It is no surprise Bill Shankly’s first great Liverpool team featured a strong influence from north of the border.
The Ayrshire-born managerial icon was as proud a Scot as they come and it is well documented how the transformative signings in the summer of 1961 of Ron Yeats from Dundee United and Ian St John from Motherwell - once, with the help of new finance director Eric Sawyer, the manager had persuaded the Anfield board to loosen the purse strings - were crucial in helping drag the Reds out of the doldrums of the Second Division and provided the foundations of the dynasty of success which would follow.
Both Yeats and St John would enjoy long careers on Merseyside and be regarded as legendary figures for their achievements in the red shirt but they were joined for a time at Liverpool by one of their less-heralded compatriots who played an important role in the squad on and off the pitch and would go on to inadvertently influence arguably the club’s greatest ever player, Scottish or otherwise, that Anfield was the place for him.
Leith-born Willie Stevenson’s talents were evident from an early age when he represented his country as a schoolboy while playing for local side Edina Hearts and was good enough to keep out of the team one of his contemporaries who would grow into one of the finest players of his generation .
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“I’ve still got a photograph of that side”, he recalled years later to the official LFC programme. “There’s a wee lad with glasses, his arms folded across his chest who couldn’t get a game that day, went by the name of Denis Law”. By 16, Stevenson had been signed as an amateur by Glasgow Rangers and immediately farmed out to nursery side Dalkeith Thistle where after serving his apprenticeship he returned to Ibrox and having signed professional forms made his league debut the day before his 19th birthday.
The tall, cultured midfielder soon became a regular and helped the Gers win the Scottish league title in his first season before a year later adding the Scottish Cup, the same season Scot Symon’s side reached the semi-finals of the European Cup before losing out to Germany’s Eintracht Frankfurt who themselves were famously beaten 7-3 by the all-conquering Real Madrid side in the Hampden Park final. Such experience gained by the age of 20 should have made Stevenson perfectly placed to kick on but he soon found himself out of the team after a dip in form and suddenly behind in the pecking order to another talented youngster who would go on to become a Rangers legend.
“I’d played 65 games the season before, far too many for a young lad and it was beginning to show”, he admitted. “Rangers had also signed a youngster from Raith Rovers by the name of Jim Baxter.” The two initially appeared in tandem but when Baxter - initially tried at inside-left having arrived for a Scottish record fee at the time of £17,500 - was moved back into the left-half position, Stevenson was consigned to the reserves and, after more than a year in the second-string, decided he had little option but to try his luck elsewhere but became embroiled in a contract dispute.
With Rangers refusing his request for a transfer and holding his registration which prevented him playing for anybody else, Stevenson travelled to the other side of the world to Australia - who at the time were not under FIFA’s jurisdiction - and signed for Apia in Sydney. He was not there for long however as it soon emerged the Australian FA were looking to come under the global governing body’s umbrella and, having been warned he could be banned from football if he played Down Under, the 22-year-old returned without ever kicking a ball in Australia and briefly re-signed for Rangers - who had finally agreed to his transfer request - with a host of English clubs now interested in signing him.
Bill Shankly’s old club Preston North End had reportedly bid £15,000 but, with Arsenal, Newcastle United and West Bromwich Albion also interested, Liverpool’s £20,000 offer was accepted by the Glasgow club and Stevenson was on his way to Merseyside, signing in at Anfield on 19 October 1962. The Reds had endured a difficult start to life back in the top-flight having the previous spring won promotion after eight years in the Second Division, winning only four out of their first 13 matches, and Stevenson was soon in the side, making his debut in a home defeat to Burnley which dropped Shankly’s men to 20th in the First Division table.
It may not have been the most auspicious of beginnings as Stevenson sought to get his career back on track but he stayed in the side as the Reds steadied the ship with a 3-3 draw at Manchester United and a home victory over Arsenal, the Scot’s timely defensive interceptions and ability to switch play with perceptive passing helping him becoming a regular fixture as Liverpool finished a respectable eighth in their first season back in the top-flight while also reaching the FA Cup semi-finals before losing to Leicester City at Hillsborough. Shankly had seen enough to make a bold promise on the eve of the 1963/64 campaign that the league championship would soon be back at Anfield and such hopes were bolstered by an opening day win away to Blackburn Rovers before successive home defeats to Nottingham Forest and Blackpool dampened the optimism.
Although there were impressive away victories at Chelsea and Wolves, Liverpool were again beaten at Anfield in their third home league game of the season by West Ham, leading Shankly to memorably quip to club directors afterwards, "Gentlemen, I assure you that before the end of the season we will win a game at home."
He was proved right two days later when Wolves were trounced 6-0 on home soil and when reigning champions Everton crossed Stanley Park and were beaten 2-1 a fortnight later, the Reds embarked on a run which saw them win nine of the next ten league matches, going top of the table when Ron Yeats’s first goal for the club secured a 1-0 victory at Manchester United in late November (the day after US President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Texas). Home defeat to Blackburn knocked Shankly’s side back down to fourth but they kept in touch with the leading pack through the winter, returning to the summit in late March with victory over Bolton which began a seven-game winning streak which concluded with a 5-0 victory 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 games to spare.
Stevenson missed only four of the 47 games in all competitions Liverpool, who also reached the FA Cup quarter-finals, played but it was the following season he truly made his mark on proceedings as he and his team-mates wrote themselves into folklore. Although now champions of England for the sixth time, the Reds had still never won the FA Cup and Kopites were fed up of jibes from Evertonians claiming the red half of Merseyside was cursed when it came to the world’s oldest cup competition and the Liver Birds would fly away from the Pier Head if it ever actually happened.
They would eventually be made to eat their words though as, after seeing off West Brom, Stockport County, Bolton Wanderers and bogey-team Leicester City, they faced Tommy Doherty’s Chelsea in the semi-finals at Villa Park only three days after they had edged past German champions Cologne on the toss of the coin to also reach the last four of the European Cup in the club’s maiden continental campaign. Winger Peter Thompson - who Stevenson rated as the best footballer he ever played with, “He was awesome, such pace and ability down the wing” - broke the deadlock with a stunning solo strike just after the hour mark before, eleven minutes from the end, Ian St John was chopped down by defender Ron Harris after a surging run into the box to hand Liverpool the chance to seal victory from 12 yards.
Midfielder Gordon Milne was the designated penalty taker but didn’t fancy it, admitting years later to LFC TV’s documentary ‘Ee-Aye-Addio - 1965 And All That’, "It was one of those days when the ball is like a balloon and the goal shrinks. It was one of those pictures I had in my mind. Willie was next to me and I said, ‘Willie, I don't fancy this.' 'No problem’, he said.”
“All our big brave men”, Ian St John laughed, “Roger Hunt and Ron Yeats.. they were all looking the other way and tying their bootlaces so who was going to take it? And then Willie, out of the blue, casually picked up the ball and placed it on the spot. No one said anything despite the fact that he had never taken a penalty before. With his belief that he was a little bit better than the rest of us, propped up by his liking for fine suits and the best cognac, he might have been saying, ‘Step aside, you peasants and let me do the job.’ No one complained or challenged his decision. It came to him that he couldn’t really miss and nor did he.”
“I thought I was having quite a good game so I just said ‘I’ll take it'”, Stevenson recalled. “The best thing about that was I meant to put it in the bottom right-hand corner, my right facing it, but my foot just slipped as I came to the ball and instead of going on the ground it went about six feet up straight back into the net. They are all great goals when they go in."
Liverpool’s opponents at Wembley 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. Stevenson admitted he and his some of his team-mates didn’t like Leeds due to their approach to their game, a view which was likely only enhanced when - just three minutes into the game in the rain-soaked capital - an over-the-top challenge from former Everton midfielder Bobby Collins left Reds’ left-back Gerry Byrne with what turned out to be a broken collar-bone. With substitutes still a couple of years away from being introduced, the teak-tough Scouser gritted his teeth and carried on, remarkably playing the full 120 minutes and even more incredibly setting up the opening goal for Roger Hunt three minutes into extra-time after being played into a crossing position on the left following a slalom run through midfield by Stevenson.
“Was it five or six players I beat, I cannae remember now!”, Stevenson said. “No, the amazing thing about that was I’d seen Gerry on my left and I knew he was there so when I got past those two or three players and saw Gerry go, I just had to play him in. I have to say I think Leeds bottled it that day. They didn’t want to lose whereas we desperately wanted to win.”
Billy Bremner equalised for the Yorkshiremen soon afterwards but, nine minutes from the end, Ian St John headed home Ian Callaghan’s right-wing cross to end Liverpool’s 73-year wait for a first FA Cup and spark wild celebrations among the tens of thousands of travelling Kopites on the Wembley terraces, which continued the following day when the team returned to Merseyside for a triumphant homecoming parade attended by an estimated three quarters of a million people.
“The thing that sticks in my mind is the train journey back into Liverpool”, Stevenson recalled. “I’d never seen crowds like it with fans with scarves and so on waving us in at all the stations from Crewe onwards back into the city. And then when we got into town, I wouldn’t like to guess how many people were there - you couldn’t out a cigarette paper between them - but it must have been millions, even if I’m maybe being a bit like Shankly and prone to exaggeration! We had the time of our lives.”
The Liverpool players were unable to completely cut loose with celebrating their historic achievement because just two days later reigning European and world champions Inter Milan were at Anfield for the first leg of the 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.
Stevenson had a hand in the move which led to Roger Hunt’s early opener and a 3-1 victory on Anfield’s first great European night gave Liverpool a healthy advantage to take into the second leg the following week but a contentious 3-0 defeat in Milan ended dreams of becoming the first British team to win the trophy and sent the hosts through to the final being played in their own San Siro stadium, with Shankly claiming afterwards he had been told beforehand no matter what happened his team would not be allowed to win and admitting years later Spanish referee Jose Maria Ortiz de Mendibil had been the one man over his long career in the game who had truly hurt him.
His side recovered from their Italian heartbreak by regaining the championship in 1965/66, Stevenson managing a career-best goals tally of six as he missed only one of the 53 matches Liverpool played in all competitions as they saw off Juventus, Standard Liege, Honved and a Celtic side who the following year would become Britain’s first European champions to reach the final of the European Cup Winners Cup, played at Glasgow’s Hampden Park. But the Reds’ wait for a first continental honour would continue as, despite Roger Hunt cancelling out Siggi Held’s opener to force extra-time, a desperately unfortunate own goal from Ron Yeats handed Germany’s Borussia Dortmund victory, the setting of the defeat making it even more difficult for Stevenson to take.
“We should have won that game but on the night we were awful”, he said. “All us Scots had all our families and friends there. I was so disappointed that in the shower room after the match I picked up my medal and hurled it through the window. It must have fallen somewhere in the car park below.”
It was the beginning of the end for Shankly’s first great side which would eventually be broken up before silverware returned to Anfield in 1973 and Stevenson, despite playing another 51 matches as the Reds’ seven-year trophy drought began, would be one of the first to be replaced, with young midfielder Emlyn Hughes - who had arrived from Blackpool in February 1967 - soon taking his place in the side. Still only 28, he moved to Stoke City in December of that year and spent five years in the Potteries before in 1973 joining old team-mate Ron Yeats who had taken over as player-manager at Tranmere Rovers and helping them to a famous League Cup win away to Arsenal before finishing his playing career with spells at Limerick in Ireland, Vancouver Whitecaps in Canada and Macclesfield Town.
After retirement, he ran a pub in Cheshire and then a contract cleaning company, remaining a popular figure at former players reunions among his former team-mates who always appreciated his dry sense of humour. Another Scot - who would go on to rival Shankly as the most influential figure in LFC history - was on the receiving end of it during a short-lived trial at Anfield as a young naive teenager but Kenny Dalglish would later admit Willie Stevenson’s sharp tongue was in his mind when years later he decided to join Liverpool.
“When Liverpool’s scout in Scotland spotted me up front for Glasgow United, Bill Shankly invited me down for a trial”, Dalglish - a boyhood Rangers fan - recalled. “It was August 1966 and I was only 15 and had never travelled away from Glasgow before. Getting on the team bus to go to Melwood and nervously glancing down the aisle, it was like a Who’s Who of British football. England had just won the World Cup and there was Roger Hunt, so close I could almost reach out and touch him. Nearby sat Ian Callaghan, another of Alf Ramsay’s famous players. Then I saw Ian St John. The Saint! I’d seen him play many times, for Motherwell at Ibrox and for Scotland at Hampden Park, but never this close. For any young Scot, the goalscoring Saint was an idol. My reverential gaze strayed further down the bus, encountering the familiar figure of Willie Stevenson, such a stylish left-half and a particular favourite of my father’s during Willie’s Rangers days.
“As my few days in Liverpool was drawing to a close, I said to fellow Scot George Adams who was also on trial with me, ‘I’m going back to Glasgow soon and this is my last chance to get Willie Stevenson’s autograph, my Dad will kill me if I don’t’. Willie and all the first-team players were in the dressing room preparing for training and I hesitated at first but plucked up my courage, opened the door and inched my way in. Seeing Willie Stevenson, I walked across, clutching a piece of paper and a pen. ‘Will you sign this please, Willie?’ ’No.’
“His answer was short and brutal, stunning me. My hero had refused. Just as I turned away, my heart broken, Willie said, ‘Oh, all right!’ Then Hunt, Cally, the Saint and all the players burst out laughing. Their behaviour gave me a glimpse of the Liverpool way. This teasing was how the dressing room worked and how they made people feel at ease. As Willie signed the autograph, I felt even more this could be home. They had treated me as an individual and made a joke of the situation, rather than doing it in an off-hand manner. I couldn’t stand players not looking up when they signed autographs, not even registering I was there. Liverpool were different. I re-played that incident over in my mind many times as I pondered years later which club I should leave Celtic for."
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