There can sometimes appear a tendency among the footballing fraternity of the twenty-first century to suggest they have reinvented the metaphorical wheel.
Terms like ‘low block’, ‘false nine’, and ‘xG’ have become modern additions to the game’s lexicon and, while no-one could credibly deny sports science and the deeper analysis the digital age facilitates have not led to some good innovations tactically and otherwise, some aspects of football these emerging expressions refer to are not necessarily new.
As much as Liverpool supporters and the wider football world have loved the ‘gegenpress’ philosophy which lies at the heart of Jurgen Klopp’s model, a number of Anfield legends including former European Cup winning captain Graeme Souness have pointed out that principle of getting the ball back as quickly as possible after it has been lost was a feature of many successful Reds sides of the past and indeed other leading English teams during the late 70s and early 80s when they dominated Europe.
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The introduction of the backpass law in 1992 was undoubtedly one of the biggest changes to hit the game since the offside law in its current guise was adopted in the early 1920s and has made it necessary for goalkeepers to be as competent and comfortable with their feet as with their hands. But the idea of a ‘sweeper keeper’, prepared to come out of the penalty area and tidy up as necessary behind his defence, was around long before that rule change which heralded football's new era coming at the same time as the birth of the Premier and Champions Leagues, and one of the first true exponents was the man between the sticks for Bill Shankly’s first great Reds side who became a legendary figure whose achievements and personality ensured he will forever be immortalised in Anfield folklore.
Tommy Lawrence was still a month short of his 17th birthday when he joined Liverpool as an amateur in April 1957, signing professional forms six months later, but the Scottish-born stopper who had grown up in Cheshire had to be patient before making his first-team breakthrough, even being sent on trial in 1961 to Stockton Heath Albion (later known as Warrington Town) as an outfield player. Fortunately for him and the Reds, it didn’t work out and only a few months into the 1962/63 season after five years of waiting he got his hands on the number one jersey at Anfield and never looked back.
It was the Reds’ first campaign back in the top flight after eight long years in the wilderness of the Second Division and Anfield was standing on the precipice of an era which would establish the dynasty which has made Liverpool one of the planet’s most storied sporting institutions thanks to the vision and will of one man - Bill Shankly. The former Scottish international midfielder, who had spent much of his playing career in England with Preston North End, took over as Liverpool manager in December 1959 after spells in charge of Carlisle United, Grimsby Town, Workington and Huddersfield and immediately made a huge impression on everyone at the club with his uncompromising standards, not least the teenage Lawrence.
“When Shankly first came, everyone thought he was mad”, he admitted. “The club was jogging along in the Second Division then, nobody bothering much about anything, when this fellow arrived. Managers had been easy-going types up to then, win one, lose one, it didn’t really matter, but with this Shankly it was win, win, win. He was at us all from the start I remember. He joined on the Saturday and on the Monday he came into the dressing room after the reserves had beaten Leeds 2-1 and said to me, ‘Son, I’m signing you as a professional tomorrow’. I said ‘Mr Shankly, I’ve been one for two years’. The senior players couldn’t take his pace and he cleared them all out at the end of the first season, all except Roger Hunt.
“He brought some of us through from the reserves and bought some others in - St John, Yeats, Stevenson, Milne. That’s one of his great qualities, knowing which men will do a job for him. There was not much what you might call affection between him and the players, more respect, schoolmaster-pupils. Against that though, he wouldn’t let anyone call you, the Press or anyone. He’d bawl you out behind closed doors but nothing in public. The players appreciate that. The fans are the ones though. You can believe everything he says about them. In fact I’d say he has more regard for the supporters than the team. On coach trips away he’d point at them out the window and say to us, ‘Those people have travelled miles to see you. You should go out there and die for them’. We’d never heard anything like it. I’ve seen him give the fans tickets, give fivers to some to help them get home.”
It took Shankly eighteen months or so to convince the Anfield hierarchy the rich potential of Liverpool as a club could only be fulfilled with investment and, aided by the appointment of Littlewoods Pools managing director Eric Sawyer to the board as finance director, the acquisitions of forward Ian St John from Motherwell for £37,500 and centre half Ron Yeats for £22,000 from Dundee United in the summer of 1961 were in the manager’s own words “the beginning of Liverpool” and the Reds were promoted as champions the following spring. Inevitably the First Division new boys took some time their feet playing at a more elevated level and were only able to win four of their first 13 matches although, crucially for morale, a last-minute Roger Hunt equaliser secured a 2-2 draw at Goodison Park in the long-awaited and impossibly-hyped first league derby played for 13 years (Everton having been relegated in 1951 and passing their local rivals on the way back up three years later when they were promoted as the Reds went down).
Goalkeeper Jim Furnell had only joined Liverpool from Burnley the previous February and, having helped his new club to promotion, began the new season as Shankly’s first choice but a broken finger thirteen games into the new campaign proved unlucky for him but a stroke of fortune for the 22-year-old Lawrence who was finally handed his first-team bow five years to the week he signed professional forms as the Reds travelled to West Brom in October 1962. Alongside another debutant in Gordon Wallace, the Ayrshire-born keeper could not prevent a 1-0 defeat which dropped Shankly’s men to 18th in the First Division but he performed creditably enough on his first appearance in the big time, the ECHO’s Horace Yates writing afterwards, “Tommy Lawrence will not let Liverpool down, if his debut provided a sample of his worth. When recently we have seen so many goalkeepers handle the ball as if it were red hot, how comforting it was to see Lawrence take it with all the assurance of an expert slip fielder at cricket.”
Home defeat to Burnley a week later dropped the Reds into the bottom three but a 3-3 draw at Manchester United steadied the ship and Shankly’s men then embarked on a run of eight victories and a draw in the next nine league matches to rise to a much healthier league position of fifth, also negotiating the opening rounds of the FA Cup in a mid-season decimated by one of the most brutal winters on record which saw the Reds play only twice in the league between 22nd December and 2nd March. Liverpool would go on to reach the FA Cup semi-finals for the first time since reaching the final in 1950 only to lose 1-0 to a Gordon Banks-inspired Leicester City at Hillsborough, the disappointment of which did see the campaign somewhat tail off with only one victory in the last nine matches resulting in an eighth place league finish.
A respectable enough showing for a first season back in the top flight in the eyes of many but Shankly’s sights were set much higher and, having signed highly-rated 20-year-old winger Peter Thompson for £37,000 from his old club Preston, the Liverpool manager’s side would go to win the club’s sixth league championship the following spring in only their second season after promotion. It was a triumph not just built on buying good players but also Shankly’s tactical nous, with Lawrence being encouraged to come out of his penalty area when required and tidy up behind his defenders so allowing them to hold a higher line and compress the play, a 1960s version of the ‘sweeper keepers’ we have been become so accustomed to today which proved effective and led former England manager and Everton captain Joe Mercer to say, “Lawrence comes so far off his line he plays like an extra defender.”
“At first I was frightened to death”, Lawrence recalled. "Shankly said, ‘Right Tommy, you're not playing on the six yard line. When the ball's on the halfway line, you've got to be on the 18-yard line. If the ball shoots through, you've got to be out to kick it - a sort of stopper'. We did it at Melwood a few times, then we tried at Anfield. Well, I'm standing there and the Kop is giving me some stick. 'Get back on your line!', they're all yelling. No goalkeeper did that in those days. I thought, 'Oh my God'. But it worked. I'd come out and do like they do today. You didn't get sent off in those days either. So I used to bring them down. If they pushed it past me, I'd just hit them. It was only a free-kick, you didn’t even get a yellow card. These days I’d be sent off. But it usually worked. If I was too late and they scored, I’d get all hell from the Kop for being off my goal-line.”
A memorable campaign did not get off to the most promising of starts with Liverpool losing their first three matches at Anfield, leading Shankly to quip to club directors afterwards, "Gentlemen, I assure you that before the end of the season we will win a game at home." His side proved him right two days later with a 6-0 rout of Wolves, the first of ten victories in the next twelve matches which took the Reds to the summit of the First Division table. They would be knocked off top spot after a draw at Arsenal in which a costly Lawrence error salvaged a point for the Gunners and earned the young goalkeeper a harsh if crudely amusing rebuke from a frustrated Shankly.
"Tommy Lawrence was frightened to death of Shanks”, Tommy Smith recalled. “He was just a young boy and had been there since he was 16 years old. I’ll always remember we were playing Arsenal and we were winning 1-0 with 20 minutes to go and I thought, ‘What a good win this will be at Arsenal.’ Joe Baker hit the ball from 25 yards. I am not joking, but he stubbed his toe first and then hit the ball. It trickled by me and I went, ‘It’s yours, Tommy!' Tommy was on the line and opened his legs and the bloody ball went right through him. I couldn’t believe it. They put the pressure on us for the last five minutes, but we held out. I am thinking to myself all this time, ‘When we get into that dressing room I am going to get into the bath before Shanks comes in the door.’ Little did I know that the ten players I was playing with thought the same thing. When the final whistle went... if we had sprinted that much during the game we would have won it easily. Everybody was trying to hurry into the dressing room but it wasn’t quick enough. The door opened and in came Shanks. His face was blue and I am thinking, ‘Here it goes.’ He went, ‘Where is he?’ I didn’t realise but big Tommy was behind me. I was three inches bigger than him and didn’t know where he was. His finger went up and he said, ‘I am here, boss.’ ‘Where?’ ‘I am here, boss.’ He said, ‘Before you say anything, boss, I want to apologise to you and the lads. I should have never opened my legs to that ball.’ Shankly went, ‘It’s not your fault. It’s your f****** mother who should have never opened her legs.’"
It would be three months before Liverpool hit top spot again but a 2-0 home win over Bolton Wanderers on 20th March was the first of seven straight victories, the last of which was the 5-0 Anfield triumph over Arsenal immortalised in a BBC Panorama documentary which sealed the championship - Liverpool’s first top-flight league title since the first post-war season of 1946/47 - with three matches to spare thanks to goals from St John, Alf Arrowsmith, a Peter Thompson brace and Hunt. Yet Lawrence’s contribution was arguably as vital as any of the goalscorers on that heady Anfield afternoon as he saved a penalty early on when the game was still goalless.
“Whatever happens to me in the future, I don’t think anything will ever match that feeling”, Lawrence said. “Before the game, Roger Hunt had tipped me off that if they were awarded a penalty, George Eastham would probably take it and he usually shot for the right-hand corner. He did and I took Roger’s advice - and saved it. And, of course, it is now history that we went on to trounce the London side 5-0 and claim the League’s top honour. But I often wonder what the result might have been had Arsenal made that early breakthrough. Good old Roger, a typical bit of Liverpool team spirit which is what makes us such a great club!”
It was the time of Merseyside's life with Everton, champions the year before Liverpool in 1963, also among the leading sides in the country and the city flourishing, with the docks still thriving and the Beatles’ emergence encapsulating the new freedoms and cultural shifts felt across the world as the shackles of post-war austerity were finally cast off. The Reds embarked on a summer tour of America and featured on the Ed Sullivan Show only a few months after the Fab Four’s first iconic appearance on it during the group's breakthrough tour of the States, although Shankly’s famous bewilderment and mistrust of being abroad meant the manager cut his own trans-Atlantic adventure short.
“We were there on tour for 10 weeks but the boss only lasted about 10 days”, Lawrence recalled. “We were in this hotel room getting ready to go out and you could hear him on the phone to his wife, Nessie. He was saying, ‘Nessie, I’m coming home. These Americans know nothing about football. You know, they’ve never even heard of Tom Finney!’ And he went home the next day. He actually went home.”
As useful as the trip may have been useful for broadening horizons and promoting the club, it did not help the Reds avoid another slow start to their league campaign with a shocking 4-0 reverse at home to Everton leaving Shankly’s side second-to-bottom with only two wins from the opening eight games and scotching any real hopes of retaining their title. But this would be a season written into history because of exploits in the cup competitions, with the championship triumph enabling Liverpool to embark on their first ever season of continental competition, in the European Cup. Victories over Reykjavik of Iceland, Anderlecht of Belgium and Cologne of Germany took the Reds into the semi-finals but as the business end of the campaign approached, it was the FA Cup which loomed large in Liverpool minds.
Although the Reds and Everton were level on five league titles apiece when Shankly took over at Anfield, Liverpool had still never won the world’s oldest cup competition having been beaten in the 1914 and 1950 finals by Burnley and Arsenal respectively. The Toffees were already two-time winners having triumphed in 1906 and 1933 and Kopites were sick of jibes from Evertonians claiming the red half of Merseyside was cursed and the Liver Birds would fly away from the Pier Head if the Reds ever actually won the Cup. After seeing off West Brom, Stockport County and Bolton Wanderers, Roger Hunt’s volley in an Anfield quarter-final replay beat bogey side Leicester City and avenged the semi-final heartbreak of two years earlier, Shankly’s side defeating Tommy Doherty’s Chelsea at Villa Park in the last four to send Liverpool to Wembley for only the second time.
The Reds' opponents would be Don Revie’s Leeds United, another up-and-coming young side who Shankly’s men would have a fierce rivalry with over the coming decade. In a tightly-fought encounter, Roger Hunt put Liverpool in front early in extra time after a goalless first 90 minutes only for Scottish midfielder Billy Bremner to thump an equaliser past Lawrence soon afterwards but Ian St John’s 111th minute header ensured the Cup would at last grace the Anfield trophy cabinet and sparked wild and emotional celebrations among the tens of thousands of Liverpudlians who had travelled to the capital and countless more back home, the relief of finally ending the club’s 73-year hoodoo having a profound effect on the players, so much so on Lawrence that at one point he managed to lose the trophy!
“Dad talked about the 65 final a lot”, Lawrence’s son Stephen recalled to the Tales of Anfield Road. “He spoke of walking out in front of the enormous crowd, feeling a little nervous as this was the opportunity that Liverpool had been waiting for, for so long. They had such a great team and they were determined to win the FA Cup for the first time. He recalled it was a quiet final and the weather was horrendous but then suddenly the game came to life when Roger scored. He thought they had won it, as Leeds didn’t look like scoring. Then Billy Bremner hit an unstoppable shot which my Dad could only look at, as it sailed into the top corner. Despite that, they were still very confident of winning though. They all believed they were the much better team than Leeds.
“When St John scored the winner, my Dad just dropped to his knees. That was the moment he knew they had won it. He told us the trip home was unbelievable, When they got to Lime Street and on to the buses, he recalled the amount of fans waiting for them to return with the Cup. He would never forget, people hanging off lamp posts and hanging out of windows just to get a glimpse of them. It stayed with him his whole life. The story about my Dad losing the bottom of the FA Cup is told a lot, but it’s true. He was given the job of looking after the plinth, but after the game, and a few drinks back at the hotel, Shanks came looking for it. It was nowhere to be found. My dad told the boss he had no idea where it was. Shanks turned to him and said, ‘The first time we win the FA Cup, and he’s lost it.’ Thankfully, it was later found. It had been left on the coach and was on its way to Southend.’”
The celebrations had to be somewhat restrained because, only three days after their moment of history at Wembley, Liverpool were facing Inter Milan at Anfield in the first leg of their European Cup semi-final. Shankly stage-managed the occasion expertly, ensuring Inter took to the field first and sending injured players Gerry Byrne and Gordon Milne out to parade the newly-won FA Cup around the ground before the Reds emerged from the tunnel just as the trophy reached the Kop. The Italians were unable to cope with the electric atmosphere inside a partying Anfield and were beaten 3-1 to leave Shankly’s men with one foot in the final, which had already been scheduled to be played at Inter’s San Siro stadium. But a week later, amid raw hostility, a highly suspicious refereeing performance from Spanish official Jose Maria Ortiz de Mendibil saw the Reds beaten 3-0 and crash out to end their hopes of becoming Britain’s first ever European champions, with Lawrence at the heart of the controversial incidents which brought the Italians’ first two goals on the night.
“As soon as we came out of the tunnel they were throwing fireworks and spitting at us from the stands”, the Liverpool goalkeeper recalled. “We were used to deafening noise with the Kop, of course, but not this kind of animosity. I was at the centre of it all night. For their first goal, the referee had raised his arm to indicate an indirect free-kick but it was chipped straight into the net and he allowed it. Unbelievable. Then a couple of minutes later one of their lads is flagged offside but I’ve got the ball and the referee just waves to me to carry on. So I’m bouncing the ball when their player kicks it out of my hands and it’s in the net. The same thing happened to Gordon Banks just a couple of weeks later when George Best kicked the ball out of his hands during a game between England and Northern Ireland in Belfast. The difference was that one was disallowed right away. The lad who did it to me only did it for a joke but it stood. I had a go at the referee there and then but it made no difference. At the end of the match Shanks just said of it, ‘It was meant to be’. That wasn’t like him but he knew that you just couldn’t compete with cheats. We found out what playing in Europe was all about that night.”
Shankly’s men bounced back from their European heartbreak by winning a second league championship in three years, avenging the previous season’s Anfield derby shocker by beating Harry Catterick’s Toffees 5-0 on home soil in late September and never relinquishing top spot after reaching the summit with a 5-2 victory over Blackburn Rovers in mid-November. The experience of the previous season helped Liverpool get past Juventus, Standard Liege and Honved to reach the European Cup Winners Cup semi-finals where a second-leg fightback saw the Reds overcome Jock Stein’s Celtic - who the following year would become Britain’s first European Cup winners - to reach the final at Hampden Park in Glasgow where they faced Borussia Dortmund. Roger Hunt’s 68th minute equaliser cancelled out Siggi Held’s opener for the Germans but deep into extra time the fates again turned against the Reds, Lawrence’s rush to block Held’s advance on his goal rebounding to Reinhard Libuda whose speculative effort from 40 yards hit the crossbar and rebounded back off Ron Yeats who had raced back to try and clear the danger and into the net to ensure Anfield’s wait for maiden European silverware would have to wait another seven years.
Shankly and his men would in fact go without a trophy of any sort until 1973 despite twice going close to another league title and reaching the FA Cup final in 1971 by which time the Scot had started to piece together what became his second great Liverpool side. It would not feature Lawrence and some of the stalwarts who had taken the Reds back to the top in the 60s with the manager’s loyalty to his ageing stars finally running out after a shock FA Cup quarter-final exit at Second Division Watford in February 1970 which saw him reluctantly accept the need for new blood.
“It was pretty obvious the boss had something in mind the Tuesday after the Watford game”, Lawrence remembered. “When we reported to Melwood we were told a friendly with Blackburn had been arranged behind closed doors but when the squad was read out many of the names who had been regulars for years were not included. I was one of them. Ray Clemence was given my place and I knew then my first team days were over.”
Lawrence, along with St John and Yeats, were left out of the weekend’s home defeat to Derby County and the goalkeeper would make only one more Liverpool appearance at the end of the following season to take his total to 390 before joining Tranmere Rovers in November 1971. It drew to an end a decade and a half at Anfield for the popular goalkeeper - affectionately christened ‘The Flying Pig’ by the Kop due to his fuller physique - whose excellence and consistency (only missing four games during a six-year period), along with his bravery and character on and off the pitch, made him a key element in the Reds’ return to prominence.
“Courage was vital”, he admitted. “You had to be prepared to dive at feet, challenge jumping forwards, go where the boots, elbows and arms were flailing. I broke the odd finger a couple of times but that was par for the course. We would only wear woollen gloves in wet weather. There were no laws against charging the goalie then either. It was a fantastic experience to be playing in such a team of talented players. We didn’t get a lot of money but were great mates and felt we could beat anybody. We did think Shanks was a little bit mad but for us he was brilliant.
“Once I’d made a mistake in a game and afterwards he came into the dressing room and as he walked past me he said, ‘Hey Tommy son, a goalkeeper would’ve saved that.’ And he just kept walking. Then when he came back, he said ‘Hey Tommy son, you’re allowed to use your hands, you know.’ And he just carried on walking. Then I hear him in the corridor talking to the press. ‘Tommy Lawrence? Aye, had a great game. Fantastic fellow. What a goalkeeper, kept us in the game…’ If you’d had a nightmare, he’d come in and railroad you. Then he’d walk out and tell everyone you’d had a great game. He would never ‘call’ his players in public and that’s why we liked him so much.”
Lawrence added 80 Football League appearances to his total at Prenton Park before moving on to non-league Chorley as player-coach and after retiring from football returned to the Rylands wire factory in Warrington, where he'd worked as a youngster, as a quality controller, also being a regular and popular visitor to Liverpool former players’ functions. He passed away at the age of 77 in January 2018 but not before a remarkable and heartwarming encounter three years earlier in Liverpool city centre which saw him hit the headlines with a brief unscheduled interview which became the number one trending topic UK-wide on Twitter, was watched by more than eight million viewers alone on the BBC website and was later translated into over 100 different languages.
“Tommy had made a once in a blue moon visit to Liverpool city centre after going down to LFC TV for an interview”, his grandson Ryan explained. “On his way back into town, he was stopped by BBC journalist Stuart Flinders who was approaching shoppers at random and asking if they remembered the famous 1967 FA Cup tie between Liverpool and Everton which was watched by over 100,000 fans at both Anfield and Goodison. Tommy’s eyes lit up on hearing the details and he confirmed, ‘That’s right’ with a smile before casually adding, ‘I played in it. I was the goalkeeper for Liverpool!’ After asking Grandad about this, he swore to me he thought it was a wind-up at first, as the cameraman was laughing his head off (which describes the shaky camerawork). When he got home being the humble man that he was, he mentioned nothing of it. As you can imagine it came as a great surprise to his wife Ellie when she sat down for tea and saw that her husband was the main feature on BBC North West Tonight. When she questioned him about it Tommy simply replied, “Oh yeah, the BBC interviewed me today!”
