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  RED MACHINE

  Liverpool FC in the 1980s the Players’ Stories

  Simon Hughes

  In memory of Susan Hughes

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  THIS BOOK WOULD HAVE BEEN A LOT MORE DIFFICULT TO COMPLETE without the contributions of many good people. They include: Ian Collins (for the title), James Purcell (creative design), Mark Gilbertson (good old friendship), Matthew Keenan (being an Evertonian), Andrew Taylor (also a Blue), Paul Wright (another Blue), Andrew Howie (encouragement), William Le Marinel (machismo), Colin Grogan (humour), John Williams (maturity), John McDermott (spelling and grammar), Peter Hughes (financial support) and, most of all, Rosalind McDermott (understanding, love and beauty).

  I would also like to thank some outstanding professionals: David Luxton, Bill Campbell, Graeme Blaikie, Ailsa Bathgate, Tony Barrett, Neil Haines, Mark Platt, Ian Herbert, Chris Bascombe, Ged Rea, David Cottrell, Steven Gerrard and those kind folk at Cult Zeros.

  Lastly, I acknowledge the help of the footballers who feature in the pages that follow. Without their efforts and stories, it would have been impossible.

  Simon Hughes

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Foreword by Steven Gerrard

  Introduction

  CHAPTER 1: Bush Fighter, Bruce Grobbelaar

  CHAPTER 2: Original Toxteth Terror, Howard Gayle

  CHAPTER 3: Guardian Reader, Michael Robinson

  CHAPTER 4: Mackem, David Hodgson

  CHAPTER 5: Arriving Late, John Wark

  CHAPTER 6: Isolated, Kevin Sheedy

  CHAPTER 7: Skippy, Craig Johnston

  CHAPTER 8: Southerner, Nigel Spackman

  CHAPTER 9: Genius, John Barnes

  CHAPTER 10: Irish Upstart, Steve Staunton

  CHAPTER 11: Disciplinarian, Ronnie Moran

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  Copyright

  FOREWORD

  MY EARLIEST FOOTBALL MEMORIES ARE DOMINATED BY COLOUR. I was born in 1980, and when I think of Liverpool in the decade that followed, reds, whites, yellows and greys enter my mind.

  The memories are imprinted indelibly from the kits bought for me, the first of which arrived when I was five years old. My mum returned home from a shopping spree in Huyton village with a special box. It included a replica jersey that sparkled; decorated with Crown Paints across the front. Every year, my main Christmas present from then on would be a Liverpool shirt. I had all of them.

  There is also the colour green. My first live game at Anfield was against Coventry City. It was in the League Cup, Liverpool won 3–1 and Jan Mølby scored three penalties – a record at the time. I remember the click of the turnstile, the smell of hotdogs and Bovril, the large groups of people and the claustrophobia attached to that. The roar of the Kop and the movement was scary. I was thinking how fortunate I was sitting in the comfort of the old Kemlyn Road.

  Most vividly, though, I remember walking through the bowels of the stand, up the ten or so steps, and then seeing the pitch. Its radiance under the floodlights nearly blinded me. I’d never seen a surface like it before. It was emerald, brighter and bigger than when I’d seen it on the TV – the perfect place to play a football match. I’ll never forget the adrenalin still coursing through my body when I got home. It was something I wanted more of.

  When I first started playing football in the street, there was an even number of Liverpudlians and Evertonians. My dad was always trying to get the point across that Liverpool were the team to support. There was also the influence of my uncles, who were dying to get one over on my dad by encouraging me to support Everton.

  It was a great time to be a Merseysider, with the clubs dominating English football and playing with a style and swagger. Both teams held the top two positions and, reliably, either one would appear in the FA Cup final. In terms of football, it was an era of unparalleled success for the city.

  The real clincher for me was the ’86 cup final when Liverpool fell behind to Everton. After a goal by Gary Lineker, my allegiance swayed towards Liverpool, and when Ian Rush scored the third to secure a 3–1 win, smashing a BBC camera in the corner of the net because of the ferocity of his shot, that was the moment I knew I was going to be a Liverpudlian for the rest of my life, 100 per cent.

  Within 12 months, the club had signed John Barnes, Peter Beardsley and John Aldridge; three totally different players that when brought together were lethal. I often hear people now claim that certain players are ‘typical Liverpool players’. There is an element of truth in that conviction but only in the sense that ‘a typical Liverpool player’ is someone who doesn’t take defeat easily. Technical, tactical and physical ability comes into it but what carries you over the line is a tough mental strength. Barnes, Beardsley and Aldridge had all of those assets.

  As I was growing up, I didn’t know much about the character or backgrounds of the players, nor, indeed, their personal stories. Football didn’t really have that kind of coverage back then. My knowledge about a footballer came from watching the matches live at Anfield or on TV. If the games weren’t live, my dad would put the radio on. I’d be playing in the house subconsciously; my understanding of these players and their abilities would develop. On the radio, you’d regularly hear the same names: Barnes, Beardsley, Aldridge and latterly, upon his return to the club, Rush.

  I loved Barnes, though. His style summed up Liverpool. The team passed the ball with such speed and precision. They were mesmerising to watch. The thing I now admire most is the way each player grasped the responsibility to try to help the club progress. That’s what I’ve tried to bring into my game and, as captain, instil it in the players around me. When you’re a Liverpool player, because of the success that’s gone before, you have a duty to carry that history on.

  I made my first-team debut for Liverpool in 1998. Having grown up in Liverpool and been through its youth system, I knew what I was letting myself in for. By then, Liverpool hadn’t won a league title in eight years. Unfortunately, that record still stands 15 seasons later. There is a pressure attached to that. All of the players coming into the club from elsewhere should know that, despite the lack of league titles, an expectation remains to be right at the very top. It’s difficult to deal with, but the players that haven’t survived here haven’t been able to handle the fact.

  When I speak to players from the ’80s and before that era, what always strikes me is how a healthy social scene founded strong dressing-rooms. It really used to help Liverpool. Today, we try to get close to that, but it’s a lot more difficult for a number of reasons: with the different nationalities and cultures, the size of squads and the number of games in quick succession. There are seldom times throughout a season to genuinely unwind.

  Liverpool’s success in my eyes, however, was founded very simply on the standard of players mixed with the mentality. It wasn’t down to one thing; it was a number of boxes being ticked at the same time. Ian Rush scored more goals than any striker in European football, and when you add that to a steely defence that could play as well, you’ve got yourself a team. In addition, there was the noise and intimidation of the Kop. Everybody at the club was pulling in the same direction.

  When those elements collide, you know you’re onto a winner.

  Steven Gerrard

  INTRODUCTION

  It was the most glorious and turbulent decade inside the most successful English football club. These pages are about those on the pitch, who performed the most significant role: the players.

  THE IDEA FOR THIS BOOK WAS INITIALLY BORN OUT OF PERSONAL frustration. Few of the active footballers that I have met since starting a career in journalism have anything that is genuinely interesting to sa
y. Steven Gerrard, who contributes a foreword in the passage that precedes this introduction, is one of few exceptions.

  There is a perception today that it is only by speaking to or, if you are lucky, getting to know a footballer that you can establish a true picture of the factors that influence the game. Most of the time, though, a player will only say what his employers, or maybe the fans, want to hear. ‘Hey, I love the club’ or ‘We all have to stick together.’ Such sound bites are often met with comfortable applause.

  Football is now a business. This has a consequence. The schools of excellence that were opened at many clubs at the start of the ’90s were superseded by academy systems. At Liverpool, for instance, the intake now begins with children aged five. Such is the focus on reaching the top that youngsters are actively discouraged from developing interests outside the game. As a result, life experiences and the opinions that stem from them are muted.

  Retired players, however – those from a different era – have a very different personal landscape. All of the people interviewed in this book were polite and more generous with their time than necessary. Most current footballers, particularly young ones, like to project the image that they can take on the world, as if they are somehow invulnerable. Yet these players were bracingly candid and generally comfortable enough to admit their own weaknesses.

  I find it interesting how players are remembered and now perceived by those who were once their contemporaries. Michael Robinson, for example, struggled to fit into the team and social structure at Anfield after joining from Brighton in 1983. Aside from Graeme Souness, he had few allies and left for Queens Park Rangers within 18 months. Yet now, Robinson lives an enriching life just north of Madrid with his long-term wife and two dogs on a luxury golfing retreat, having launched a successful career in Spanish television. Today, he is as recognisable on the street as any of the World Cup winners that have represented the country’s national football team.

  I later met John Barnes, one of the most revered players in Liverpool’s entire history. You would think that his achievements in football would have served him handsomely after retirement. Instead, I found him to be frustrated and unfulfilled in a career sense. His brilliance on the football pitch has not afforded him subsequent opportunities within the game.

  In writing this book, there have been some enjoyable occasions: getting half-cut with Bruce Grobbelaar inside a Liverpool watering hole or getting fully cut with Robinson over a late lunch, early evening, late evening and eventually early morning in Madrid.

  Listening back to those interviews, the conversation is relaxed and friendly, but the setting helps most. They all took place away from the anterooms that pass for padded cells inside clubs’ training grounds, and without the ominous presence of a media officer lurking beyond the door.

  The game itself remains fundamentally similar, but what surrounds football has changed beyond recognition since the 1980s. This was long before Rupert Murdoch decided to flog satellite dishes off the back of football coverage; long before red-top newspapers demanded matches to be soap operas, where attractive and controversial figures would secure the emblazonment of their names in the sport as well as the news headlines; and long before Sky Sports saw fit to rant about the awarding of a throw-in as if it was some kind of human-rights atrocity in East Timor.

  Football was unpolished and unpackaged. Match-attendance figures would suggest it was also unpopular. There were no all-seater stadiums, no executive boxes filled by suits, canapés and Veuve Clicquot; and no disproportionate number of Louis Vuitton man-bags hanging on the hooks inside dressing-rooms.

  At the start of the decade, shirts didn’t have a sponsor on them, shorts were hoisted and tight, and wooden advertising hoardings around Anfield were limited to the Ian Skelly car dealership and Wonderfuel Gas. Footballers, meanwhile, often dressed in attire akin to a cast of refugees from a bogus space movie.

  As a child of the ’80s, I appreciated that, psychologically, Liverpool Football Club had regularly won the title by mid-November. Like Steven Gerrard, my first game at Anfield was against Coventry City not too far into the season. I was aware fully that Liverpool were leading the table and despite the best efforts of those chasing it was a pointless pursuit. When other clubs were in the rear-view mirror, Liverpool were soon out of sight.

  Even though they dominated the English game, winning six league titles, two European Cups, two FA Cups and four League Cups, Liverpool were behind the times commercially, and, aside from a kit deal with adidas in 1985, efforts to capitalise on a growing worldwide appeal amounted to the sale at the Heritage Market in Stanley Dock of those grey-and-red replica bench coats made famous by Kenny Dalglish and Ronnie Moran.

  Players did not pay agents exorbitant fees to order kitchen fridges for them, and clubs in England offered modest wages. When Liverpool’s all-time leading scorer, Ian Rush, left Anfield for Juventus, he earned a reported basic £900 a week, though this didn’t include his goals bonus.

  Although outsiders only saw the primary-coloured tracksuit, off the field Merseyside positioned itself as the vanguard of casual culture. Inside Anfield, decent views of its prim surface and team wearing pinstripes (that kit really was the business) were impeded by wrought-iron fences topped with mace-like spikes on the Kop and Annie Road, preventing intrusion onto the pitch or, daringly, the away section, where travelling fans stood expelled like a colony of lepers. Or worse – Mancunians.

  Occasionally, attitudes on the terraces were cruel and narrow-minded. Barnes, after becoming the first high-profile black player to sign from another club, took months to win over sections of the crowd. A relative told me the story about an old fella that used to stand in front of him. ‘That nigger’s not bad after all,’ he commented after Barnes scored his second in a 4–0 win over Queens Park Rangers.

  Liverpool is the most vibrant and independent of England’s provincial cities, a place of legend – apart from the rest. But Liverpool then was not the place of resplendent riverside apartment blocks, fancy restaurants and all-you-can-need shopping centres it is now. The Albert Dock was derelict; industrial factories were inhabited by rodents and dust instead of workers; the parks of Sefton and Princes had more tramps than bohemian types.

  The ’80s began with a global recession. The upheaval in the British economy brought the highest levels of unemployment since the Great Depression. One in every four adults across Liverpool was without a job and the city was rarely out of the news.

  These were Militant years. The Labour Party seized control of Liverpool City Council from a whimsical Liberal–Tory coalition with a narrow majority. Its ruling group was from the hard-line left, led by Derek Hatton. Liverpool became synonymous with political discord. Hatton stood up to Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government. Yet Liverpool’s reputation was acidic. Thousands left the city to look for work but were met in other cities with a barricade of intolerance. All Scousers were charlatans and parasites, leaching off state benefits. Apparently.

  That media image of Merseyside was of dilapidation, vandalism and idle, ale-swilling workers controlled by Marxists determined to achieve self-obliteration and total mayhem. More businesses were closing than were opening, and in some areas youth unemployment reached 90 per cent. On returning to the city in 1984, then Daily Mirror journalist Anne Robinson produced a report on the decay of the city. ‘Talking to ordinary people on the street is like interviewing the recently bereaved,’ she wrote.

  In the ’60s, Liverpool had been the second cultural capital of the country, if not the first. Merseybeat had boomed. American poet Allen Ginsberg said, ‘Liverpool is at the present moment the center of modern consciousness of the human universe.’ By 1985, its population had fallen by a third. In the Thatcher years alone, 65,000 jobs were lost, the majority of them in the docks and manufacturing as trade turned away from the Atlantic and towards Europe instead. Liverpool wasn’t the only city affected, but it became a representation of the deprived north, probably because it had furt
her to fall.

  Comedian Arthur Askey once said, ‘Liverpool is a city full of comedians … you’ve got to be a comedian to live there.’ For long a place that could laugh at itself, now it was the outsiders making fun at Liverpool’s expense. ‘What do you call a Scouser in a suit?’ teased one joke. ‘The accused.’ Yorkshire-born playwright Alan Bennett referred to Liverpool as ‘that sentimental, self-dramatising place’. At football matches, opposing fans sang ‘You’ll never get a job’ to the tune of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.

  Such taunts were partly made out of jealousy: a tribute to the overwhelming achievements of both Liverpool and Everton Football Clubs, who between them won the First Division championship every year from 1982 to 1988. Socially, the ’80s may have been a desperate period. But for Liverpool’s football clubs, in terms of silverware, it could not have been any better.

  This book isn’t intended to be a comprehensive account of what happened in the decade on or off the pitch at Liverpool. Instead, it focuses on the characters of the players and their stories. Some performed a significant role in the club’s history while the contribution of others was comparatively minor. But they all played a part.

  Most importantly, this book seeks to answer a question frequently posed when supporters gather for a post-match pint: where have all the characters in football – or more precisely from Liverpool – disappeared to?

  CHAPTER ONE

  BUSH FIGHTER, Bruce Grobbelaar

  BRUCE GROBBELAAR NODS EARNESTLY AND BEGINS. ‘I CAN TELL YOU this because it’s history and we both laugh about it,’ says the now 55 year old, who won more medals during his time at Liverpool than any other goalkeeper in the club’s history. ‘I broke Steve McMahon’s nose twice in one night.’

  The Reds had eased to a 4–0 friendly win over Dundee in the October of 1987. There was a party at Royal St Andrews, overlooking the golf course. ‘We were all having a pint afterwards and Steve got into a disagreement with Barry Venison. All of the Dundee players wanted to get involved, so I pulled the pair of them to one side.’