Red Machine

by Simon Hughes

  Liverpool’s attitude towards injured players had been legendarily brutal. In Bill Shankly’s era, a centre-forward called Jack Whitham, signed for a considerable fee from Sheffield Wednesday, spent more time on the treatment table than on the training pitch.

  ‘Training for Jack was like jogging in between injuries,’ Ian St John recalled. ‘Finally, one day Shanks marched up to him and said, “You, go up to the corner [where the pigsty was] and train up there. I don’t want you to contaminate the rest of the team.”’

  With history against him, Sheedy was in an awkward position. For a long time he felt pain in his back and struggled to find consistent form.

  ‘The injury was absolutely genuine, but Liverpool didn’t see it like that. Liverpool was such a successful club; it’s difficult to argue with their methods generally. But I think my early struggles with fitness were bad for me in the long term. Immediately, there was a perception that I was a crock. And when you had that reputation at Liverpool, it was a difficult tag to shake off.’

  When the possibility of a first-team outing arrived, injury struck again.

  ‘I played for Ireland Under-21s, ironically at Anfield, and took a heavy knock to the ankle. It ruled me out for a month. Straight away, Ray [Kennedy] got injured too, and my opportunity passed by. I was playing in Ray’s position for the reserves, so I was his deputy. Ronnie [Whelan] was left footed and Bob gave him the chance. He took it with both hands. It felt like everything was conspiring against me at Liverpool.’

  Even by the time Sheedy made his debut, he’d informed the club of his intention to leave. On a four-year contract, exit routes were limited.

  ‘It was the most difficult period of my career. I felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall for a long time. Mentally, it was impossible. I felt I was good enough for first-team football at a top club, but Liverpool weren’t in the business of letting a player go to a place where they might end up proving the decision makers wrong. Blackpool and Derby County both made firm offers and Liverpool accepted, but I didn’t want to go to either of those clubs.’

  This was before players had the power to force moves away from clubs they did not want to be at. Sheedy’s long-term contract meant that, unless all parties agreed, he would have to wait until it ended and then have a choice of destinations, albeit the buying club would still have to pay a fee for his services.

  ‘It made me tougher mentally. I knew that no matter how well I did, there was a bit of an impasse between me and the club, and in the long term I would have to get away. My parents helped me through it, coming up for all reserve games both home and away. It would have been easy to let my performances drift off, but because my parents were in attendance I didn’t want to let them down. Thankfully, Everton saw enough to take me on.’

  Initial contact from Goodison Park arrived through a local press man.

  ‘Football clubs were and always have been secretive. They trusted certain aides to make confidential calls for them, and when my phone rang I thought he wanted a quiet chat about my future, as it was common knowledge my time at Liverpool was coming to an end.

  ‘Elsie Road was right next to Anfield but a stone’s throw away from Goodison Park, so every midweek home game when Everton were playing, I’d walk over and sit in the top balcony of the Main Stand. I wasn’t a well-known face in Liverpool, but I still wore a heavy coat with a hood to make sure nobody recognised me. I was lucky enough to watch Graeme Sharp make his debut. I could see Howard [Kendall] was building a young team centred on players like Adrian Heath and Kevin Ratcliffe. Without knowing it, I’d done my homework. I knew what I was going into. I also knew Evertonians were thinking that if I wasn’t good enough for Liverpool, why would I be good enough for Everton, so I knew I had to get off to a good start and, luckily for me, I did.’

  Sheedy’s initial form was steady. But it took another 18 months for Everton to take off. By November 1983, inconsistent league form had seen only four wins in twelve matches. A new nadir was reached as table-topping Liverpool cruised to a 3–0 derby victory. There were rumours of Kendall being sacked. But what appeared as a moment of misery acted as a catalyst for future achievements. Although the Blues would continue to struggle until the beginning of January (a month where Kendall was rumoured to again be on the verge of dismissal), the defeat in the derby prompted Kendall to install Colin Harvey as first-team coach.

  Although Harvey’s appointment received recognition in the press, that story was overtaken by Everton’s attempt to sign Brazilian João Batista Nunes. In an attempt to boost morale on the pitch and on the terraces, Kendall targeted the ageing striker who two years earlier had finished as the country’s top scorer in domestic competitions with Flamengo. Had the deal been concluded, Nunes would have been the first Brazilian to play in England. At the last minute, though, Nunes decided to remain in South America. Instead, Kendall moved for Andy Gray. Gray would score goals in the FA Cup final at the end of that season, as well as in the Cup-Winners’ Cup final a year later.

  ‘Howard gave the younger players as much respect as the older ones. He treated us like adults,’ Sheedy recalls. ‘It was a good young team, but it was a good young team that wasn’t getting consistent results. Howard was really clever with the press, and that bought him a bit of time when things were at rock bottom. People look at various moments, like Adrian Heath’s goal at Oxford when we were 1–0 down in 1984 during the League Cup. [Everton went on to reach the League Cup final as well as the FA Cup final.] There was a theory buzzing about the place that the directors were prepared to sack Howard if we went out.’

  While Harvey’s influence on the training field improved Everton tactically, the belated flowering of Peter Reid in the heart of midfield was crucial to the team’s development.

  ‘We needed a few more experienced pros to help the youngsters out through the sticky patches. Andy Gray’s arrival and Reidy’s emergence as one of the best midfielders in the country helped a lot. When Reidy came in from Bolton, it did not look like a big signing. Peter had been through a lot of injury problems.’

  A fee of £60,000 reflected that.

  ‘We heard someone had sent Howard a letter warning him against signing him because he could not pass the ball more than 40 yards. But Howard went with his instincts.’

  Sheedy believes the impact of Reid and Gray on an Everton dressing-room filled with ambitious young players was ‘to turn us into men’. Gray was the type of striker that could wage a one-man war against opponents, flattening defenders like a cruel cyclone.

  ‘There is a perception now that Gray scored a lot of goals, but if you look at his record, that wasn’t the case. His influence over the team, though, was very important because his presence meant we weren’t going to be bullied any more.’

  With Harvey taking charge of training and Kendall observing and trusting his own judgements, the regimes at Bellefield and Melwood were very similar.

  ‘There wasn’t a lot of coaching at Liverpool. It was more a case of the management recruiting good players with the intelligence to figure it out themselves. People say, “Surely it wasn’t just five-a-sides …” But it was.

  ‘At Everton, there was the odd tactical drill, but generally it was uncomplicated. It was a case of getting it down, passing and moving – one and two touch. For me, it proves that if you’ve got good players who are bright enough, they can self-teach and take their findings into a match.’

  Not much could divide the quality in the Liverpool and Everton teams. Sheedy believes, however, that Everton had an advantage in their goalkeeper. Neville Southall was probably the best in the world during the ’80s. Usually with his socks down and shin-pads flapping, Big Nev was a man who bore an appearance of someone whose job it was to drain dregs at a dreary speakeasy. Instead, he had remarkable acrobatics and could deny any of the English top flight’s clinical best.

  ‘Nev was better than Bruce [Grobbelaar] by far,’ Sheedy insists. ‘He didn’t make any daft mistakes, rushing off hi
s line or coming for crosses when he should have stayed on his line. Bruce was helped by the fact that the Liverpool defenders always knew that he was coming, meaning they could get back on the line and prevent the ball from going in when he didn’t meet a cross. To a certain extent, they knew what they were going to get.’

  Despite Southall’s greater reliability, like Grobbelaar he was different to the outfield players, marked out by the fact that he did not drink. I remember a story told to me by ex-Everton midfielder John Ebbrell. Whenever Everton travelled to away games, Southall would collect Ebbrell from his home on Wirral en route to the team’s rendezvous point. The reason was simple. Ebbrell would like to unwind on the way home with a few beers, and, as Southall wasn’t a drinker, he became the regular designated driver.

  ‘He used to come and park his Volvo estate on my front lawn,’ Ebbrell explained. ‘I used to live in a cul-de-sac and I’d be sitting in my living room watching TV, waiting for him. Suddenly I’d hear the screech of this car speeding around the roads nearby, then this filthy Volvo would come in and pile through my driveway. Nev would be sitting there in front of the window having mowed down the flower bed, looking like Mad Max.’

  Sheedy continues: ‘Bruce was an eccentric while Nev was plain crazy. He was the ’80s version of Peter Schmeichel. It was his dedication that set him apart. He hated conceding goals. If anyone scored a hat-trick against him in training, he’d be chasing them around Bellefield for a week. With respect to the other goalkeepers at the club, you knew that if you had a shot, you didn’t necessarily need to put it right in the corner to beat them. That wasn’t the case with Nev. A shot had to be perfect. That also improved the precision of the strikers.

  ‘The best goalkeepers always make the goal look smaller. The failing of some goalkeepers means that draws can sometimes turn into defeats and victories can turn into draws. The opposite was the case with Nev. They used to say at Liverpool that Ray Clemence won the team a minimum of twelve points a season in an era when there was only two points for a win. I’m not sure whether Bruce could claim that.’

  Everton’s social scene was founded on mass gatherings around a table at one of any number of Chinese restaurants in Liverpool’s city centre. Kendall’s policy was to make sure the players met when results were lean.

  ‘It meant that, one way or another, any issues would get ironed out quickly,’ Sheedy remembers. ‘We had a stringent disciplinary system at Everton, where players would get fined for the slightest indiscretion. It was a great idea for team spirit, because it meant that people would try to be on their best behaviour, but at the same time if anyone went out of line the group would benefit by coming together for a night.’

  Compared to Liverpool’s fourteen major honours in the ’80s (excluding Charity Shields), Everton won two league titles, one FA Cup and a Cup-Winners’ Cup. Their threat to Liverpool’s domination was genuine. But after the Heysel disaster, Everton – like all English clubs – were prevented from competing in Europe. As reigning First Division champions, the restriction was particularly damaging to Kendall’s team, who believed they had a chance of winning a first European Cup.

  ‘All the momentum was with us,’ says Sheedy, who eventually left Everton in 1992 for Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle before a spell at Blackpool. ‘English clubs had dominated the European Cup for nearly a decade, so we thought it was going to be our time. After Heysel, there was a lot of disappointment that we didn’t get a chance to prove it. But we were not alone. Liverpool were in the same boat. So, who knows, if things were different, Liverpool could be sitting here now with seven or eight European Cups. I have a lot of sympathy for their players, too.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SKIPPY, Craig Johnston

  ‘I WAS CRAP, MATE,’ SAYS CRAIG JOHNSTON IN A BEGUILING MANNER, while he redresses his thinning top curls into a ponytail. ‘I had a dream to become the best player in the world, but I failed miserably. In fact, by playing for Liverpool, I was the worst player in the best team in the world … you really have no idea how crap I was.’

  The genial Australian, known as Skippy to Liverpool supporters, could be readying himself for a beach party at Surfers Paradise rather than an afternoon slurping Earl Grey inside his partner’s penthouse apartment in Knightsbridge, central London. He is bereft of footwear when I meet him, wearing a checked shirt with sleeves rolled up and a pair of ripped jeans. ‘I go for the Status Quo rather than the Brian May look these days,’ he jokes. Of all the characters interviewed for this book, the former winger would be the most unassuming and engaging in equal measure.

  Johnston, who won five league titles, an FA Cup and one European Cup at Anfield between 1981 and 1988, had to prove a lot of people wrong before making it on Merseyside. At Middlesbrough, during his first trial match in England, he was labelled by Jack Charlton as ‘the worst player I’ve ever seen’, before being told that it would be in his best interests to ‘fuck off back to Australia’.

  It toughened him up, and those words have been buzzing in his ears ever since – as a constant motivation to improve. Past his 50th birthday, Johnston has maximised his talents both during his football career and afterwards. Since retiring at the age of 27 to care for his sick sister, he has invented a football boot, created software for hotel businesses to monitor minibar thefts, made up a revolutionary system for coaching children, developed computer models for analysing football statistics and, most recently, established himself as an award-winning photographic artist. At one point, he was also bankrupt and made homeless.

  Johnston’s memories from matches, moments and medals over his playing career have faded – something he admits. It probably has something to do with the fact that he’s done so much since deciding to quit the game. Unlike many other ex-pros, he has a lifetime of alternative achievements to reflect on.

  ‘One day, I’ll have to research and try to remember exact games and goals,’ he says. ‘Instead, I am more analytical of people and attitudes. I wasn’t an intelligent footballer. I was called an idiot on a lot of occasions because my understanding of the game wasn’t as good as other players’. Away from the pitch, I was and still am streetwise, and I reckon I’ve got a better grasp of the way the world works. That has been my saviour, because football doesn’t prepare you for what happens after you quit.’

  Johnston spent the first four years of his life in an apartment block in the Berea district of Johannesburg.

  ‘My parents were Australian and met on a boat. They were travelling independently around the world. Dad was going to Scotland to try to be a footballer, and Mum was going to London to be a teacher. After a year or so, Dad was frustrated with Aberdeen reserves, so he travelled south to catch up with my mum. Before long, she gave birth to a daughter.

  ‘They lived near Craven Cottage, so my Dad went to watch Fulham a lot. His heroes were Johnny Haynes and Jimmy Greaves. He tells a lovely story about going to the ground before they moved to South Africa when Mum was pregnant with me. There was nobody there; it was during the week. He rubbed her belly and said, “One day my boy will come back here and play soccer.” Years later we drew Fulham in the League Cup and Kenny [Dalglish] got injured. I wore the famous number 7 and we won 1–0. Dad’s prediction was right.’

  After his parents decided to return to Australia when Johnston was six, the family settled in Boolaroo on the outskirts of Newcastle, a coalmining and steel town about 100 miles north of Sydney.

  ‘It was very working class,’ he says. ‘The miners from the collieries in the north of England had come over to work. They named places after towns back home – there was Morpeth, Gateshead, Wallsend – all towns being built on the east coast of Australia.’

  The coalminers brought football with them.

  ‘Sydney and Brisbane are rugby league towns. Everywhere also had cricket, rugby union and Aussie Rules. But soccer was a big, big thing in Newcastle where I lived. It was soccer, soccer and soccer. That’s the main reason I became a player.’

  Johnston l
ater starred at cricket for New South Wales state at junior level as a medium-paced bowler. But he was obsessed with ‘soccer’.

  ‘I grew up with my dad telling me stories about his early 20s when he tried to make it as a pro. I made it my mission to retrace his footsteps but this time to make it as a professional – even if it was just for one game. The team of the day that we saw on Australian TV was Leeds United: Billy Bremner, Johnny Giles and Sniffer Clarke. I liked them because they were tough men.’

  Johnston watched football a lot following an enforced break from school.

  ‘I got involved in a bad fight one day,’ he recalls. ‘I really got beaten up by this English kid. I developed a disease, osteomyelitis, which is a form of polio. It rots the bone. In the ’60s, it was incurable. I spent six months in hospital and at one stage doctors said that the only option was to cut my leg off. My mum signed the form giving the order to amputate. Luckily, there was a doctor visiting Australia from abroad who managed to save it. While I was recuperating, all I did was watch English football.’

  At 15, he saw a touring team from Middlesbrough beat his local side, Newcastle. Afterwards, he wrote to ’Boro boss Jack Charlton asking for a trial. He also penned letters to Dave Sexton at Chelsea and Tommy Docherty at Manchester United.

  ‘Middlesbrough were the only ones to respond,’ he remembers. ‘But they told me I had to pay for my own flights and boarding. It meant some big sacrifices for the family. We had horses and they used to shit a lot and people needed it for their gardens. So I collected horse manure for money. My family eventually had to sell the house and move into a smaller property out of town to fund the plane tickets. They understood that I’d struggled with the osteomyelitis and understood what it was like to have your dreams taken away like it did with Dad. So they supported me all the way through.’