic status. But he never did it for reward or money.  He got neither in his life-time. He did it for love.

I’ll end with a tribute from a relative, Matt Vallance, quoted in LFC on line. He says:

Shankley operated the same system at Anfield that he had known in the mines in Ayrshire. Even players of the like of Emlyn Hughes and Kevin Keegan had to earn their first-team jersey. He made sure that  each player fitted in and knew his place and could face difficulties and overcome them. 

He was the most inspirational person I ever met, not because of his extraordinary wit and charisma which rubbed off on his players, fans and on his adopted city and on all who met him, but because of what was inside him. The love, dedication and honesty he gave to the game, and to its people all his life, while asking for so little in return

The passion and optimism he gave to tens of thousands of ordinary folk that lit up their ordinary lives, and never left them.; the way he treated everyone as his equal and with respect

He believed in everyone working for the common good. He once said:

“If I became a bin-man tomorrow, I’d be the greatest bin-man who ever lived. I’d have everyone working with me, succeeding and sharing out the success.

I’d make sure they were paid a decent wage with the best bonuses and that we all worked hard to achieve our goals.  Some might Say “But they are only bin-men. Why do we need to reward them for a job anyone can do?” But I’d ask them “Why do you think you are more important than a bin man?”  I’d ask them how proud they would feel if their city became the cleanest in the world. Then ask:  “Who made them so proud?”  The bin men!”

That was Shankley. He gave everyone who wrote to him a personal reply  hammered out on an old typewriter. Every young person who knocked at his door was welcomed to a game of footie, and often to a joke, a ticket a “yes” to a request.

He was not as successful as Matt Busby at Man. U who was similar to him in thought, but he is remembered today as the one who went into football management to use his own words “to make people happy”  Not to make a fortune, not to be the most powerful, the most successful man in the game.  He wasn’t.  But as his autobiography says:

“Above all, I’d like to be remembered as a man who strove and worried so that others could share the glory, and who built up a family of people  who could hold their heads up high and say: ‘We’re Liverpool’ “

He knew nothing about modern ways of governance, he never heard of training courses for man-management. But, like Matt Busby and others like him, he could tell us a thing or two about leadership. And about love

  May he rest in peace and have time in Heaven to assess, with wry humour how we are doing in the game today.  And may he pass on the torch to us. We need it.