Two Cups, One Goalie

(Originally published in 'We Are Liverpool' magazine, issue 3 - September 2014)

There are two things that, I am fairly certain, won’t come as a huge surprise.

One: Liverpool FC have won Europe’s most prestigious trophy, the Champions League / European Cup / call it what you will (except ‘Old Big Ears’, a term which should only be used as a football reference when discussing the career of Francis Jeffers ), five times.

Two: by the early 80s, Liverpool FC enjoyed the kind of dominance rarely seen outside of Madame Fifi’s Saucy Punishment Parlour.

It was a circular process.  More trophies meant a continuation of the supremacy; the aura of success acquired a self-fulfilling motion, leading to more victories, more trophies.  What a glorious time to be a Red. 

And yet, at the risk of sounding like an ungrateful curmudgeon, I have always felt that we underachieved. It sounds insane when you consider the triumphs we witnessed – title after title, cup after cup – but there are a couple of glaring omissions on our roll-call of honours that have haunted me for the last 30 years. 

For two years in succession, 1982 and 1983, we were favourites to lift the European Cup.  For two years in succession we royally cocked it up.

Well, I say ‘we’.  In reality it only took one person to trample our dreams into the dirt.  And I’ve held a grudge ever since.

J’accuse Bruce Grobbelaar.

People who say lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place aren’t merely ignorant of scientific reality, they also lack imagination.  I doubt they ever saw Grobbelaar play for Liverpool. 

Sure, the spring-heeled Zimbabwean with the Scouser's 'tache was capable of gravity-defying brilliance when the mood took him, contorting his body like an Olympic gymnast to scoop balls away from his net, a maelstrom of reflexes & instinct.  He would race from his line without hesitation to plunge at the feet of an advancing attacker. He would also, with alarming frequency, eschew conventional goalkeeping techniques in favour of a more esoteric approach. Great in theory.  Often disastrous in practice.

For every spectacular save, every match-turning interception, there'd be a calamity.  A loss of concentration, a reckless charge, a ball squirting through hands or legs.

In his first season at Anfield, Grobbelaar went through the full repertoire.  It was a major culture shock to a crowd accustomed to the steady brilliance of Ray Clemence.  A nadir was reached on Boxing Day, 1981.  In a 3-1 home defeat to Manchester City, Brucie managed to display all the goalkeeping competence of a blocked sink. There seemed no way back, for both keeper and team.

And yet, just a couple of months later, his rehabilitation was almost complete. An ultimately successful title challenge was back on track, the European Cup quarter final beckoned.  Grobbelaar had started to repay the faith Bob Paisley unconditionally placed in him.

At which point, the familiar destructive tendencies once more kicked in.  CSKA Sofia were the opponents. Twelve months earlier, a consummate Souness hat-trick had inspired Liverpool to a 5-1 thrashing of the Bulgarian champions.  With wounds well and truly licked, they saw the rematch as a chance for rapid revenge.

A 1-0 Anfield home win gave few indications of the drama to come.  And for much of the second leg, Paisley’s team exercised a level of control that had long become a Liverpool trademark. Chances were created, a legitimate Rush effort was deemed invalid, penalty shouts went unheeded. There was, of course, a grim inevitability about what happened next.

With 20 minutes left, a speculative cross was punted into the Liverpool area. Like an impatient toddler keen to be noticed, Grobbelaar saw his chance. He shuffled forward with intent, carefully eyeing the flight of the ball. He readied himself to gather. As the ball sailed over his head, it occurred to everyone that, for neither the first nor last time, his judgement had been seriously awry.  I'm talking ‘Boris Johnson in a thong’ levels of awryness here.  Awryness all over the shop.

With the goalkeeper occupying the proverbial no man’s land, CSKA striker and potential Countdown conundrum, Mladenov, had the simple task of nodding the ball into the unguarded net, sending the game into extra time.  As Liverpool imploded, the Bulgarian grabbed a second, to knock the holders out of the competition. 

Now clearly, there are no guarantees in football and we should be wary of jumping to unsustainable conclusions.  But Aston Villa went on to win the European Cup that season.

Cheers, Bruce.

Fast forward twelve months.  The same stage of the same competition.  Opposition from Eastern Europe once again, this time Poland’s Widzew Lodz.  And a repeat of the same dire spectacle, played out as if to reassure those doubting the conceptual validity of déjà vu.

This time it was the first leg.  A comfortable stroll against moderate opponents transformed into an insurmountable deficit thanks to Grobbelaar’s uniquely erratic decision-making tendencies.  Again it was a high ball.  Again there was no logical need for him to attempt to collect.  But that’s exactly what he did.  One-handed.  Like the world’s worst juggler, trying to catch wet soap, blindfold, on a trampoline.  Obviously, he spilled it.  Obviously, the result was a Widzew goal.  Followed, as Liverpool poured forward to atone for their goalkeeper’s well-honed profligacy, by another.

As some kind of warped encore, in the return leg Bruce again raced from his line to concede a penalty, after an uncharacteristic Souness blunder.  There was no way back.  European glory was put on hold for one more year. 

In Rome, redemption, of a sort, was achieved.  As Liverpool secured their fourth European Cup, Grobbelaar was cast in a leading role, with wobbly-legged capers conferring legend status on the madcap gaffe magnet.  

Not for me.  I still have visions of two ruined campaigns.  Of two lost cups.

Some grudges take a whole lot of shifting.

1981/82 - THE START OF A BEAUTIFUL RELATIONSHIP

[Originally published in Well Red magazine, February 2012]

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Some seasons stick in the memory more than others.  It just depends which set of experiences you choose to fall back on. 

As anyone who followed Liverpool in the ‘70s and ‘80s will tell you, it seemed that every campaign was a treasure trove of memorable games and defining moments.  Silverware arrived with unprecedented regularity, icons were born and, when the time came, were replaced by newer, shinier models.  The juggernaut kept on rolling, leaving the Uniteds, the Evertons, the Arsenals – let’s face it, the whole of Europe – crushed in our wake.  It was a good time to grow up a Red.

In the midst of this glorious procession, it’s fair to say that I came of age as a Liverpool supporter.  From spending games perched on my Dad’s knee in the Main Stand as a giddy 7 year old, to standing on a home-made stool in the Anny Road end, craning to see anything other than the back of some oversized docker’s neck, to my Kop apprenticeship (same spot each week - just to the side of the right-hand stanchion), to the relative comfort of a Main Stand season ticket (relative to the comfort enjoyed by, say, a hostage chained to a radiator), and back to the sweaty, tobacco-fuelled embrace of the Kop.  A host of vivid memories to cling to in the wilderness years.

It was whilst happily bathing in the warm glow of such reminiscences that I was struck by a chilling, yet unavoidable realisation.  It is now 30 years since my first season as a fully-fledged regular match-goer.  30 years. How did that happen?

I’d been to my fair share of matches prior to 1981/82, odd games here and there when the opportunity arose, but this was different.  I was 14 now, old enough to single-handedly navigate the hazardous 3.6 mile journey from the mean streets of Orrell Park to Anfield.  Or, as was usually the case, blag a lift off my Dad to the junction of Walton Lane and Anfield Road.  The sense of independence, the thrill of the new, was all-consuming.  This was where I belonged, these were my people.  It was like becoming part of an elite club, albeit one with questionable toilet provisions and an admittedly lax dress code.   

Now all that remained was to settle back and wait for the LFC Class of ’81 to sweep all before them, as tradition dictated they would.  Simple, really.

Except this was to be a season unlike most others.  Alright, it culminated with Liverpool cast once more as the country’s pre-eminent team, with both the League title and League Cup safely tucked away.  No change there.  But there were to be more twists along the way than you’d get in an Eastenders Christmas special.  

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Having captured the European Cup for the third time just a few months earlier, it seemed that Liverpool were entering the 1981/82 campaign in typically robust shape.  However, those supporters who observed with some alarm the team’s disappointing 5^th place finish the previous year had genuine cause for quiet concern. 

The remorseless crushing machine of 78/79 was by now starting to show the inevitable signs of ageing. Players who had scaled the ultimate heights at Anfield could no longer produce the consistency or vitality needed to sustain yet another title challenge.  A staleness had crept into Liverpool’s game.  Without rejuvenation, the squad would struggle to compete with the vigour and drive of reigning champions Aston Villa (no, really) or UEFA Cup holders Ipswich (yes, I know).

Naturally, no-one was aware of this more than Bob Paisley.  His immediate response was to bolster his options with a trio of eye-catching signings.  In Mark Lawrenson and Craig Johnston, Paisley saw players of immense promise, relative youth and, above all, real pace.  In Bruce Grobbelaar, he had earmarked a potential long-term successor to the great Ray Clemence.  With prodigiously talented youngsters like Ian Rush and Ronnie Whelan waiting hungrily in the wings, the foundations were in place for a gradual transition.  As it transpired the need to rebuild soon became more urgent than even Paisley had envisioned.

Just two weeks before the opening game of the season, Clemence decided to pursue the fresh challenge offered by perennial dilettantes Tottenham.  After more than a decade as Liverpool’s undisputed number one, his loss was a grievous blow.  As a result, Grobbelaar’s credentials would be tested a lot sooner than either he or Paisley expected.

As the campaign progressed, it quickly became apparent that all was not well.  Just as the new boys struggled to impose their identity on the team, so the old hands failed to recapture the consistency and level of performance that we had become accustomed to.  Seasoned internationals were making the kind of mistakes more commonly found in the schoolyard; Anfield’s reputation as a fortress was in danger of being undermined by a series of disappointing displays and results; I began to fear that my presence on the terraces was having some kind of adverse effect, an inverted Midas Touch, turning all I surveyed to cack.

Clearly, the transition was going to need a bit of gentle coercion.

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The tipping point came on Boxing Day.  A calamitous home fixture against Manchester City ended in a thoroughly dismal 3-1 defeat in a game notable for a number of reasons. It was already the third reversal Anfield had witnessed (along with three draws) in just nine matches – by comparison, the previous decade as a whole had produced only five home losses.  It saw the erratic Grobbelaar reach a nadir, his handling disastrous, his decision-making bizarre and his confidence shot to pieces.  It marked Phil Thompson’s final game as Liverpool captain, with Paisley handing the armband to Graeme Souness in the aftermath, an attempt to stem the alarming dip in Thompson’s form (and a decision which was to sow seeds of long-lasting personal resentment between the pair that has never been fully resolved). 

It meant that Manchester City jumped to the top of the table, an event considerably more noteworthy in the days of the Peter Swales comb-over than it is in today’s cash-soaked times.  And it left Liverpool languishing in 12^th place, disjointed and off-the pace, our title chances seemingly in tatters.

 But if we’ve learnt anything from this club’s history, it’s surely to know not to write it off when the odds are stacked against it. 

Paisley understood that the team’s prospects depended on its response to his decision to ease some of his long-serving stars out of the first-team picture.  Despite the previous stellar contributions of the likes of Ray Kennedy, David Johnson, Terry McDermott, even Thompson himself, he was not one to let sentimentality stand in the way of progress.  And he was canny enough to know that, sooner rather than later, his remodelled squad would find its feet.  When it did logic, and history, suggested that the rest of the division wouldn’t be able to live with it.

The revival began almost immediately.  High-flying Swansea were clinically dispatched, 4-0, on their own turf, in a one-sided FA Cup tie.  The confidence and consistency flooded back.  The fledgling Dalglish – Rush partnership began to flourish, the revitalising effect on Kenny’s career clear to all; Whelan and Johnston brought some much-needed energy and directness to the midfield; at the back Lawrenson and Hansen forged an understanding, based on the kind of ball-playing ability rarely seen in defenders on these shores, that would come to be unrivalled in the club’s history; even Brucie managed to rein in some of his more damaging excesses.

The juggernaut was back on the road.  After the City debacle, twenty of the next twenty four league games were won (including, in one spell, eleven consecutive victories).  Devastating displays mixed with battling performances, full of character and purpose.  The League Cup was secured after another belated comeback at Wembley against Ray Clemence’s Tottenham.  Villa, Everton, United and City were blown away in front of their own supporters, the latter a 5-0 massacre that excised the pain of the Boxing Day disaster. 

One by one, the teams above us in the league were reeled in and overtaken.  Until finally, in the season’s penultimate game, with Spurs again the hapless victims, second half goals from Lawrenson, Dalglish and Whelan confirmed Liverpool as champions for the thirteenth time.  Given the circumstances, it’s easy to understand why Paisley, a man who knew a thing or two about championship success, saw this as his most satisfying triumph.

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As for me, my debut season as an Anfield regular was a momentous one.

It included my first Wembley visit (which was followed by accidentally jumping a taxi queue at Lime Street station in front of an understandably miffed-looking Kenny Dalglish and Sammy Lee), my first Goodison derby (smack in the middle of the Gwladys Street End, which made celebrating Craig Johnston’s mis-hit clincher an exercise in failed restraint) and my first exposure to the talents that would sustain a new era of success. 

It ended with the intense anti-climax of being locked out of the title-decider with Tottenham, having arrived 90 minutes before kick-off, the very fact that such a game was a ‘pay-on-the-gate’ affair acting as a stark reminder that these were very different times. 

There have been lots of games, lots of trophies, lots of memories since then. I’ve grown older, wiser, more cynical, more tolerant, more inclined to treat results, good or bad, with a rationality I would have once thought impossible.  I’ve seen our club at its highest and at its lowest and realised that, sometimes, real life makes football seem irrelevant.  Sorry, it just does.

Time passes, things change, people move on.  Even the most treasured of memories eventually start to fade. 

But, 30 years on, there’ll always be a part of me that’s still back on the Kop in 1982.