Tommy Smith - Hard man

Dateline: 1960, Melwood, Liverpool.

I was only fifteen and playing in a five-a-side game at Melwood. I nutmegged Gerry Byrne and scored and I was on top of the world. A couple of minutes later a ball dropped between us, I went to head it and Gerry headed me and I went down with a gashed eye. As I lay on the ground covered in blood, Bill Shankly strolled across, looked down at me and said 'Lesson number one, never nutmeg Gerry Byrne son and think you can get away with it."

The lesson was absorbed and a footballing hero was born.

Tommy Smith had learned the value of reputation and it was a lesson he would always remember. At the raw age of fifteen Smith had barely started his Liverpool footballing career yet already he was experiencing the Bill Shankly revolution, the revolution that was going to sweep him and the club he idolised onto untold domestic and European glory. Smith had been a successful local schoolboy and joined Liverpool when, at the age of fourteen, his mother had brought him to Anfield in December 1959, to meet the new manager, Mr. Shankly. After serving a colourful apprenticeship for two years, which included general dogsbody duties such as painting the Kop and raking top soil on the pitch, Smithy was soon pushing for a first team spot.  

Tommy had been a precocious goal scoring forward in his youth and soon made his mark in the reserves, where he played several games alongside boyhood hero Billy Liddel who was in the twilight of his own glittering career.

"Shanks gave me some advice early on which I clung on to throughout my career. He told me never to take any shit from anyone, and when I thought I was good enough to play for the first team, I acted on that advice and marched into his office to ask when I would be getting a game. He told me my time would come and that I had to be patient but in such a way that I came out of the office thinking I was the best thing since sliced bread."

A youthful Tommy Smith

THE EDGE

Shankly always had a way of disarming angry players who demanded to see him about injustices they felt were harming their progress. He would let the player down whilst at the same time managing to build up the player's confidence and self esteem. It was all part of what Tommy Smith refers to as 'The Edge'.

"He would always be looking for whatever it was that would give us the edge. In those days reputation was a big thing. If you could win a game before you went out, win it. That could mean winning it in the papers by saying certain things or by not saying certain things. You got very crafty at the game."

The famous psychology employed by Shankly was all part of this attempt to get the edge too. He was known equally well for pulling down the opposition players as much as he was for building up the confidence of his own.

"He would do all that stuff rubbishing the opposition and he always met them when they arrived and watched them all get off their team bus."

The story of how he told a young and inexperienced Kevin Keegan that he'd just seen Bobby Moore getting off the bus 'he's been at the drink, got dodgy knees, and he's got dandruff' springs to mind as one of the most humorous examples of this trait, but as Tommy Smith points out, there was often a method in the madness.

"He would go into the opposition dressing room half an hour before kick off just to wish them all the best. Whilst in there, he would be taking everything in. He would only be in there for a minute or two then he would be back in with us saying things like 'Now look, the right back's got his right ankle strapped up, the winger's got a bandage on his elbow', just little weaknesses they might have that once again would give you a little something as you ran out onto the pitch."

Indeed Smith can remember only one occasion when the famous Shankly bravado was missing. Back in 1964-65, Liverpool were enjoying their first ever European campaign. After pushing aside Icelandic side Reykjavik in the first round of the European Cup, Liverpool were drawn against crack Belgian outfit Anderlecht.

"The only time I ever saw him with a lack of confidence, truthfully and honestly, was when I made my European debut against Anderlecht in 1964. Shanks was worried because he'd seen Belgium play England a few days earlier. They had drawn 3:3 and a lot of the Anderlecht side had played for their country at Wembley. They had some great players at the time. In the team meeting he read out the team and when he got past the wing back positions, where I had been playing in the reserves, and into the midfield I thought I'm not in the side at all. Then he got to number 10 and he said 'Tommy Smith'. He told me I was playing at the back and that I was to be Ron Yeats' right leg. Whether it confused the Belgians or not I don't know but for twenty minutes I was being marked by their number 4."

It would not take a huge leap of imagination to credit Shankly with deliberately causing the confusion in the Belgian ranks by playing a 'number 10' at the back. Nobody would bat an eyelid these days of course, with the advent of squad numbers and the demise of the old familiar 1-11 system, but back in the 60s such moves were innovative and audacious. It was something Liverpool fans would see in later years too, with Ray Kennedy famously playing on the left side of midfield with a number '5' on his back.

Either way, Liverpool wearing their new all-red strip for the first time, gave Anderlecht a chasing that night and ran out 3:0 winners. During the game Tommy Smith remembers an incident when he gained a greater understanding of Shankly's 'edge'.

"They had a lad who could really play a bit, Van Himst his name was. I slammed into him early on and as he got up, he pointed to his head, and said 'Loco' to me. I was determined to show Shanks I was up for the task. Of course, Shanks was full of it after the game, telling us how poor the Belgians were and how they couldn't even beat England, but he hadn't been like that before the kick off." 

HARD MAN

"I remember once at St. James Park, Newcastle, Malcolm Macdonald had scored a hat-trick against us. He was making his home debut, I'd missed a penalty and Kevin Keegan had given one away. Towards the end of the game Macdonald went up for a high ball with Ray Clemence and Clem clattered him. He had to be carried off and as he lay on the stretcher I walked over to him and said 'Right, that's yer lot, you'll never score another f*****g goal against Liverpool while I'm on the same pitch', and I meant it, and what's more, he never did. At the end of that season we played them in the Cup Final and once again words were exchanged in the tunnel before the game. Then we went out and slaughtered them 3:0 and it could have been 6."

Of course the reputation Tommy Smith forged for himself as a hard man, the 'Anfield Iron', belies the huge amount of ability and skill he had. Playing 638 games for Liverpool is testament to that. Often overlooked too, is the fact that Tom was a member of the England team that won the Junior World Cup in 1963, playing alongside illustrious names such as Ron 'Chopper' Harris, Len Badger, Jon Sammels, John Sissons and Lew Chatterly.

The simple truth of the matter though is that Tommy was a hard man who played to his strengths.

"I make no bones about it, that's what I was good at. Some players were good dribblers, others good headers, I was a hard tackler and I used it to gain that 'edge' that Shanks was always looking for."

The hard man tag was sometimes a hard one to shake off as Tom recalls.

"There was an incident once when I was coming back from injury and had played for the reserves in a match against Preston at Anfield. I was approached by a chap and his wife as I left the ground. I asked if I could help them and they simply thanked me for not kicking their son. He had been playing inside left for Preston ! Again, it showed the value of reputation. I'd had absolutely no intentions of doing anything to this kid but my reputation had obviously not only got to him but to his parents as well."

Liverpool's triumph that day in May 1974 was total. Macdonald had publicly pronounced what he was going to do to Liverpool via the national press and Smithy and co. answered in the best possible way, never giving Macdonald so much as a sniff at goal. The Liverpool defence had regained the edge. Sadly it was to be Shanks' last competitive match at the helm as he announced his retirement in the summer of that year.

Many people, Tommy Smith included, thought the short sightedness of the board in refusing to grant Shankly a place on the board was spiteful.

"Shanks was wrong to keep turning up at Melwood, giving advice and acting as if he was still in charge. There's no doubt about that, but the club directors were wrong the way they treated him. They got their own back, it's as simple as that. Shanks had always been difficult and he would have created one or two problems for them. The directors settled some old scores in 1974."

Tommy of course, settled a few old scores himself out on the pitch. He played in an era when the game's legendary hard men proliferated. As well as his England Junior team mate Ron Harris at Chelsea, there was Billy Bremner and Norman 'Bite yer legs', Hunter at Leeds, Dave MacKay at Spurs and Derby, and Nobby Stiles at arch rivals Manchester United.

Tommy has great respect for hard men of yesteryear and keeps in touch with his old sparring partners.

"Norman, Nobby and I are great mates nowadays," he explains. "They both won 28 full England caps to my one, but I ask them jokingly how many club honours they won and their honours pale into insignificance to mine."

DALGLISH AND SOUNESS

The winning of honours is something the current Liverpool have not yet gotten used to. Tommy again on the decline of the club he loves,

"The decline is the result of lots of things that have happened. I get annoyed when people blame Kenny Dalglish. I was around at the time he resigned and I could tell the guy was heading for a nervous breakdown, he was under too much strain. Graeme Souness ruled his own way when he replaced Kenny and I think he made a fool of Liverpool F.C. with some of his signings. He gave other clubs what they'd always been looking for, a chink in Liverpool's armour. Then we had Roy Evans who wasn't the best manager in the world but far from being the worst, but we've never been able to make up lost ground. I look at the players at the club today and the basics don't seem to be there a lot of the time. Just simple things like how to line up at free kicks, or even how to take throw ins".

Tommy sees the decline of Liverpool's fortunes part of a greater malaise afflicting the game in general in this country.

"Sadly, football in England has declined since we won the World Cup in 1966. Suddenly we had coaches appearing out of drainpipes and we've got players now who are nowhere near as good as players were in the 1960s and 70s. They're possibly fitter, but that's all. Remember, in my day, we played on heavy pitches with a ball that weighed a ton, nowadays they play on bowling greens with a balloon. The pitches are faster, the ball's quicker but the players aren't any quicker than we were. You can't tell me there are better players around now than Bestie, Greavsie, Roger Hunt, Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore and so on. I reckon there are only two or three England players today who would be able to cope if they played back in the 60s."

Dateline: May 25th 1977, Olympic Stadium, Rome.

"We had been working on a move where Steve Heighway would float a ball to the near post and I would flick it on to Kevin Keegan, but on this occasion, Stevie drove the ball in. I just went for goal. Listening to the BBC commentary, you'd think every other player in the team had scored except me."

Lesson number two: Never leave Tommy Smith unmarked at the near post and think you can get away with it.

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Tommy Smith M.B.E.

ROLL of HONOUR

4 First Division Champions
2 F.A. Cup
2 European Cups
2 UEFA Cup
1 European Super Cup
1 England Junior World Cup
5 Charity Shields

Represented England at
Junior (12 appearances)
Under 23 (10 appearances)
Football League Representative
Full International level (1 appearance)

Awarded the M.B.E. in 1977
Named in 1998 as one the first 100 Legends of Football by the Football League

*263 fractures to other players * (Tommy's note!)
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Games for Liverpool 638
Goals for Liverpool 48
Games for Swansea 45
Goals for Swansea 2

© LFChistory.net - Interview in October 1999 for Shankly.com