It was a hot summer's day in 1975 when I first switched on a
tape recorder to gather the thoughts of someone important.
The affair could not have been more low key. He was a
retired football manager, I a teenager wanting a piece for my school magazine.
But in the following 38 years, after interviewing some of
the most famous people on earth for a living, no one has come close to having
the same effect on me as Bill Shankly did that day.
After an hour in his company I walked away feeling as though
I'd just had an audience with a messiah who was part Martin Luther King, part
Robin Hood.
Shankly was without doubt the most inspirational person I've
ever met. And probably the greatest football man this country has ever seen.
Not because he was a playing legend. He wasn't. Although he
was a decent half-back who was the heartbeat of a successful Preston side and a
strong wartime Scotland team.
Not because he won more than any other manager. He didn't.
His haul of three league titles, two FA Cups and a UEFA Cup puts him behind Sir
Matt Busby, Bob Paisley and Sir Alex Ferguson.
Although he built two magnificent sides from scratch and
only "a travesty of justice" (a referee later exposed as bent)
stopped him from being the first British manager to reach a European Cup Final.
Not because he arrived at an unambitious Second Division
club and built a modern dynasty that would dominate European football for
almost a decade.
Not because of his extraordinary wit and charisma which
rubbed off on his players, his fans, his adopted city and all who met him.
But because of what was inside him. The love, dedication and
honesty he gave to the game, and 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.
Shankly's politics were of the old school of Christian
socialism, honed in the Ayrshire pit community he grew up in.
It defined how he treated everyone: as his equal and with
respect. How he built his football teams by making the most important people at
every club, the fans, central to his vision.
His belief in collectivism, of everyone working for the
common good, defined him to his core. "If I became a bin-man
tomorrow," he told me in 1975, "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, 'Ah but they're only bin-men, why do we need
to reward them so well for a job anyone can do?' But I'd ask them why they
believe they are more important than a bin-man.
"I'd ask them how proud they'd feel if their dirty city
became the cleanest in the world? Then ask who made them proud? The
bin-men."
His biggest fear was anyone might think he'd cheated them.
He loathed selling others short.
It's why, when I asked him to name the greatest player he
ever managed, he shunned ball-jugglers like Kevin Keegan, Ian St John, Peter
Thompson and Steve Heighway and picked Gerry Byrne. "He was hard and
skilful every game," Shankly said. "But above all honest. And that is
the greatest quality of all."
It's why every person who ever wrote to him had a personal
reply, hammered out on his old typewriter. Why every kid who knocked on his
door was given what they wanted. A word, a joke, a ticket, a "yes" to
a request to come to a nearby kick-about.
I wrote to him in 1973 to tell him I'd been badgering my MP
Harold Wilson to give him something in the next Honour's List, but met with
little success.
He wrote back: "I am not really disappointed at not
being recognised. The people who dish out honours are not my people. My people
go to Anfield. If I can make you all happy then that is my greatest
ambition."
How many managers, players or administrators would do that
today, devoting so much of their own time to the fans? How many would even
recognise Shankly's principles let alone share them?
He would have been 100 on Monday, and many events are
planned to celebrate his memory, including the setting up of a Shankly
Foundation by his family, to support grass roots football.
At Anfield tomorrow there will be a minute's applause for a
man whose life was consumed by his love for our game and its people.
Maybe everyone involved in modern football should take that
minute to reflect on what exactly Bill Shankly stood for.
Then ask why so many of them go into the sport today, not to
make the people happy, just themselves.
