The Country's Greatest Football Man

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.

Source Brian Reade http://www.mirror.co.uk

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Shankly Novel Set For Liverpool Launch

A novel charting Bill Shankly’s career as Liverpool FC manager is to have its official launch in the city.

Red or Dead, written by award-winning Damned United author David Peace, will be released in August ahead of the 100th anniversary of Shankly’s birth.

Publishers Faber have announced the official launch event will be held at the Epstein Theatre on Hanover Street on August 14, the day the book hits the shelves.

Described as the story of “a man in two halves”, the book charts Shankly’s successes and explores the final years of his life, after his retirement from Anfield in 1974.

The launch event has been arranged by Faber and Liverpool’s Writing on the Wall literary festival.

It will feature a reading, book signing and conversation with Daily Mirror columnist Brian Reade.

Writing on the Wall organiser Mike Morris said: “This is a huge coup for one of the UK’s best and most dynamic writers to agree to launch his latest novel in Liverpool.

“David Peace and Bill Shankly is a fascinating combination of talent and this is guaranteed to be a special night for Liverpool’s literary crowd and LFC supporters.”

The novel is set to be the centrepiece of celebrations of Shankly’s life and work, leading up to the official centenary on September 2.

Other events planned include a memorial bike ride between key landmarks from his career, set to feature Reds legend Robbie Fowler.

The four-day bike ride has been organised by the club’s charity, the Liverpool FC Foundation and will take in Shankly’s home village of Glenbuck in Ayrshire and Preston North End’s Deepdale ground.

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First Class Bill Shankly

Liverpool fans know that Bill Shankly was first class, now Royal Mail will issue a stamp commemorating the 100th Birth Anniversary of legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly on 16th April 2013.

This will be one of a set of 10 stamps issued dedicated to Great Britons celebrating individuals across sport, journalism, music, politics and the arts with other stamps including:

Norman Parkinson

Vivien Leigh

Peter Cushing

David Lloyd George

Elizabeth David

John Archer

Benjamin Britten

Mary Leakey

Richard Dimbleby

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The Shankly Collection – The Early Years

On the 2nd of September it will be 100 years since the birth of Bill Shankly, Here’s part 1 of our fantastic collection of Bill Shankly photos from down the years.

Bill Shankly was born in the small Ayrshire coal mining village of Glenbuck, close to the Ayrshire-Lanarkshire border.

Shankly's character such as his world-view as a socialist was born in the mining community with collectivism, with everyone working for each other and enjoying a share of the rewards.

The old Glenbuck Post Office.

Shankly's parents, John and Barbara, lived in one of the Auchenstilloch Cottages with their ten children; five boys and five girls. Bill was the ninth child and the youngest boy.

A young Bill with his wee pals.

All five Shankly brothers played professional football and Shankly claimed that "once, when we were all at our peaks, we could have beaten any five brothers in the world".

His brothers were Alec, known as "Sandy" by the family, who played for Ayr United and Clyde; Jimmy, who played for various clubs including Sheffield United and Southend United; John, who played for Portsmouth and Luton Town; and Bob, who played for Alloa Athletic and Falkirk. Bob became a successful manager, guiding Dundee to victory in the Scottish championship in 1962 and the semi-finals of the European Cup the following year. Their maternal uncles, Robert and William Blyth were also professional players and both became club directors at Portsmouth and Carlisle United respectively.

Shankly played for Scotland twelve times from 1938 to 1943 in five full and seven wartime internationals.

A proud Scot, "It's fantastic. You look at your dark blue shirt, the wee lion looks up at you and says 'Get out after those English bastards!” 

A young Bill playing for Preston North End.

Arsenal v Preston, Highbury, 1949. Shankly duels with Lishman.

Shankly had just reached his 26th birthday when the Second World War began and the war claimed the peak years of his playing career.

He joined the Royal Air Force and managed to play in numerous wartime league, cup and exhibition matches for Norwich City, Arsenal, Luton Town and Partick Thistle, depending on where he was stationed.

On 30 May 1942, he played a single game for Liverpool in a 4–1 win over Everton at Anfield.

Shankly at the end of his Preston North End career in 1948, one year before he took his first managerial job at Carlisle.

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Damned United Author To Pen Bill Shankly Novel

Red or Dead will focus on how Shankly transformed Liverpool into a British footballing institution.

“As time goes on it hurts more and more to depict someone who's not here to defend themselves. And if it upsets your Mum, it upsets you." So said Simon Clough, son of legendary football manager Brian Clough when the film version of The Damned United was released in 2009.

The book, by David Peace, was a fictionalised account of Clough’s 44-day reign at Leeds United and, though Clough’s family objected vehemently to its depiction of their patriarch (as did Johnny Giles who sued him for his depiction), the novel quickly became a critical and word of mouth hit, with Peace utilising the staccato, rhythmic prose style he’d perfected in the gloomy Red Riding series and miners’ strike thriller GB84 to articulate Clough’s tormented inner monologue as he lost his grip and control of his players at Leeds.

Today, Peace’s publishers Faber and Faber announced that, after a series of novels based in Japan, Peace will be returning to write about English football with a novel about legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly.

So should John Toshack and Ian St John get their lawyers prepped? Not by the sound of things. Peace – a fan of Huddersfield, who Shankly also managed – explained his motivation thus:

"I have written about corruption, I've written about crime, I've written about bad men and I've written about the demons. But now I've had enough of the bad men and the demons. Now I want to write about a good man. And a saint.”

Red or Dead will focus on how Shankly transformed a second division team with a crumbling stadium into a British footballing institution without rival for two decades and how, suddenly, in 1974, Shankly stood down. Half of Peace’s book will focus on Shankly’s retirement, one in which he saw his team become even greater under Bob Paisley and struggled to let go of the club he’d built and, so he thought, didn’t treat him as well in retirement as Liverpool’s biggest rivals Everton and Manchester United. Regardless of who you support, it has the potential to be the sports book of 2013.

Red or Dead by David Peace will be released in August.

Source http://www.independent.co.uk

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Banner Time - Che Shankly

Great LFC Banner... Fans depict Bill Shankly as Che Guevara vs Benfica, 2010.

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Little Plastic Men

For those of a certain age you’ll remember when challenging one of your school pals to a game of football in the house on a rainy day consisted of borrowing ya ma’s iron first. The kids of today “don’t know there born”, as my granddad used to say… oh dear I’m getting old.

Nowadays the Xbox and Playstation generation have got it easy, switch it on, throw the disc in, plug in your 14 controllers, select a team, pick your kit and weather conditions, even put yourself in the side and after about 700 goals 48 winners medals later it all can get a little boring.

Well this year the classic football tabletop game Subbuteo returns for a new generation with the help of our own John Barnes at London Toy Fair this year. It was originally dreamt up way back in the late 1940s by Peter Adolph, and it’s invariably the best representation of football that you’ll ever play. They had everything there, from teams and basic sets through to trophies, stands, supporters, scoreboards… if you had the money you could create a field of dreams, but you’d still have a great game even with an entry level package.

Our legendary manager Bill Shankly was big fan of Subbuteo and would use the game in his pre match tactical talks, often removing the oppositions star player and putting him in his pocket telling his players “don’t worry about him he wont get a kick of the ball”. Shanks later became the Subbuteo Club President. A player who won his local table football league would be sent a signed certificate from our great manager.

 The set up is of the game is very simple. Two players control a team of eleven players each and have a set amount of time (ten minutes each way in this case) to score more goals than the other. Players are moved by flicking them about – hence the old advertising tagline “flick to kick” – to get an oversized ball into the goal… and that’s really about it. There’s a few other little rules to consider; you’re only allowed to shoot within a certain area, movement of players is limited, but in general Subbuteo is a gloriously simple game to play.

The game seeped its way into the British public’s consciousness in so many ways. Songs have even been written about it’s majesty including the Merseyside band Half Man Half Biscuit-- more commonly known as HMHB-- wrote a nostalgic tribute to Subbuteo in one of their albums called "All I Want For Christmas Is a Dukla Prague Away Kit, but the game faded into near-obscurity in the late nineties. The licence was picked up by Hasbro and seemed to be pretty much a dead horse which was gloriously flogged. No more little plastic guys; we had to put up with ‘photorealistic’ images instead, playing in tiny Urban Arenas. The game as we knew it was gone.

The new Subbuteo has a few improvements. While previously it was quite easy to break an arm or head off your players (50m for a headless center-forward), they’re now made of a more flexible plastic so can withstand a hefty flick. The goals in the new set are nice and sturdy, but the best thing about the new version is the pitch.

Where before you had to devote a fair bit of time ironing out creases on the pitch – not an easy job for a kid – the new pitches are printed up on non-creasing fabric, meaning that getting a game together is the work of moments. This simple change is great; where before it could be a pain to get ready to play, now it’s so much easier. All you need is the space to play, which is admittedly sizable, but I can see plenty of kitchen tables in the future getting repurposed as cup final stadiums.

The new set comes with two full teams, a generic reds versus blues set up, but there’s also a limited range of teams available. Liverpool (including our number 7 in dashing pair of orange boots), the Manc’s, Chavski as well as other sets in various colours, but there’s also a small selection of international sides too. If you fancy enhancing your experience, you can pick up referees, fences (very useful for stopping the ball falling off the table), even different coloured balls. While it’s a limited range of accessories, if the relaunch is successful you can bet that there’ll be more stuff released in future.

Of course, everything is compatible with the older gear – there’s plenty of sites out there that sell old teams for relatively reasonable prices such as the splendid subbuteoworld.co.uk. However, you’ll get everything you need in the Club Edition with no need for any extra outlay – I guarantee you though, after a few plays you’ll be thinking how nice it’d be to have your favourite teams lining up.

It’s a great little game and I’m delighted to see it come back in a proper fashion. It’s such a big part of so many people’s childhoods; even if they’re not the biggest gamers now they’ll have fond memories of playing Subbuteo as a child. Here’s hoping the reissue brings in a whole new generation of players who’ll be able to pull off stuff like this…

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