The Boot Room Boys by Peter Hooton

Author:Peter Hooton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2018-09-26T16:00:00+00:00

John Toshack arrives at Lime Street Station with his wife Susan and is greeted by Bill Shankly, 11 November 1970.

The Second Coming

The first signing of the new decade was hardly high profile but it would turn out to be very astute. In May 1970, 22-year-old Steve Heighway, the flying winger, was bought from non-League Skelmesdale United after being spotted by Geoff Twentyman. The Dublin native’s unorthodox style of play on the left wing would prove a great asset to Shankly’s new-look team. He was a graduate like Brian Hall, who would also play an important part in Shankly’s second great team. The pair were affectionately called ‘Big Bamber’ and ‘Little Bamber’: a reference to University Challenge host Bamber Gascoigne and Brian Hall’s lack of height.

Later that year, Twentyman persuaded Bill Shankly to have a look at the prolific goal-scorer John Toshack as he had European experience with Cardiff City. In his scouting diary, in the entry for 6 November 1970, Twentyman had written, ‘Very good in the air, does a job we want.’ Shankly agreed, and within a week Toshack was a Liverpool player, signed for £110,000. Toshack was a wonderful header of the ball and with Heighway on the wing things were finally looking up.

Toshack admits that he found it hard at the start as he could feel the weight of expectation on his shoulders. He was under pressure to be an immediate success at a high level. When he arrived in Liverpool, the first thing Shankly said to him was ‘You’re coming out of Sunday school and going into church.’ Toshack knew exactly what he meant.

Geoff Twentyman was aware that while he was scouring the country for new talent, Liverpool couldn’t go out and sign too many £100,000-plus players. He concentrated on finding another hidden gem like Steve Heighway in the lower divisions, but fate would also play a part. When Andy Beattie – Shankly’s old team-mate at Preston and managerial boss at Huddersfield – tipped Liverpool off about a youngster playing for Scunthorpe, Shankly asked Twentyman to check him out. Twentyman liked what he saw, and on his recommendation Paisley, Fagan and Shankly went to watch Kevin Keegan in a second FA Cup replay between Scunthorpe and Tranmere Rovers at Goodison Park. The selection of the neutral location for the second replay was down to the toss of a coin, and if Scunthorpe had won the toss it would have been Hillsborough rather than the convenient Goodison Park – and the boot room might never have seen the young Kevin Keegan. On the evidence of that one game they all agreed he had the attributes to be a Liverpool player and they signed him for £33,000 in May 1971. Liverpool had been lucky with tossed coins.

Thanks to all the transformation and rebuilding, in the 1970/71 season Liverpool finished a creditable fifth and also managed to get to the final of the FA Cup. In an exciting semi-final at Old Trafford they had beaten Everton 2-1, Brian Hall and Alun Evans scoring after Liverpool had gone 1-0 down to their rivals.

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