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Brian Hall - The life of Brian

Brian Hall talks EXCLUSIVELY to shankly.com

Brian Hall, one of the Shankly 'babes' of the 1960s, is now employed as Community Liaison Manager at Anfield, and learnt some fascinating insights into the workings of the Boot Room in those days 'when we were fab'.

instantly recognise. Across the narrow strip of car park separating the tight Victorian terracing of Anfield's streets from one of the most famous pieces of turf in the world, animated school kids jostle each other to grab a treasured autograph from one of their footballing heroes, maybe Jamie, or Robbie, or perhaps best of all Michael. The names and demeanour of the gladiators may have changed, but the familiar sight of Liverpool's young stars taking time out with the next generation of Kopites is one that Shanks would have approved of.

Inside the office, an ex player, one of the bright young starlets of Shankly's second great Liverpool team recalls the 'privilege' he felt at being part of the most momentous period in the club's history. Actually, not so much one of the bright young starlets, but more the serious young man, who had managed to reach the age of 22 before making his mark in the professional game. It was April 1969, when Bill Shankly gave university graduate Brian Hall his Liverpool debut at Stoke City's Victoria Ground. For Brian Hall's rise to prominence as a pro footballer did not follow the more traditional routes of his team mates.

Beatles Nut

Hall explains, "It was my first season as a professional. I had come to study mathematics at Liverpool University in the mid 60s, mainly because I was a Beatles nut and just had to go and live in the city. A friend of mine arranged a trial for me at Liverpool and I went along not knowing what to expect. They signed me on and I played for three years as an amateur whilst I carried out my university course. I came on as a replacement for Roger Hunt in that first match. Roger had picked up a shoulder injury and come off at half time but all I can remember doing once I went on is lots of running around and getting kicked by the Stoke City left-back, a guy called Alec Elder."

It was a further 2 years before Brian Hall really announced his arrival. He was the hero of the 1971 F.A. Cup semi final against Everton, scoring a late winner in front of 62,000 fans at Old Trafford, to send the reds into a Wembley final against double chasing Arsenal. Sadly, the side weren't quite ready to topple the Londoners and Arsenal duly claimed the double that afternoon though not before Shankly's young charges had dragged them through extra time.

"I never really had a close relationship with Bill in those days. I was in awe of him really. He would walk into a room full of international players like Roger Hunt and Ian St. John, and even they would fall silent, such was his presence. The only players I think who really built up a close working relationship with him were Kevin Keegan and perhaps Emlyn Hughes."

One of the few players to bridge the gap between the great 60s team and the European conquering 70s sides, Hall was perfectly placed to witness the development of the simple, passing style that has characterised Liverpool's play ever since.

"What they taught us had to be innate. It was that simplistic approach where we did the same things day in day out, week in week out at Melwood, until it was ingrained. You knew what to do in any particular situation. It was so simple, you just passed to the nearest red shirt."

The simplistic approach was at odds with Hall's other life at university.

"I spent 21 years of my life being educated and going from 1+1=2, to x+y=6 and then onto vector spaces and quantum theory. The higher up the educational ladder I got the more complex it became, but at Melwood they turned that philosophy upside down. The football teaching became less complex the further up I got. The game is essentially a very simple one."

Hall now does his work at Anfield in the guise of Community Liaison Manager, a role which encompasses running the International Supporters Club. It's a position he is clearly suited to and one that reflects the changes the game has undergone. "It's a totally different business now". Arguably, Shankly was the first to hold such an office at the club although of course the title never actually existed back then. Hall understands as much as anyone the role Shankly played in bringing the club and it's fans together. "He was the right man for the right time." 

Rows

Not that everything was plain sailing. "We would have our rows. He would have his say and I'd have mine, but half an hour later it was forgotten."

Hall's most famous run in with Shankly occurred in the 1972-73 season. Liverpool had reached the final of the UEFA Cup and faced German side Borussia Moenchengladbach in a two legged affair, the first being at Anfield. The first match only lasted half and hour because the pitch became waterlogged after a torrential downpour, and the game was re-scheduled for the following night. In that half hour though, Shankly had spotted a weakness in the air in the German back line and for the rematch brought in the aerial supremacy of John Toshack at the expense of Hall's attacking midfield play.

"My reaction was childish. I just slammed about and wasn't really in the best frame of mind to be on the subs bench. Of course we won the match 3:0 and it was viewed as a master stroke by Shanks but I was still unhappy. It rumbled on to the end of the season where it finally came to a head when I was dropped for the final game against Leicester City. We only needed a draw for the title and Shanks decided to blood a young Phil Thompson at my expense. That incident hit me far harder than the UEFA Cup final one had done. Again though, he got the result and everyone was happy but my reaction was wrong even though we had won the title."

Hall had so much respect for Shankly however, that he would never remain angry with him for long. The following season, 1973-74 saw the start of his best run in the red shirt. He would be a mainstay of the midfield for the next two years.

"When I first arrived at the club, I had quickly learned a hard reality, and I mean quickly. I was living in this hi-falutin, intellectually rarified atmosphere at university and on the other hand I was getting kicked up in the air on a Saturday afternoon and getting absolutely blasted by the manager afterwards and it was a very real and immediate world. If you had a poor game he would let rip in the dressing room but once he went outside to face the press guys, he would tell them what a great player you were. That inspired great respect."

Hall scored Liverpool's first in the 3-1 win over Leicester in the FA Cup semi-final replay in 1974

Towards the end of the 73-74 season, Liverpool were developing their trademark passing game to an advanced degree. Hall, now in full swing, positively purrs at the memories of Shankly's last months as manager.

"Two matches stand out for me that epitomised the way we wanted to play. The 1974 F.A. Cup semi final replay at Villa Park against Leicester City was the first. It was a great display of collectiveness, of each player helping out each of the others. Then came the subsequent final against Newcastle United. That was the team performance that became the model, where we got a grip on the game, slowly but surely controlling it, then scored the goals. That became the model the club worked to for the next 15 years. It was the pinnacle of team performance. What the Dutch did in the 1974 World Cup, we were already doing."

The Boot Room

There's an acknowledgement too of the role the other boot room members played in the creation of this world beating style. Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan, and Ronnie Moran were an essential part of the Shankly story. Though already at the club when Shankly joined in 1959, Shankly had the foresight to see that he could work closely with them and never felt the need to bring in any of his own people. It's a factor Hall clearly thinks was crucial in the success the club subsequently enjoyed.

"Bill didn't start out with a grand plan. The thing evolved and the input came from the team of coaches. They all saw and learnt something and put it into the pot and that's what the boot room was all about. It wasn't just a small room where the boots were hung up on pegs, that was only the physical manifestation. To me the meeting of minds was what it was really about. Visiting managers would pop in to the room and try to glean information or an insight into the growing mythology that was surrounding the success we were having." Hall chuckles at the very notion that there was something unscrupulous or supernatural going on in the bowels of the boot room or even at Melwood, the training ground which had always had a lax policy of letting anyone who wanted to walk in and watch the training sessions. "No, there was no secret, and that was the biggest myth of them all wasn't it ?"

There never was any secret or magic recipe to Liverpool's success. The key was always simplicity and it was banged into the players relentlessly on the training ground until it became automatic. The simple passing game that Liverpool were playing was programmed into every player at the club so that when one dropped out and another slotted in, there was no noticeable drop in playing standards. With things running smoothly and Liverpool on the brink of steamrollering across Europe the club were hit with the massive bombshell of Shankly's retirement in July 1974. It rocked the club to the core. Citing tiredness and a need to spend more time with his family as the main reasons, Shankly had had enough. Hall has his own personal theory of what was going on in Shankly's head at the time.

"The pressure of the football and the producing of winning teams he could cope with because he'd lived with it all his life, but he was an icon, a legend in this city and people hung on every word he said. The pressure of that just got too much. If he didn't have that element of it and it was just football I know he could have coped with that because he loved it."


Hall looks at fans worshipping Shankly at Wembley in 1974

Privilege

Reflecting on a colourful period in the history of British football, Hall has come to treasure the time he spent at Liverpool as a player.

"It's not just a glib line when I say it was a privilege to be here, to be part of that whole scene in the 1970s and to have worked with such powerful people. Shankly, through his strength of character, did something utterly unique in the history of any football club, welding together the fans, the players, the red half of the city, into something that was extraordinary. The whole Beatles thing was going on, the fans had their music scene that was setting the world alight, and they had Shankly and a great football team that was winning cups. He was the most powerful person I've ever met. Something special and wonderful happened."

The endless fascination of Shankly to many of us lay in his ability to use psychology to build up players. When I venture that much of what he said, particularly about the standard of the day's opposition, was plainly outrageous nonsense, Hall leans across his desk and quickly counters, "It wasn't something I ever considered until I'd finished playing. Bill used to say 'All you need is the grass and a ball', and I never used to understood what he meant. We'd be walking out at Melwood in the freezing rain and I'd be thinking 'flippin' eck', but he would just love playing and he expected other players to be the same way. To him, putting on the red shirt was about the will to win. He had the ability to look you in the eye and know whether or not you were self motivated. That was what he wanted to see in a player because that's what he was like. How a player looked on a Tuesday at Melwood was important to Shanks. That's when you found out what made him tick and I don't think that's changed." It's clear that Shankly's motivational secret was to surround himself with players who thought like he did, players who wanted to play and win, players who knew they were better collectively than the opposition.

For better or worse, the game has moved on apace since those heady days of the 60s and 70s. Hall insists the club is not too mired in the past to get to grips with the modern game and the business it has become. His cluttered office, stuffed full of cards and notes and letters from all corners of the world bears testament to the global pulling power LFC now wields and the need for the club to acknowledge and nurture it's standing amongst it's supporters, wherever they are.

"This club is one of the biggest in the world. We might have had a dip on the field of play, but it'll come back I'm convinced of that. Shankly was the starting point for all of this. He set the standards that all future sides here are expected to emulate, but it's no use kidding ourselves that we can just carry on doing what was right to do in 1965. We have to move on. Shanks and the other boot room guys knew nothing about dieticians and what we would call today sports science, but the standards they laid down are still the standards today for this club, even if the methods taken to get there need to be updated."

Peace

There's a growing sense that the club has made it's peace with the fans over Shankly and his legacy. For years there existed a belief that the club had not treated it's greatest ever employee with quite the reverence he deserved. Only now, as the dust settles on the boot room era and new brooms sweep across the club with Gallic fury are the club and the major instigator of it's rise to world fame fully reconciled. In a typical, defiant, victory salute pose, the magnificent Shankly statue stands astride the entrance to the new visitor museum underneath the newly rebuilt all-seater kop. A moving combination of old and new.

On cue, Hall brings the interview to an end and we make our way out of the office. I casually enquire if he will be at the game tomorrow, an away fixture at Derby County's Pride Park. "No, I spend too much bloody time at the club during the rest of the week!" You know he doesn't mean it to sound the way it comes out. He is clearly still in love with Liverpool Football Club. Outside, the car park is quiet again, and the sun has long since dropped out of sight. The security man jangles the keys to the office and informs us that he is just about to lock up for the night. It's been another long day for Brian Hall.

I drive out of the ground and pass the Shankly Gates and the Hillsborough memorial flame, sitting oddly, yet serenely together. A clutch of young boys, with no memories of Shankly and his days of triumph, stare at the flame and read the messages clustered around the memorial. Maybe one of them will be the next Michael Owen I muse. In my rear view mirror, I see one of the heroes of a bygone age finally leave for home. He's a clever man Brian Hall, because he knows he has been privileged.

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Factfile:

Born: 1946 in Glasgow
BSc from Liverpool University 1968
Liverpool debut in April 1969 v Stoke City
Liverpool games:220
Liverpool goals: 21
Sold to Plymouth Argyle 1976
Moved to Burnley in Nov 1977
Retired from playing in 1980
Became Public Relations / Community Liaison chief at
Anfield at the request of Peter Robinson in Sept 1991

Honours as player (with Liverpool)
1971 F.A. Cup finalist
1973 UEFA Cup winner
1972-73 League Championship
1974 F.A. Cup winner
1975-76 League Championship

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

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