Quiet Genius

by Ian Herbert

  There was an invitation to a Downing Street reception as guests of ‘the Prime Minister and Mr Denis Thatcher’. Paisley was double-booked on that occasion, having already agreed to attend a ‘Boxing–Dinner Evening’ in his honour at the Piccadilly Hotel in Manchester, hosted by the Anglo-American Sporting Club, which was more his thing. So Margaret Thatcher had to wait.

  The couple did eventually attend one of the Thatchers’ receptions, though Paisley told Jessie that he didn’t know how they had made it onto the guest list. They must have filled a ‘space on the end of their list’, he assumed. Paisley told Thatcher that she would ‘always be welcome at Anfield’ if she was visiting Liverpool but did not get the impression she was listening. ‘We were standing up all the time and Bob didn’t like it,’ was Jessie’s annotation to the invitation she kept.

  They enjoyed far more the Monks Ferry Training Trust’s workshop, on the Wirral peninsula, in the company of Prince Charles. ‘Bob and I shook hands with the Prince of Wales and he had a conversation with Bob,’ Jessie wrote.

  Paisley always liked to accept invitations from his beloved north-east. There was the official opening luncheon of the Tyneside Summer Exhibition in July 1983; the North East Show; a Hartlepool United sportsman’s dinner followed by official photographs of him with the club’s committee men. Jessie kept them all. The suited and booted of Hartlepool look like they can hardly believe whose presence they are in.

  It was an eclectic mix of appearances back on home turf. There was a ‘Bob Paisley Question Time’ in Newcastle upon Tyne, and the re-opening of Hetton-le-Hole’s village hall, where Paisley tried his hand at bowls, as well as the unveiling of a plaque on the wall of the old Downs Lane house, in his honour.

  The letters of thanks were almost as profuse. One man, who signed his letter ‘Kopite’, was so overwhelmed to have had a ‘snap shot’ taken with Paisley at Camp Hill, near the couple’s home in Woolton, that he sent Paisley a copy, thanking him for having ‘made my day’. The pattern on Paisley’s brown cardigan belongs to the 1970s. Jessie faithfully pasted the photograph into the album.

  Amid the more formal events – the Indo-British Association; the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation’s Men of the Year luncheon at the Savoy – there was the conferment of honours. Paisley became a Freeman of the City of Liverpool and was awarded a BSc in science by Liverpool University. He and Jessie stayed at the Swiss Cottage Holiday Inn – where the team had prepared for so many great occasions including the 1978 European Cup final – before he received the OBE. He was the star attraction on Songs of Praise from Liverpool’s Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral on 5 January 1986. The Radio Times was more interested in host presenter Cliff Michelmore meeting Paisley than the city’s bishop and archbishop. Jessie was bursting with pride. She cut out the Radio Times listing for the programme and pasted it in.

  Paisley had clearly come to love travelling and flying in a way far removed from those wretched weeks in the United States just after the war. Sometimes he would travel abroad under his own steam, seizing invitations to discuss and spread his ideas about football. There was a two-week trip to Indonesia in February 1984, where he arrived on an Indonesian Airways flight at a wet Jakarta airport to be greeted by a guard of honour. He was snapped up for a number of coaching clinics and it was big news for the Indonesia Times who pictured him taking them. Paisley cuts a comical, almost colonial figure, in shorts, training top and eccentric black socks, barking out orders and pointing. A press conference followed in Jakarta, at which he suggested there should be another system of coaching in Asia in view of the players’ shorter posture.

  Within three months Paisley was touching down again in Israel, where he received another celebrity reception. His old defender Avi Cohen was among a large welcoming party at the airport and observing a training session at league leaders Beitar Jerusalem. He met the Israeli president Chaim Herzog, who flatly informed him that Cohen could have developed if Liverpool had only shown more patience. Paisley nodded diplomatically. He was not offended. He always liked Israel. ‘They are good people,’ he said, and he would have been the international manager there had his wanderlust stretched to that. The Turkish side Galatasaray also sought him out, though that was a proposition he could discount. ‘I have discussed the offer with my wife and decided because of the distance and the fact that my wife doesn’t like flying, it would not be feasible.’

  But it was clearly football that Paisley hankered for. He continued to join Liverpool on their pre-season tours – perhaps aware that these events offered a time among the squad when he might fit in – to Norway, the Basque Country, Denmark and more. Kenny Dalglish occasionally found him a useful complementary figure in the overseas scouting role which Saunders still undertook for them. Paisley travelled with Saunders to Portugal in 1984 to watch Benfica. Liverpool played them four times that calendar year, after being drawn with them in consecutive European Cup competitions.

  Paisley could be forgetful, though his old colleagues put that down to Bob being Bob. Before one of the Benfica away games, he and Robinson went to Portugal together to look at the accommodation and ensure preparations had been made. They had gone in separate cars for their flight out from Manchester airport and when they returned Paisley became adamant that his car had gone. ‘Are you certain you parked there?’ Robinson asked him. Paisley was insistent: ‘It’s gone,’ he told Robinson. They walked around the airport car park maze, couldn’t find it and eventually got hold of the Manchester airport security, who offered to drive them around in a further search. Paisley’s car materialised in a matter of minutes. He had forgotten which floor he had put it on. It could happen to anyone, especially Paisley, who had always needed reminding when the next meeting was, though his demeanour seemed to have changed and he was certainly a little more withdrawn than before. There was mild concern at Anfield.

  A change had certainly become faintly detectable when the only serious prospect of Paisley finding work beyond Liverpool materialised. It was 1986, the year after Dalglish had become manager, and the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) – possibly aware that Paisley’s advisory role had turned out to be peripheral – approached him about the now vacant Republic of Ireland manager’s job. It seemed like a good fit, because Paisley was becoming increasingly acquainted with the country – Jessie’s fear of flying made the ferry trip from Liverpool one of the journeys they could both be comfortable with – and Paisley was well known from the almost annual exhibition matches Liverpool played in the country. He was also an ambassador for the Friendship Cup tournament, contested between Liverpool and Irish children.

  The Irish national team were in disarray. A 4–1 home defeat to Denmark in November 1985 was the nadir. Only 15,000 attended the match and many of those were Danes, euphoric about their team’s qualification for the 1986 World Cup – the Irish side’s hopes had vanished weeks earlier.

  Another who caught the Denmark game on television was Jack Charlton, who had been flicking through the channels when he came across the scoreline and wondered how a side with players as good as David O’Leary, Paul McGrath, Frank Stapleton and Mark Lawrenson in its ranks could have fared so poorly. ‘I think they had about six centre-backs in the team,’ Charlton later reflected.

  Time had been lost in a stand-off between manager Eoin Hand, who was determined to stay on until the end of his contract, and the FAI, who had no money and were unwilling to pay the price of sacking him early. The FAI had run up accumulative losses of IR£90,000 for the two previous seasons and were struggling so badly to attract supporters for games that they had resorted to playing away from home. A sum of IR£13,000 had been lost on a friendly match at home to Poland, a 0–0 draw at Dalymount Park in May 1984.

  Talk was turning to employing the Republic’s first England-based manager, rather than Irish ex-players such as Hand. An advertisement for the post was placed in both the British and Irish press, which did not state whether the job would be full- or part-time, and the FAI�
�s officials Des Casey and Tony O’Neill travelled to England to interview applicants. They met Charlton, who was enjoying his leisure time after walking out on Newcastle United, Johnny Giles, whose spell managing the Vancouver Whitecaps had not worked out, Manchester City’s Billy McNeill, the former Arsenal and Northern Ireland manager Terry Neill, former Everton manager Gordon Lee and the one-time Manchester United and Scotland player Pat Crerand.

  City chairman Peter Swales refused to release McNeill, Giles dropped out because of negative press reaction about his reputation for square-ball football and both Crerand and Lee were discounted by the FAI, so it became a two-horse race between Charlton and Liam Tuohy, under whose leadership the Irish youth team had prospered.

  By the time the FAI’s executive committee gathered at 8 p.m. on 7 February 1986 for the potentially decisive meeting, the discussions had become intensely political. Giles had undergone a change of heart and decided he wanted to be considered after all, while camps had coalesced around Charlton and Tuohy, with the latter commanding considerable influence. Then FAI President Des Casey put forward the name of a new candidate, known as the ‘Fourth Man’. It was Paisley.

  The Irish had approached him the previous year but the story got out into the newspapers, to Paisley’s embarrassment. They had tried him again after Hand had resigned but received no further encouragement. But now there was a clear change of heart from Paisley. The FAI executive committee meeting heard that the former Liverpool manager was not worried about the salary but wanted to know who his assistant would be. Most of all, he wanted to avoid any embarrassment of the kind that had been caused when his name had previously been linked to the job. Paisley never liked attention.

  Some committee members were hostile to the idea of Paisley, feeling that they were being press-ganged into the appointment by Casey bringing his name to the table so late. Yet Paisley was in a very strong position. An absolute majority of ten or more votes was required to secure selection as manager, with Des Casey having the casting vote. In the first ballot, Paisley secured nine votes while Charlton, Tuohy and Giles received three each. Paisley required just one more vote.

  Back in Liverpool, there were concerns among some of Paisley’s old colleagues that the change in his demeanour might be a cause of difficulty if he were appointed manager of the Irish national team. At least one informal phone call was made from Anfield, cautioning the FAI that Paisley may not be the same manager they thought he was. Yet this did not seem to have made any material difference. His name was added to the shortlist. The committee’s discomfort with the way Paisley was brought in so late proved the critical factor, however. Tuohy was eliminated in a second ballot and a third vote still left Paisley one short of the required ten, Charlton on five and Giles eliminated with four. In the straight run-off between Charlton and Paisley, one of those who had initially voted for Paisley now switched, while the Giles support base transferred to Charlton. Paisley had dropped to eight, while Charlton had climbed to the necessary ten. Charlton, who might have beaten Paisley to the Liverpool job in 1974 had Bill Shankly’s suggestion been acted upon, reversed things now.

  It has never been entirely clear who switched allegiance, though journalist Charlie Stuart, writing in the Irish Press, identified Colonel Tom Ryan, who was aide-de-camp to the Irish President Patrick Hillery and officially the Army’s representative on the FAI, as the obscure figure who stood between Paisley and the job.

  Paisley said he was sure Charlton would do a good job. ‘If I could, I would have loved to have helped,’ he said a few months later. Charlton was less charitable when the question of Paisley’s challenge dominated his own inaugural press conference. He bridled at the line of questioning. ‘They [were] going on about Bob Paisley and how he didn’t get the job and the way my appointment was made,’ Charlton reflected in his autobiography. ‘Now, this is all news to me. Apparently, there had been some controversy in Ireland about the way the thing had been handled but when Bob Paisley’s name was introduced that evening, it was genuinely the first occasion that I was made aware that he’d been a candidate. And I wasn’t particularly interested anyway. So when this guy is rabbiting on, I stop and tell him some basic facts. I don’t give a damn how I got the job. The pertinent thing is that now I have it – and, for better or worse, he’d better get used to the idea.’

  The decision marked the end of any prospect of Paisley taking up another managerial position. The Welsh FA secretary Alun Evans used Liverpool chairman John Smith as an intermediary when he wanted to approach Paisley about the vacant Wales manager’s job early in 1988, following Mike England’s sacking after eight years in the role. Evans had been ‘badgering’ Smith about Paisley at a lunch, and it was not the first time Wales had expressed an interest, Smith said. ‘I told him to put it in writing.’

  There were good reasons for Smith to stall. The changes in Paisley had become more manifest. He still wanted to come to games, though his response to the many people who would press themselves upon him tended to entail him just smiling at them. People took that as him agreeing with them, though it became increasingly clear to those he knew that he was not as he was. He was making no contribution at meetings.

  Jessie may also have realised that managing Wales could have bad consequences when her husband’s mind was not maintaining the threads. There was talk in the family of how she had put a stop to him taking that job.

  Paisley was one of a number of candidates to be interviewed by the Welsh before the position was given to Terry Yorath. Paisley’s return to the helm of a side came only in a one-off commemorative game. He took charge of a combined Liverpool and Juventus side to face a Northern League XI for a game to mark the centenary of Newcastle United.

  Paisley’s role at Anfield became even more marginal. He no longer took a seat on the coach to away games, as Dalglish had decided that he wanted that to be the preserve of a tighter group of players. Bob undertook duties where he could at Melwood, but his light training session with some of the club’s injured young players in October 1986 left him suffering a broken ankle. He’d only realised there was a problem when he got to his feet to answer a telephone after lunch, he said. A few months later, Paisley’s two-year contract as adviser to Dalglish was not extended. The Glaswegian Paisley had signed in the summer of 1977 was his own man now.

  Paisley was not. Four years from his departure, he had taken to making outspoken public pronouncements. This was not the individual they had known. In November 1986 Phil Neal incurred his wrath in the Daily Mirror. Neal’s departure from Anfield for Bolton Wanderers in 1985 had been acrimonious on his part because he was convinced that he, not Dalglish, would and should have succeeded Fagan. Neal’s second ghostwritten autobiography, Life at the Kop, was more critical of Liverpool than any other written by a Shankly or Paisley player.

  Paisley said that Neal, as well as Chris Lawler and Geoff Twentyman, with whom Dalglish had also parted company, should ‘stop bellyaching and biting the hand which fed [them] for so long.’ If Liverpool ‘was such a bad club, why had they stayed for so long?’ he asked. Neal and the others had let the fans down, he said. ‘Football is their only escape from the poverty and deprivation in an area of massive unemployment.’ This was written up by the Mirror’s Chris James – one of the five Merseyside reporters Paisley trusted and who knew what was on and off limits. James seemed to believe that the public attack on Neal and others was intentional.

  A little over a year later there was another broadside railing at the poor standard of First Division football. Paisley was invited to speak at a young player of the month award ceremony on Merseyside at a time when the team were 15 points clear at the top of the First Division, yet he chose to say that Dalglish’s side were ‘aided and abetted by the poorest First Division I have seen in my years in the game’.

  John Aldridge, who was signed by Dalglish in 1987, incurred Paisley’s criticism in another piece. Paisley complained that ‘there isn’t a great deal of talent around’ and that clubs
no longer did enough scouting. Paisley appeared to have become bitter. Aldridge felt a particular distress, which Liverpool tried to smooth over. In 1988, the two met up and the club ensured there was a photographer on hand in the dressing-room to capture the moment. That encounter troubled Aldridge, though. Paisley’s train of thought seemed confused and he was repeating himself. Paisley’s attempts to explain himself didn’t much help. ‘It’s completely stupid because all I did was give my honest opinion about Aldridge’s playing ability,’ Paisley said, as if that put it right. ‘I merely said I wouldn’t have bought Aldridge and expressed the view that although he is a good goalscorer he has his limitations.’

  A far bigger controversy lay around the corner. On 28 February 1989, the Daily Mirror’s sports pages were dominated by what it described as the first of a two-part revelatory interview with Paisley. He had been speaking loosely and expansively again, though this time in a far more damaging way, which threatened his entire relationship with Liverpool. Contacted by the journalist Ted Macauley, he gave a withering assessment of the Liverpool side which was fifth in the table and nine points adrift of leaders Arsenal at the time. It was all profoundly embarrassing. The Mirror sought to demonstrate that it had acted professionally, quoting its chief sports photographer Albert Cooper, who was a witness to the interview. ‘It seemed he had something to get off his chest,’ Cooper said of Paisley.