A less restrained member of the Boot Room fraternity was Reuben Bennett. He came from Aberdeen and was a real character, very close to Emlyn and Terry Mac. Totally committed to Liverpool, Reuben was usually first in, making tea, hurrying the players on to the bus to Melwood, getting things ready for training, and quick to bawl people out in training. ‘Useless,’ he’d shout. We just looked at him in amazement. Reuben fascinated us because he was a complete contradiction. If it was frozen outside, Reuben wore a T-shirt. If the weather was roasting, Reuben would don this thick fisherman’s polo neck.
‘It’s normal,’ he said.
‘Your metabolism’s not,’ I replied.
We adored the stories from his days as a goalkeeper. ‘Lads, I still hold the record for the longest throw out,’ Reuben told us. ‘We were playing at Crewe and one my throws went out of the ground. Landed on a train! Ended up in Southampton!’ I’m sure half of his stories were fairy tales, football life rewritten by Hans Christian Andersen. Reuben banged on about how much tougher players were when he was younger, claiming he used to clean cuts to his legs with a brush.
‘It’s a toothbrush,’ I explained to the non-Scots when Reuben was out of earshot. ‘It’s got iodine on it. If you go down on the gravel pitches in Glasgow, you use a toothbrush to scrub the dirt out.’
Reuben became very animated when reliving his anecdotes, painfully so at times. One day, I was sitting in a hotel sauna, listening to Reuben recall some injury suffered at Dundee.
‘They put me in the dressing room but I recovered and went back on. I came for a cross and saw this Dundee boy going to hit me. I leapt with my knees up to protect myself. I punched the ball that hard it flew right over the grandstand and into the street.’ Mimicking the action of hitting the ball, Reuben’s nail caught his forehead and blood poured down his face. I never knew where to look I was laughing so much.
Entry to the Boot Room’s exclusive club clearly demanded distinct traits. The man who took the kids’ A and B teams, John Bennison, was another character. One of his jobs before Anfield was emptying gas-meters and I’m sure Benno’s still got bags of shillings at home. You certainly got little change out of him on the training pitch, where Benno had a well-earned reputation for meting out punishment. After the 1977 Charity Shield, I was building up my fitness by playing for the staff against the kids at Melwood. Benno just booted them hard.
‘Is that why they call it the Boot Room?’ I asked Benno. If one of the youths tried to go past Benno, he’d nail him. Anything below knee level was acceptable.
‘Play on,’ shouted Bob while some poor kid writhed on the grass as Benno stalked away.
At Celtic, Jock Stein never allowed matches like this in training, but I took quickly to this Liverpool tradition. The kids loved it, because it made them feel really involved, and it allowed first-teamers who’d been out injured to regain some sharpness. In Liverpool’s constant pursuit of excellence, the staff led the way, rarely losing many games at Melwood. I swiftly learned that the Boot Room boys’ one-eyed style of refereeing would never have been found on any Football Association course. Not that they ever needed a course.
Nobody could teach the Boot Room anything about football. Bob and Joe, Ronnie and Roy were professors of the game and their paperwork was the very best. The two dusty cupboards in the Boot Room contained loads of books, detailing every training session, every match. Every day, Ronnie and Roy made entries in the books with all the gravitas of clerks filling in ledgers, inscribing notes about the weather, the numbers, any injuries, who’d trained well or who’d been off the pace. Liverpool understood better than any club that football was a science and these training books reflected that professional approach. Stretching back to 1966 under Shanks, they grew into great reference books, shaping football operations. One year, the club was plagued with cartilage problems, so Ronnie and Roy flicked back through the books, analysing previous outbreaks. They’d tweak training, maybe give certain players a breather, and the crisis would be resolved. Ronnie and Roy watched us like hawks, scrutinising every move and word. I know modern-day clubs use technology to chart performances in training, but I’d back the eyes of Ronnie and Roy ahead of anyone’s computer.
I resented the suggestion that trophies fell into Liverpool’s lap. People outside Melwood’s high walls and metal gates couldn’t grasp the sophistication of the work going on inside. ‘All Liverpool do in training is just play five-a-sides’ was an ill-informed critique I heard and read countless times, but such ignorance never bothered me. If Liverpool seemed a mystery, that just made it more difficult for other teams as our aura grew. Before Graeme joined us, I was away with Scotland when we talked about Liverpool, and the five-a-side issue was raised.
‘Yes, we play five-a-sides but not ordinary ones,’ I explained. ‘Everything has a purpose. We’re not strolling about – it’s all conditioned. If there’s something specific Bob wants to work on, it’s incorporated into the five-a-sides. It’s so simple and effective.’ Bob’s small-sided games were designed to correct faults from Liverpool’s last game and prepare us tactically for the next.
‘A team like Everton play with a high defensive line, trying to catch us offside,’ I said to Graeme. ‘Before we play them, Ronnie and Joe introduce a high line in the five-a-sides. So we get into the habit of not running offside. Sometimes, Ronnie and Joe don’t tell us. They just whisper to the other team to play a high line. They make us think, react, take control. If we’ve not scored many for a couple of weeks, we move from small goals to big ones, just to get us back into the scoring habit. Whatever condition the staff place on the five-a-side has value. One touch, two touch, pass and move.’
Pass and move obsessed Ronnie and Joe, who considered standing still a crime worthy of a lengthy custodial sentence. ‘Pass and don’t move is a foul,’ Ronnie warned us before every training session. ‘Free-kick,’ he shouted if the conditions weren’t met, making sure the message got through quickly.
Liverpool’s secret could be found in one of the staff’s mantras: ‘Get it. Keep it.’ I loved how Ronnie and Joe preached the importance of cherishing the ball’s company. Guided by such heavyweight football men, Liverpool stayed ahead of the game for years. Nowadays, it makes me laugh when people bang on about diets, warming up and down, stretching properly and getting enough sleep, as if this was some fancy, new-wave thinking. We did all that under Bob. We never had the technology, the rooms full of computers and conditioning labs, but we appreciated the value of preparation, although at times our warm-down was nothing more scientific than a cup of tea. Nothing happened at Liverpool by chance. In the team meeting before the game, Ronnie ran through set-pieces, telling which players to pick up which opponents. Researching the opposition was a given for me, such as studying the keeper. How far would he come out for crosses? Did he go down early? Watching games on the television, I logged all this information in my head, so when the crunch came in a match, I was ready.
A tried and tested formula dictated how Liverpool’s day unfolded. Every morning, we arrived at Anfield at 9.30, changed and hopped on the bus at 10.15 for the 15-minute ride to Melwood. I loved a tradition punctuated only by the arrival of a new driver after the last one got fed up with being hit by mud or banter. They always did. As I remembered from my trial in 1966, that journey was vital for team camaraderie. I always believed this routine gave the club a feeling of warmth. Big Hansen would be in the back seat with Stevie Nicol close by so Al could give him stick. The A and B teams got on the bus, and the senior players had the opportunity to inquire how their matches had gone.
‘How did you do Saturday?’ I’d ask.
‘We won,’ they’d chorus, faces reddening.
‘Well done,’ we’d respond.
It was great for the younger boys to feel part of the football club. The facilities at Melwood and Anfield now are so fantastic that there’s no need for a bus and I believe that the kids lose out a bit. They don’t see Stevie, Carra, Fernando and Pepe Reina now and that’s a pity because these players are role models for the boys to aspire to.
Back then, having got off the bus at Melwood, we walked into the pavilion, put our boots on, went out and loosened up and trained. Back in the pavilion after training, there was a cup of tea waiting. Back at Anfield, there was a three-course lunch spread out on tables in the players’ lounge: soup, steak pie and a dessert. With single boys on the books, Liverpool knew they’d have one good meal inside them each day. The players loved those lunches and trouble almost broke out when the board, deciding to cut back on overheads, stopped the meals one year. This affront occurred one pre-season when David Hodgson had just arrived, and he got terrible stick.
‘Hodgy, it’s your fault the lunches have been scrubbed,’ I told him. ‘Liverpool spent the money on you. I’ve had a wee conversation with the other players and we’ve decided we’d rather have the lunches than you.’ Hodgy laughed, slightly nervously.
The food was made by May and Theresa, who became family for the players, as all the staff at Anfield did. Liverpool players of that era being impish by inclination, we’d wind up some of the staff, especially Ken Myers, who ran the maintenance side. A wee bit of a grumpy man, Ken was easy to provoke.
‘Ken, the showers are too hot,’ we’d tell him. So Ken got the wrench out, attacking the plumbing in the dressing room, grumbling away as he wrestled with the pipes. When he’d finished, we’d announce, ‘Ken, the showers are too cold.’ Ken just glowered.
Anfield teemed with characters. Friends of players, particularly of local lads such as Sammy or Tommo, wandered in and out, providing services, boys who ran about town and knew everyone. Liverpool now have a player liaison officer but back then the older players helped the new ones, taking them into Southport or the Wirral and showing them houses. John Toshack took me round.
A man often appeared at Anfield trying to sell us cars – legit ones, of course. A pal of mine in the rag-trade popped into the club, selling trousers and shirts to the boys. The clothes weren’t snide, they were genuine. Another guy sold fruit and pies, and every Friday, George the Fish came up to Anfield. Another bloke had a contact in the meat market who got us great steaks. A mate of Roy’s, Wee Charlie, came to the ground to cut hair. When I came out of the shower, Charlie would say, ‘Sit down. How do you want it?’
‘Just a touch, Charlie, don’t take it all off.’
‘No problem. If it’s not right, I’ll be back in a fortnight.’
I enjoyed having Roy’s mates around. Like Roy and Ronnie, they were real Liverpool people. I loved Anfield’s community spirit, everyone mucking in. ‘Everyone at Liverpool is the greatest,’ said Bob. ‘The tea-ladies are the greatest tea-ladies.’ And they
were
great. They were Liverpool people, who worshipped the club and were just so proud to spend their day at Anfield. Working for Liverpool filled them with a sense of importance. Liverpool’s secret was that they employed the best – the best tea-ladies, the best players and the best administrator in Peter Robinson, known as PBR and renowned for looking after the players brilliantly. Most years, a message would come from upstairs: ‘There’s a new contract for everybody upstairs and you all have a rise, if you want to go up and sign.’
‘It’s happened to me ten out of the eleven seasons I’ve been here,’ Stevie Heighway told me. Famed for being fair with employees, Liverpool showed similar generosity to me. In that pre-Bosman age, Liverpool’s board was under no requirement or pressure to give me a rise. I was tied to Liverpool, yet they always showed their appreciation with a rise nearly every year. In those days, everybody wanted to play at Liverpool but the board never took advantage of that. Silverware was rewarded financially. No wonder the camaraderie was so strong. No wonder, with the Boot Room and a manager of Old Bob’s quality, Liverpool dominated England and Europe.
5
ANFIELD SOUTH
I
T WAS
the afternoon of 10 May 1978, a momentous day in the history of Liverpool Football Club and I was a bag of nerves. As I lay on my bed at Sopwell House Hotel, near St Albans, waiting there until the coach came to transport us to Wembley for the European Cup final against Bruges, I felt the walls closing in on me. All it needed was for the curtains to be replaced by bars on the window. Impatiently, I watched the hands of the clock inch towards my moment with destiny, willing them to hurry up. God, they were moving slowly. A couple of feet away, Stevie Heighway stretched out on his bed, book in hand, a picture of tranquillity. Nothing fazed Liverpool’s languid winger, who turned the pages, oblivious of my nerves. How I envied Stevie. Reading never featured high on my list of interests, or abilities, but at that moment I craved any means of distraction. Of course, Stevie had been to a European Cup final before, but he was naturally laid-back, unperturbed by the scale of the assignment. For me, freshly arrived from Celtic, a European final was new territory.
Sleep usually came easy in the build-up to matches but not this time, not before my first European Cup final. I leapt up, desperate to escape the confines of the room, looking for anything to take my mind off time’s reluctant passage. Bob Paisley was not a manager for organising games, like the carpet bowls Don Revie staged with England. Even Liverpool’s card school had closed down for the afternoon. The only activity available seemed a tour of Sopwell’s corridors. After pacing around for a while, I returned to the room. Stevie was still reading, still untroubled by the thought of what lay ahead. Throwing myself down on my bed, I closed my eyes, knowing sleep would not rescue me. Instead, I found my mind rewinding through the season, recalling the events that guided Liverpool here. I found the reflections soothing, reminding me that this was the journey I had craved at Celtic but never managed.
When I’d looked around the Anfield dressing room seven months earlier, I’d realised I was now rubbing shoulders with players who would help me fulfil my European dream. That was the start of Liverpool’s European road to Wembley, a venue known as Anfield South because of the club’s frequent visits, and I was getting ready for our second-round tie against Dynamo Dresden on 19 October. Liverpool’s XI was packed with strong characters you’d want alongside you in a fight, let alone a sporting confrontation. I sat between Emlyn Hughes and Jimmy Case, men not short of commitment. To Emlyn’s right were Ray Clemence, Phil Neal, Joey Jones, Alan Hansen and Ray Kennedy. To Jimmy’s left were Stevie Heighway, John Toshack and Ian Callaghan. Bob Paisley had built a formidable team and Dresden shattered like old porcelain.