Stuck in Colchester on Shanks' birthday

We think we have learned all we can about the one and only Bill Shankly.

His famous quotes live long in the memory. His autobiography, penned after he dramatically called time on his Anfield reign, gives us a real insight into the passions that motivated this remarkable football man.

But now comes a new discovery from deep within the archives of the Liverpool Echo newspaper - and here we can bring you an exclusive sneak-peek.

Shanks rarely gave in-depth interviews to journalists, but in the summer of 1962, the time was right to speak his mind.

Liverpool had just finished as champions, achieving promotion from the Second Division and Shankly was looking forward, full of confidence, clear about the next step in a rebuilding job that would restore the sleeping giant of Liverpool Football Club back to the summit of English football within two years.

Over the course of a tortuous football-free few months, he agreed to a series of in-depth personal columns revealing his innermost thoughts on the great Anfield masterplan.

The musings of the great man have now been compiled in a new groundbreaking book 'Shankly: The Lost Diary' and below we bring you an extended excerpt from chapter nine of the memoirs. 

And we start with a special birthday treat for Shanks...

Marooned In Colchester On My Birthday

The first month of the season gave us five away matches and three at home. Those played away from Anfield (Bristol Rovers, Sunderland, Norwich, Brighton and Newcastle) involved something like 1,800 miles of travelling, which, because of the heatwave which had greeted the start of the football season, proved more than a bit irksome.

It seemed that no sooner had we arrived from Sunderland, than we were on the move for Norwich. Those of my readers who happened to be in the Services during the war and stationed in East Anglia will know what difficulty there can be in making the journey to and from Liverpool.

With a football team, the problem is to make the journey and, at the same time, arrive fresh for the game. Hotel accommodation in East Anglia is difficult and we had been unable to find a suitable place to stay in the Norwich area on the Friday night.

We were left with no alternative to travel to London on Friday afternoon, spend the night at the hotel which we always use when playing in the London area, and catch a train from Liverpool Street on Saturday morning. This was the plan and it worked out well in as much as we had a restful night and caught a train for Norwich at about 10am.

This was on September 2, which happened to be my birthday, a fact which leaked out and made me the subject of a good deal of ribbing from the boys.

They did, however, promise me a couple of points as a present.

The programme which we had so carefully made came to an abrupt halt when the train did the same thing somewhere in the middle of a lovely bit of country approximately in the Colchester area.

Forty minutes later it was still stationary and we were marooned there with no means of communication with anybody and visions of not arriving in time to complete our fixture.

This particular day was one of the hottest of the year and the discomfort of the heat in the train, which was reminiscent of the atmosphere in a Turkish bath, did nothing to help our peace of mind.

However, we eventually arrived at Norwich with just half-an-hour to spare before the kick-off. The ground presented an astonishing sight of the large crowd of men in shirt sleeves and women in summer dresses.

It looked more like a crowd watching a cricket match.

Heat In The Hay Field

The pitch is an extremely small one and the long grass on it at the time was burnt brown and gave the impression of a hay field which had remained uncut, and the turf under it was dry and bone-hard.

The players had been very patient during our hold-up, but it probably had an unsettling effect on them, so they took a little time to settle down. However, once they did, the game came well up to expectations and even the conditions under which it was played did not prevent a marvellous exhibition of football.

How both sides stuck the pace when spectators were gasping for breath in the heat was quite amazing.

Norwich struck the first blow, for following a short corner in an attempt to intercept a shot, Yeats deflected the ball past Slater with the inside of his thigh.

During the interval, there was more thirst-quenching than I can remember in any game, the players seeming to be quite dehydrated and drinking copious supplies of orange juice to quench their awful thirsts.

You can judge what it was like when I tell you that Barry Butler, the Norwich centre-half, lost 6lbs during the game.

The second half was when team spirit, fighting spirit and fitness really told. Most of the players pulled down their stockings in an attempt to keep a little cooler.

Kevin Lewis was one of those and he must have sensed that his opposite number, Ashman (who is not in the first flush of youth as footballers go) was feeling the pace and Kevin was thus able to carry the ball and fairly blast his shots at goal.

About ten minutes after half-time, one of those hit Roger Hunt's leg and was diverted into the goal for the equaliser.

 Just as this was a blow to Norwich, so it was a tonic to us. We really turned on the heat, playing wonderful football, with the forwards causing the Norwich defence lots of trouble.

About ten minutes from the end, St John flicked a ball through the middle for Hunt to chase. He picked it up, carried it for a distance although embarrassed by three Norwich men and then fairly lashed it into the net to the great delight of our players.

The referee signalled a goal, but then consulted his linesman and promptly disallowed it for some obscure reason. This was a real blow, but far from discouraging the team, it seemed to act as a spur and shortly before the final whistle, Hunt stabbed the winner over the goalkeeper's head.

In this way I got my birthday present and was very thankful for it. Things had not been going exactly according to plan in the morning, but there is no doubt they finished well to the delight of everybody concerned.

The Norwich Keeper's Car

That was my immediate reaction to the result, but we were due for a further setback on this memorable day.

The coach which should have conveyed to us to the station failed to arrive. Telephone calls got no result; the Norwich officials were unable to get taxis for us and the only transport available was the Norwich goalkeeper's car.

Sandy Kennon very decently took as many of the party as he could pile in, a kindness for which we were very grateful, and those less lucky were left to pick up their bags and, with the temperatures in the '80s, enjoy a brisk mile-and-a-half walk to the station.

We caught the train with nothing to spare.

However, such was the elation of the party that if someone had told us that we had to walk to London, there would have been very few long faces, if any.

That was the end of our troubles. We caught the midnight train, on which sleepers had been booked, to Liverpool where we were met by a coach which enabled us to arrive home in the early hours of the morning.

Although the season had been in progress for such a short time, it had been an extremely strenuous one. We had played five games in fifteen days and travelled over a thousand miles to do so, and we were glad to be able to contemplate the immediate future with no midweek matches.

This would enable us to revert to the normal training schedule which the training staff had been to considerable pains to set out in such a way as to avoid monotony.

We knew that the players were extremely fit and our only problem was to keep them so. The week after the Norwich game was taken up with preparations for our home fixture with Scunthorpe.

Nobody would ever see this team among the glamour clubs of football, but nevertheless they were a very useful side which we had always found a hard nut to crack.

This game proved no exception. They turned out to be dour fighters who were extremely anxious to be the first club to take our unbeaten tag away from us.

In the early stages, we created many openings, but only two goals resulted. The first of these came when Hemstead deflected a shot into his own goal and the second was from Alan A'Court, a reward for his usual industrious game.

Scunthorpe's only reply was from their ex-Everton inside forward Godfrey, who also scored in the first half. These three goals ended the scoring, although it must be recorded that Scunthorpe had decidedly the better of the exchanges in the second half and were unlucky to lose both points.

However, we were most thankful to maintain our 100 per cent record. I had been told by one of the Scunthorpe officials before the game that they fully expected to beat us, mainly on the grounds that 'you have had a good run which can't last; you must be beaten some time'.

What he said was true, of course, but personally I should have required a much sounder reason than this for such optimism.

First Point Dropped

For the match the following week we had to make another long trip, this time Brighton. We travelled there the day preceding the match, still in the heatwave which was giving holidaymakers the tan of a lifetime, but which was beginning to be a bit of a bore to footballers.

Brighton's ground is a small, compact one and a capacity gate of about 19,000 in shirt sleeve order saw the team on a day which was even hotter than the day on which we met Norwich.

We had a really hard fight, but the winning goal would not come; on the other hand our defence did not let us down so that although we failed to win our seventh match on the run, we were still unbeaten.

My own feeling was that we had lost a record but I was thankful that we had not lost the game. Losing the 100 per cent tag in this fashion was more than worth the loss of one point, because carrying a label of this sort was beginning to become a source of worry for the players, with the result that they suffered from more nervous tension before a game than some members of teams with less enviable records.

Without this tension, I hoped that they would be able to settle down more quickly on the field and get on with the job of winning their matches.

We returned home the same night, a party well content with the way things had gone, and left the train at Crewe where we had arranged for a coach to meet us, which enabled us to arrive home in the early hours of the morning.

This was considered far preferable to travelling on Sunday, particularly as we were due to resume midweek travelling again with our away fixture against Newcastle the following Wednesday.

To purchase 'Shankly: The Lost Diary' RRP £9.99 Only £7.99 click here>>