Following on from last week (see link: https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/11/liverpool-fc-in-1960s-part-1-of-3.html), where I wandered outside of the football world and into wider aspects of the 1960s, this week it's back to the football...
The
1960s in English football – the shape of a decade
As you will see from the decade’s
summary stats at the end of next week’s blog, the balance of power in English
football swung firmly to the northwest in the 1960s. Of the ten First Division
titles of the decade, Liverpool, Everton and Manchester United won two each,
thus bringing their historic totals to seven top flight wins and joining
Arsenal at the summit of the roll of honour. Manchester City picked up the
seventh win for a northwest side.
Also of note, Tottenham
Hotspur won the first league and FA Cup double of the century in 1960-1961 and
Ipswich managed to win the First Division for the first (and as yet only) time in 1961-1962,
directly after promotion from the Second Division. Leeds United also took their
maiden First Division title, in 1968-1969. On the European front, Celtic’s
‘Lisbon Lions’ became in 1967 the first British team to win the European Cup,
in a season when Rangers contested the Cup Winners’ Cup final, losing out to
Bayern Munich. Former Liverpool captain Matt Busby’s rebuilding of his
Manchester United team after the Munich air disaster came to final fruition
with their European Cup win in 1968 while West Ham United won the Cup Winners’
Cup of 1965. On the international front, English football reached a high that’s
yet to be matched in winning the 1966 World Cup.
Liverpool hero Roger Hunt swapped the red of Liverpool for the
red of England in the 1966 World Cup Final
Despite the successes of
northwest clubs in the 1960s, however, only Liverpool would build on the gains
of that decade, going on to dominate the English and European game for most of
the next twenty years.
Liverpool
in the 1960s – the big wins
Liverpool had four big wins
during the decade, and a few near misses. Arguably the most important win was
the Second Division title of 1961-1962, in Bill Shankly’s second full season in
charge of the club. Roger Hunt managed 42 goals in all competitions that season
and Liverpool’s return to top flight football for the first time since 1954
would be followed by the First Division title in the 1963-1964 season.
Promotion at last - Liverpool win the 1961-1962 Second Division to climb back to top flight football after 8 seasons in the doldrums. Ron Yeats is the player holding the trophy, with Bill Shankly looking on from the right of the photo
And then - just a decade after relegation and in their second season back in the First Division, Liverpool are champions of England for the 6th time in 1963-1964
Back row: Gordon Milne, Gerry Byrne, Tommy Lawrence, Ronnie Moran, Willie Stevenson, Bob Paisley
Front row: Reuben Bennett, Ian Callaghan, Roger Hunt, Ian St. John, TV Williams (Chairman), Ron Yeats, Alf Arrowsmith, Peter Thompson, Bill Shankly
Then in 1965 came Liverpool’s long
awaited first FA Cup final win, with a tightly fought and tense encounter at
Wembley against the newly emerging Leeds United. Leeds fielded two Irishmen
that day, one who was actually Irish (John Giles) and one who became an
honorary Irishman (Jack Charlton - see previous blog: https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/07/thanks-jack.html). Charlton apparently had somewhat of an off day
regarding his defensive duties during that final but he did manage to set up Billy
Bremner’s equalizing goal in a move that proved that (as he would utilize in
his later managerial career) a long ball up to a big man sometimes results in
the most sublime of outcomes.
The match was scoreless after normal time and all three goals were scored in extra time. In an era when substitutes were not allowed, Liverpool left back Gerry Byrne broke his collar bone in the 7th minute but played the entirety of the rest of the game and extra-time, even managing to make the cross for Roger Hunt's opening goal.
In the video clip below you can find Roger Hunt's opening goal at the 4 minutes 30 mark, Billy Bremner's equalizer (courtesy of the knock-down from Big Jack Charlton) at 4:56 and, finally, Ian St. John's winner at 5:32, a goal that would finally end Liverpool's 73 year quest for the FA Cup.
Ian St. John's extra-time winner - making Liverpool FA Cup champions
for the first time in their then 73 year history
1965-1966 then saw Liverpool go on to claim their seventh First Division title, reaching the top of the all-time
roll of honour for the first time, along with Arsenal. Thus ended the first
flurry of success for Bill Shankly’s first Liverpool team, three seasons during
which they reached heights that would have been unimaginable just a few years
before when struggling vainly to escape from the Second Division (see previous blog: https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/09/lincoln-city-versus-liverpool-1950s.html)
Other notable milestones and near misses of the decade included Liverpool’s first European final, a 2-1 defeat to Borussia Dortmund in the 1966 Cup Winners’ Cup final at Hampden Park. And there was also the controversial semi-final exit against Inter Milan (4-3 on aggregate over two legs) in Liverpool’s first European Cup campaign.
Another key development in
the history of Liverpool FC also took place during the 1960s when Bill Shankly
decided that Liverpool would change to the iconic all red strip, its first appearance coming in a European Cup Second Round tie against Anderlecht, on November 24th
1964.
Liverpool in the 1960s – three key players
Roger Hunt can safely be described as Liverpool’s player of the 1960s. Signing for Liverpool as a 21 year old in September 1959, he remained a loyal and high performing servant right through until the very end of the 1960s, leaving the club for Bolton Wanders in December 1969. During that golden decade, Hunt was top scorer for 8 consecutive seasons, scoring 285 goals in all and thus becoming Liverpool’s all-time top scorer to date. He remains second in that list, bettered only by Ian Rush.
Hunt's final haul of medals included the 1961-1962 Second Division title, two First Division wins (1963-1964 and 1965-1966), that breakthrough FA Cup win of 1965 (when he scored the opening goal) and, of course, a World Cup win with England in 1966, during which he played in all games, scoring three goals and (somewhat controversially, according to the London-centric press) displaced Jimmy Greaves from the line-up in the final against West Germany.
Bobby Moore (England captain for the 1966
World Cup) summed Hunt up nicely when he said: ‘Roger Hunt is a player’s
player. He is possibly appreciated more by those who play with him and against
him than by those who watch him’. And Hunt’s unassuming nature and dedication
to honest hard work is reflected in his own words: ‘I knew perfectly well that
I wasn’t an out-and-out natural, the sort who can make a ball talk so it was
down to me to compensate for it in other ways. I made up my mind that if I
didn’t succeed at Anfield it wouldn’t be for lack of determination. From the
first day, I threw myself into training, ran and tackled for everything and
practised my ball skills at every opportunity’. Whether Hunt was a ‘natural’ or
not, his record speaks for itself – a golden career during a golden decade for
Liverpool.
Ian St. John was, along with Ron Yeats, one of the two key signings that Bill Shankly made in the construction of his first Liverpool team. Shankly had jettisoned 24 players within a year or two of his arrival at the club (including even the club legend, a by then ageing Bill Liddell) and he then set his sights on some key signings. While managing Huddersfield Town, he had tried but failed to sign St. John and Yeats, because of a lack of funds. However, he managed to convince Liverpool’s financial director Eric Sawyer to back him in spending 37,500 pounds in bringing St. John south from Motherwell.
In hyperbole typical of Shankly, he told Sawyer of St. John: ‘He’s not just a good centre-forward, he’s the only centre-forward in the game’. St. John developed an effective partnership with Roger Hunt and enjoyed 10 glorious years at Anfield, scoring 118 goals between 1961 and 1971. His most memorable goal was that diving header to win the FA Cup for Liverpool in 1965.
St. John also played 21 times for his native Scotland and continued his life in football after retirement as a player, going on to manage and become a television pundit. His importance to Liverpool in the 1960s is summed up best by Bill Shankly, as always, when he said of the arrival of Ian St. John and Ron Yeats that it was: ‘the very beginning of Liverpool’s rise, and they did more for the rise than anyone else. Yeats at the back, St. John at the front’. Over half a century after ‘The Team of the Macs’ (see earlier blog: https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/05/aston-villa-5-liverpool-0-1899-and-2019.html), Liverpool was still reaping benefits from recruitment of Scottish superstars.
Ron Yeats (born 1937)
Ron Yeats joined Liverpool from Dundee United in 1961 and played his first competitive game for the club on August 16th 1961, which was also Ian St. John’s debut. On signing for then Second Division Liverpool, Bill Shankly assured Yeats that ‘with you in the side, we will soon be in the First Division’. As mentioned earlier, Bill Shankly saw Yeats and St. John as the two key signings for his first Liverpool team.
Standing at over 6 feet 2 and weighing over 14 stone, Yeats was a rock at the heart of the Liverpool defence and he captained the club for the rest of the decade, forming a strong partnership with Tommy Smith (more of Tommy in the 1970s instalment). Yeats played 454 times for Liverpool and became in 1965 the first Liverpool player to lift the FA Cup. After some time in management he returned to Liverpool as a scout in the late 1980s and continued in that role until his retirement in 2006.
His last involvement with the club was the 2006 so called ‘Gerrard’ FA Cup final. Perhaps in 2006 he was minded of his comments back in 1965 when he said: ‘it was an emotional time getting the cup from the queen. In fact, I just wanted to throw it into the crowd, to the Liverpool supporters. We won it now. Let’s share it between us’.
Next time, and for the third installment of this 1960s trilogy - the man who made the magic happen - Bill Shankly...
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