Dalglish

 

Dalglish

It was a quiet Saturday afternoon with no Celtic to watch and I noticed that the excellent documentary ‘Kenny’ was on TV. I watched it a couple of years back but thought it worth another look. It details the life of Kenny Dalglish in his family during his time as a player and later manager at Liverpool. Of course, we of a Celtic persuasion need no reminding of the superb footballer Kenny was. There are those who think he became a better player when he left Scotland to further his career in the bigger pond of English football. As someone who followed his career at Celtic and Liverpool I think he was playing with a higher standard of player in England and flourished more fully but he was superb at Celtic too.

Kenny and his family allowed a lot of private video footage to be shown and it gave a picture of a normal family life with Christmas morning when his children were small being especially touching. He comes across as a decent family man blessed with incredible footballing ability. It was this ability which lifted the lad from High Possil Senior Secondary school to a lifestyle he could only dreamed of as a boy. It wasn’t all plain sailing though as both West Ham and Liverpool had him in England for trials and sent him home without signing him up in 1966. The following year the Rangers mad youngster was snapped up by Celtic and became part of that excellent ‘quality street gang’ generation of young players. The likes of McGrain, Macari, Connelly, Kenny and many others coming through at Celtic Park would have very good careers in the game although none of them, apart from perhaps Danny McGrain, reached the heights Kenny did in the game.

Having lived in England for a decade myself I know the pressure which exists to take the rough edge of the Scottish accent or perhaps lose it altogether but Kenny always had that Glaswegian gravel in his voice despite spending over 40 years living down south. He was and remains very much his own man and that strength of character helped him achieve so much in the game.  His list of honours with both Celtic and Liverpool is extensive in both domestic and European football and he holds the record as Scotland’s most capped player. He has given millions of supporters sublime moments to remember with his skill on the field of play and the documentary rightly reflects this but perhaps his pinnacle as a man and a human being came after the events of April 15th 1989.

Sometimes we remember where we were when we hear certain pieces of news. Some people refer to them as ‘JFK moments’ and will tell you what they were doing when they heard of the death of Princess Diana or the 9/11 attacks. For me one such moment came on that fateful day in the spring of 1989. I was in a carpet shop of all places on Corn Street in the Oxfordshire Market town of Witney. A group us huddled around a radio in those pre-internet days and listened in disbelief as horror of Hillsborough unfolded. It is a matter of public record that the tragedy of that day was compounded by a dreadful Police cover up and a wicked tabloid campaign to smear Liverpool fans. Dalglish was Liverpool manager that day and would have known very quickly that something awful was unfolding.

Dalglish was a young Celtic player on the verge of his first team breakthrough when the tragedy at Ibrox in 1971 claimed the lives of 66 football fans. Although he didn’t play in that game, he would have been as stunned as everyone involved in Scottish football was at that lamentable incident. Nothing, it was thought, could eclipse the pain and scale of the Ibrox disaster but even that tragedy was surpassed by events at Hillsborough where 96 human beings lost their lives. The city of Liverpool was shattered; indeed the whole of the football world was utterly shocked by the events which occurred that April day in Sheffield. For those intimately involved in Liverpool Football club it was to be devastating experience which still haunts them. The scars may slowly heal but the pain and loss will last a lifetime for those who lost loved ones.

For Kenny Dalglish and all of those involved in Liverpool football club knew they had to be part of the healing process and be there for the families who needed them in that darkest of hours. The physical, mental and emotional strain on Dalglish and his wife Marina in the days and weeks after Hillsborough can only be imagined. He attended as many of the funerals of victims of the disaster as he could, including attending four in one day. Alan Hansen recalled, tears in his eyes, that one father approached him at a funeral and said simply, ‘seventeen, he was seventeen.’ His solidarity with the ordinary people of Liverpool was described at the time as heroic and one ordinary Scouser said, ‘We’ve adopted him now, Glasgow can’t have him back.’ Dalglish’s actions in the aftermath of Hillsborough naturally took their toll on him and in one poignant scene in the documentary he gazes from a hill in Sheffield towards the stadium in the distance where those events took place. Even all these years later the pain in his voice was palpable.

As Liverpool FC took their first painful steps back to playing football, it was fitting that they visited Celtic Park, Kenny’s old stamping ground. The warm embrace Celtic supporters gave both the Liverpool supporters and their team that day was a mark of true solidarity. We were all football fans and in those days we knew that but for the grace of God the events of Hillsborough could have occurred in any of the antiquated stadiums of the time. Celtic fans themselves had near misses at Nottingham Forrest in 1983-84 season and in that league clinching match with Dundee in 1988. The bond they forged with Liverpool supporters that day in 1989 remains strong and it was no coincidence that Celtic supporters were among their staunchest allies in the long struggle for Justice for the 96 who lost their lives at Hillsborough.

Kenny Dalglish quit as Liverpool manager in February 1991 and looking back he had lived with so much stress that the break was probably necessary to his mental and physical well-being. He would return in time to Blackburn Rovers and even a spell at Celtic. Reading the stats of his wonderful career demonstrates that he was among the best footballers of his generation. A truly world class player and highly successful manager but that list of honours, caps, goals and awards doesn’t describe the decency of the man who stepped up to the plate when his people were in pain and needed him.

In memories view I see Kenny hit an unstoppable swerving shot into the top corner at Tannadice on a winter’s day in late 1976. In my mind’s eyes he turns a Spanish defender and curls a beautiful shot  into the net as a packed Hampden roared its approval.

There were a thousand moments of subliminal skill to recount in his fine career but none were as beautifully poignant as him holding a grieving mother and sharing in her pain.

Kenny Dalglish, a wonderful footballer and a better human being.