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When people find out that I’m English they normally ask which football team I support. I don’t have to think about this – it’s Liverpool.
I’m going to endeavour to tell you why. When I was growing up in the 80s Liverpool were at the height of their footballing powers and were sweeping aside every team that came before them.
Originally that was the reason, they were the champions of Europe and won pretty much every game they played in.
Imagine the success that the red team from Manchester has now (I’m not going to name them, if you want to know who they are use Google).
As I grew up success was a mainstay at Anfield, I watched players like Kenny Dalglish and Ian Rush tear teams apart, Kenny went on to manage Liverpool and the trophies kept coming.
In the early 90s the Titanic that was Liverpool hit an iceberg and sank – fast!
I watched as we went from being a team that was feared to a team that you just hoped would come out of the game without being embarrassed, but I still loved them.
As I became an adult I would talk to my dad about the glory days of Liverpool Football Club and my heroes were Molby, Lawrenson and Hansen.
It was at this point that the true genius of a man who essentially created Liverpool became clear to me.
I had always been aware of a man called Bill Shankly, I was aware that he meant a lot to Liverpool fans but I didn’t know why.
Everything I hold dear about the ‘red men’ comes from the undoubted football genius that was Bill Shankly.
My mum sent me a book recently called ‘The Little Book of Liverpool.’ It is a collection of quotes from past and present players and managers.
The quotes that stand out are Shankly’s. My favourite one is when he was asked if it was true that he took his wife to a Rochdale game on his wedding anniversary.
Bill was very Scottish so imagine this reply in a very broad accent:
“It wasn’t her wedding anniversary, it was her birthday, because there’s no way I would have married her in the football season. And it wasn’t Rochdale, it was Rochdale Reserves.”
The man was completely football focused. He took a middle of the road team and created a legend, from scratch.
His ideas and his drive took Liverpool Football Club and turned them into an unbeatable machine that didn’t fail from the late fifties to the early nineties. He introduced the all red kit.
He installed a sign at the entrance to the pitch that stated in big bold letters ‘THIS IS ANFIELD’.
He would make his players feel ten feet tall every time they went onto the pitch.
More importantly than that he embraced the city. He knew that the working classes of Liverpool were struggling.
He knew that if he could tap into that passion he was on to a winner. Each and every player that pulled on a red shirt did it for one reason only.
The thousands of people that packed into Anfield every Saturday.
Shankly loved the Liverpool fans and in return we idolise him. The Liverpool fans were made to feel like a part of the plan. Shankly would praise them for the victories of the team on the pitch.
The Spion Kop is a stand at Anfield, which was one of the first to sing songs and chant. All of this was lapped up by Shankly and he revelled in the fact that the people of Liverpool cared as much as he did.
This brotherhood of Liverpool fans was forged by this one man, the unity has fared us well through good times and bad, the song which makes the Kop world famous is ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.
It is from the Rogers and Hammerstein musical ‘Carousel’ from 1945 and a Liverpool singer later covered it by the name of Gerry Marsden.
The Liverpool fans took it and made it our own. It has seen us through triumph, in 2005 Liverpool were 3-0 down to the Italian giants AC Milan, at half time the Liverpool fans sung ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, the players heard it, were inspired and went out and clawed back to a 3-3 draw, finally winning on penalties after extra time.
Liverpool Football Club has also been through more tragedy than it should have – it has been a part of two of the worst sporting disasters in history on the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985 and Hillsborough in 1989.
Through all of this Liverpool fans have still stood shoulder to shoulder and sang at the top of their lungs.
On the 24th July Melbourne Victory will host Liverpool at the MCG. I for one am working on getting leave to get there and join in with hopefully 100,017 other people in order to sing with my brothers and sisters from down under.
The legend of Liverpool was built on the foundations of Bill Shankly, a man who to this day makes me smile when I hear his name. A man who set up a football family with an anthem that will never die.
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