Showing some fight is often the minimum requirement football supporters want and expect to see from their team, particularly in times of adversity.
Usually in a metaphorical sense and meaning putting a proper shift in, running and tackling hard no matter how badly things are going and essentially not throwing in the towel even when it seems all is lost.
On the rare occasions that spills over into actual fighting between team-mates, a certain satisfaction can even be gleaned from the knowledge that the players are hurting like their fans are as evidenced by the bust-up between Jamie Carragher and Alvaro Arbeloa at West Brom the day after Liverpool’s 2009 Premier League title dream finally bit the dust.
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Sometimes, like when Bruce Grobbelaar and Steve McManaman came to blows as the Reds slumped to one of their most abject Merseyside derby defeats at Goodison Park in September 1993 during the final tortuous months of Graeme Souness’ spell in the Anfield hot-seat, it can merely serve to highlight a wider malaise.
And every so often it can act as a turning point leading to greater things, which was very much the case during Liverpool’s unforgettable 1986 FA Cup final victory over perennial rivals Everton when with the Reds a goal behind and teetering on the brink of conceding a second, goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar and left-back Jim Beglin were involved in a furious on-pitch row after a defensive mix-up.
“I wish I had a quid for every time a Liverpool fan over the years has said to me, ‘That woke us up, that got us going again'. If that's true, I'm delighted it happened”, the Irishman would later say when reflecting on a day which arguably proved to be the highlight of an eventful but regrettably brief career with the team he had joined only three years earlier as legendary manager’s Bob Paisley’s final signing.
Beglin had crossed the Irish Sea in May 1983 for a modest fee of £20,000 much to the delight of his father, who had played in the League of Ireland for Waterford and Sligo, and was a Liverpool fan but he was the only one in the family who was.
“My older brother was a Man United fan. My younger brother was an Everton fan. And I was a Chelsea fan. So we all got on awfully”, Beglin quipped of his sports-mad family. Having tried his hand at hurling, Gaelic football, squash and tennis, the County Waterford-youngster’s talents were spotted by Shamrock Rovers after impressing in schoolboy football in his native city and three years with the Hoops saw him play under former Leeds and Eire legend Johnny Giles and compete in Europe.
Interest from Arsenal did not materialise into a move to England much to Beglin’s disappointment and he began a commercial course with Aer Lingus but only a week into it was offered a month’s trial with Liverpool.
“I remember thinking ‘this is it’”, he recalled. “It’s either stay at Rovers, get a job, or go back to Waterford. And I never wanted to go back to Waterford, because I didn’t want to be deemed a failure. You go back to your own town and everyone says ‘ah, he didn’t make it’. I’m not having that.
“Having arrived at Anfield, I was very apprehensive, because I’m going into a completely different world — this is the best club in Europe. At the time, I remember thinking, ‘this is a hell of a jump’. I played a couple of reserve games in the first 10 days, which went really well for me, and out of the blue one day, it was the end of the tax year, I was offered a permanent deal.
“It was tremendous for me. My dad passed away that summer — he didn’t get to see me play for Liverpool but at least he got to see me sign for them. He was always a Liverpool fan and would regularly make trips across to Anfield. He came over that particular weekend and we watched Liverpool lift the league trophy. I think they’d played Aston Villa, and we sat in the stands. I was there thinking ‘oh my God, I now have a chance of a crack at this'. I was determined not waste the opportunity.”
He would have to wait a while for that opportunity though. First-choice left-back Alan Kennedy was firmly established as one of new manager Joe Fagan’s senior players and would conclude Beglin’s first season at Anfield by scoring the decisive goal in the European Cup final for the second time in four seasons. Although he had been training with the first team and featured on the bench in some of the Reds’ European ties, Beglin was sent to Japan to play in a youth tournament while Fagan’s men conquered AS Roma on their own turf and it would be November 1984 before an injury to Kennedy finally enabled him to make his senior bow in Liverpool colours in a 1-1 draw at home to Southampton.
“I felt I was ready for it but the team was so settled, it was difficult. We didn’t exactly have a rotation policy back then”, he remembered. “Joe Fagan pulled me aside on the pavilion at Melwood and said, ‘You’re playing tomorrow’. The emotions were incredible. From utter joy, to nervousness, and then desperation for three o’clock."
Kennedy was back in the side the following week but a serious ankle injury picked up in a home defeat to Manchester United at the end of March ruled the Geordie defender out for the rest of the campaign and thrust the 21-year-old Irishman firmly into the spotlight. Liverpool were suffering their worst league campaign in years following the departure of captain Graeme Souness to Sampdoria in Italy and had been mired in the relegation zone in late October. Although they would eventually recover to finish a distant second to Howard Kendall’s resurgent Everton, hopes of salvaging a difficult campaign rested on progress in the cup competitions and in only his fourth game for the club Beglin helped put the Reds on the brink of a second successive European Cup final by helping keep a clean sheet and scoring his first senior goal to put the seal on a 4-0 rout of Greek champions Panathinaikos in the first leg of the semi-final at Anfield.
“That was lovely because we went through it on the training ground”, he said. “They were very good, the Liverpool coaching staff, at spotting little details. I was at other clubs as well and you’d never get that attention to detail. They’d picked out the fact that the Greek lads would just follow the runners — they weren’t that bothered about the ball, sometimes they’d just get drawn. I had to make out I was uninterested and just kind of loitering outside the box. Everybody would make the run to the front post, hopefully drag the whole Panathinaikos team with them. And then it was my job to suddenly sprout into life and get into the back.
“I always remember, little Sammy Lee ran over. Kenny was on free-kick duty and could deliver a free kick, he could do most things. Kenny just got the perfect depth, because at the last minute, one of them realised that they’d fallen for it. He tried to kind of backpedal and get there, but Kenny had played it absolutely inch-perfect for me. Luckily, I was able to come on to it and get a good strong header behind it. It was a moment I’ll cherish forever because it was my only goal at the Kop end. That was very special, to do that on a European night.
“The following night, I went into my local chippy. The guy behind the counter, an Italian bloke, was refusing to serve me. He had 100 quid on 3-0, I had popped up and got the fourth with five minutes remaining.”
Defeat after a Maine Road replay to Manchester United in the FA Cup semi-final scotched dreams of a cup double but Panathinaikos were duly despatched 1-0 in the second leg in Greece to set up a showdown with Italian giants Juventus in Brussels as Anfield hopes turned to what would be a fifth European Cup triumph in only eight years. Although Kennedy was battling desperately to prove his fitness, Beglin’s assured performances in the 14 games he had deputised in - which included another goal in a win at West Ham - meant Fagan had few concerns over naming him in the starting line-up at the Heysel stadium. What should have been one of the greatest nights of his career however turned into a nightmare when crowd trouble before the game and a charge by Liverpool supporters saw the collapse of a wall inside the dilapidated stadium and the ensuing deaths of 39 Juventus supporters.
“It was the biggest game of my life, only my 15th in the first team”, Beglin wrote in the Independent ahead of the 20th anniversary of the disaster in 2005. “I was the baby of the side, just 21, a left-back not long out of Shamrock Rovers in Dublin, and as excited as I was nervous. When we were on the coach to the ground, the rival supporters appeared to be mixing well. After we arrived there was a kids game on the pitch so we strolled over to the terrace where many of our fans were massed. A plastic ball was thrown from the crowd; Sammy Lee and Bruce Grobbelaar volleyed it back. The atmosphere was positive. Our crowd were separated from the Juventus fans by some flimsy fencing. As we passed the Italians we had bits of bricks hurled at us. But we were able to step out of the way and they landed harmlessly on the track. We laughed it off.
“We started to hear that there was serious violence as we were putting the finishing touches to our preparations in the changing-room. I was eventually told there might be three deaths, but not until just before we finally went out. During the delay, which lasted for an hour and a half, the coaching staff were telling us to relax and start our whole routine again in order to be ready for a rescheduled kick-off time. I was young and apprehensive; I didn't want to let anybody down, so I wanted no distractions. I knew something bad was going on but had no idea of the scale. We were being told to stay focused. It's possible the management and my more experienced colleagues shielded me from things.
“Some of the lads have said they felt low-key during the match. They must have been more aware of what had happened. I saw a Liverpool side striving to win. Everybody. We didn't know any other way to play. Yet when we heard so many lives were lost, no one cared about the result. We were in confusion and shock. I felt for Joe Fagan, our manager. Word had gone round that he was stepping down and Kenny Dalglish might be taking over. What a terrible way to go. He handed us our runners-up medals and said, ‘It's not 'boss' any more, it's Joe.’ For some reason, he then grabbed me and took me in to address the world's media. All the questions were fired at Joe. I sat there wondering what I was doing.
“The enormity of Heysel hit me like a train after the game. Dejection over losing the match quickly gave way to disbelief when I learned that 39 people had died. I walked with my Liverpool team-mates to where the wall had crumbled and the Italian fans were crushed. The remnants of people's lives - handbags and shoes, scarves and spectacles - were strewn among the rubble. Back home, I'd set my video for the great occasion. The tape ran out before the game ended. Graeme Souness and Terry Venables did a little analysis before it was off to the BBC newsroom. There was a warning about "disturbing images" from Brussels. I sat there in silence, aghast.”
As expected Kenny Dalglish did take over from Joe Fagan that summer initially as player-manager and, with one of the new manager’s first moves being to jettison Liverpool’s ageing full-backs with Alan Kennedy sold to Sunderland and Phil Neal joining Bolton Wanderers, Beglin now found himself as first-choice left-back and would go on to play 53 out of the 63 matches in the Reds’ marathon 1985-86 campaign. With the eyes of the football world on Liverpool after the harrowing events of the previous May, it could have been a daunting prospect for the inexperienced young Irishman but Beglin admitted it was made easier by the calibre of defenders he was playing alongside.
“It was so well-drilled. Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson were good talkers and that’s a big help. If you’ve got someone alongside you then you’re guessing more. The amount of centre backs I’ve played alongside who, if they’re in trouble, just give it to the full-back, even if somebody’s two yards away from you. But every time it was on for Jocky to do that, he’d just drop the shoulder, turn inside someone and create the space for himself. To come into a back four like that was a hell of a lot easier.”
Although an early-season victory over the reigning champions Everton at Goodison Park had served notice Liverpool were determined to regain their league crown, Manchester United’s blistering start which saw Ron Atkinson’s side win their first ten league matches and a poor spell from Dalglish’s side over Christmas and New Year meant it was Easter Monday before the Reds would top the First Division that campaign and even then Howard Kendall’s Toffees had games in hand which meant they were in control of the destiny of the title.
After losing the return derby at Anfield in mid-February to fall eight points behind their neighbours, Dalglish’s side looked out of the running but, with the player-manager restoring himself to the starting line-up after an injury to Paul Walsh, embarked on a remarkable winning run to whittle away at the Blues’ lead, securing three points in all of their remaining league fixtures bar a draw at Sheffield Wednesday. As the season entered its final week however they still needed help from elsewhere with Everton having a game in hand due to be played at home to West Ham (who themselves had an outside chance of finishing top) the Monday after Liverpool’s final fixture.
On the Wednesday night before the last Saturday of the season the Reds travelled to face Leicester City while the Blues were at the Manor Ground taking on relegation-threatened Oxford United. With Liverpool’s game kicking off fifteen minutes later and Dalglish’s men two up early on through goals from Ian Rush and Ronnie Whelan, the away end at Filbert Street broke out into scenes of jubilant celebrations as news filtered through of Les Phillips’ late winner for Oxford which meant the league championship trophy would return to Anfield if Dalglish’s men won their final match away to Chelsea. Although they had won an FA Cup fourth round tie there three months earlier, Liverpool hadn’t won a league fixture at Stamford Bridge since 1974 but a sublime volley fittingly from the player-manager himself was enough for the three points required with Beglin providing the deft assist for Dalglish’s strike.
“It was one of the best days of my life,” Beglin said. “The following we had during that run-in was phenomenal. We must have had 12,000 fans at Stamford Bridge that day. I had gone up for a corner and had an effort cleared off the line. I hung around the penalty box and when the ball dropped to me I knew that Kenny was on my right. I just helped it on its way, Kenny took it on his chest and volleyed into the corner. We got the goal, shut up shop and won the league which was incredible.
“It was a big year for the club because of Heysel. We were tentative at times, we were a little unsure. But I always say it about that team and about Liverpool FC in general, there was always that spirit. Back then, the standards were set so highly and Kenny wouldn’t let anything drop. He had that aura about him. Everybody respected him. And you were always willing to go the extra mile for somebody like him, and we did. We might have been a little hesitant in the way we went about it at times, but come the end of the season and come the pressure, that team just soared. The run we went on, it was just a magical time for me, particularly with what happened a few months later.”
The joy at winning back the league championship from their closest rivals across Stanley Park was tempered by the knowledge the job was only half done. Victories over Norwich, Chelsea, York City, Watford and Southampton had taken Liverpool to their first FA Cup final in twelve years where their opponents, inevitably, were Everton who had won through to their third successive final. Desperate to make amends having lost their championship crown and salvage something from their own impressive season, the Toffees edged the opening stages at Wembley and took the lead shortly before the half hour mark with double Footballer of the Year Gary Lineker’s 40th goal of his one and only season at Goodison Park.
An out-of-sorts Liverpool were initially unable to gain control even after a half time dressing room talking to from Dalglish and his coaches and Everton looked likely to extend their lead in the opening stages of the second period, with Kevin Sheedy flashing a cross-shot inches wide and Mark Lawrenson having to clear off the line after Bruce Grobbelaar dropped a cross before the now-infamous bust-up between the Reds goalkeeper and Beglin which ultimately proved to be the spark which helped Liverpool turn the game around.
“People have said that was the turning point, it made us realise we were 1-0 down and in danger of blowing it”, Beglin recalled. “The ball was running along the line and Bruce was shouting for me to let it run, but I was thinking, if I let it run, Trevor Steven’s going to get on it. Bruce timed his jump thinking I was going to do as he said, but in the meantime I’d put my foot on it and I had to shield it before he got back. He got a bit panicked about it all and once he’d got the ball, he called me something unrepeatable. I told him where to go and he hit me. I thought I’ve got to hit him back, then you realise the occasion and everything flashes through your mind, I'm thinking the whole world is watching, the stadium is jam-packed, I need to hold it together and of course Bruce was a jungle fighter so it was probably best to leave it. Thankfully I did and he rolled the ball to me, I tapped it back to him, and from that moment it was over."
Within minutes Ian Rush had equalised after a move begun by Beglin and the Irishman had a hand in the further goals by Craig Johnston and Rush again which secured a 3-1 victory and only the third League and FA Cup double that century. It was a moment of supreme triumph to conclude one of the most difficult years in Liverpool’s history with the images beamed all around of the world of tens of thousands of reds and blues travelling and watching the match together being just what the city’s image needed.
“I always like to think that that’s the biggest derby ever”, Beglin said. “I remember the fans risking their lives trying to get into the stadium. You see the footage of Wembley at the time and it’s absolutely mad. I had guests that ended up sitting round the track, because it was so crowded. But that was a very special time, because either Liverpool or Everton were winning the league once you got to the mid-80s. So Merseyside was the place to be, it was as good as it got. I think there were two very good sides fighting it out. And credit to the Evertonians that day too, they were still very proud of their team and what Merseyside was achieving at the time. They did themselves proud that day too.
“We didn’t play especially well for about an hour at Wembley, but once we clicked into gear it just seemed to drain Everton and they were a hell of a good team. I look back now and cherish it hugely, because there were no more medals coming my way, and it should have been a domestic treble that year. We messed up against QPR in the semi-final of the League Cup. We had a shocking night at home, everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong in the second leg — we blew it so that also increased our desire and commitment to make sure we were going to get the job done. I was in dreamland. Everything I'd worked for, everything since I was a kid, had gone into that.”
Liverpool would reach the League Cup final the following season but by then Beglin’s season - and sadly his Liverpool career - was all but over after a horrific broken leg picked up earlier in the same competition. With the Merseyside rivals again locked in another fierce battle at the top of the First Division, they were drawn together at Goodison in the quarter-finals of what was then known as the Littlewoods Cup and with the game goalless midway through the first half, the Irishman and Gary Stevens contested a stray ball midway inside the visitors’ half after a loose touch from the Everton right-back which left the Liverpool man prone and in agony with part of his leg facing the wrong way, as a furious Kenny Dalglish followed Ronnie Moran and Roy Evans on to the pitch to remonstrate with referee Neville Ashley who did not even award a free kick.
“I knew it was bad”, said Beglin. “It was a derby occasion, you didn’t shirk a tackle and I was always happy to get stuck in. The play seemed to carry on for eternity for me, but it was probably just a few seconds. I looked down and I couldn't believe where my foot was, but I knew it was where it shouldn't be, adjacent to my shin. The pain was a nightmare and the break was fairly horrific, it was car crash material.”
He was rushed to hospital with Bob Paisley - who had returned to the Reds’ dug-out as an advisor to Dalglish in the Scot’s early years as player-boss - with the man who had brought Beglin to Anfield four years earlier quoted as saying, ”The injury he suffered was as ill-timed, as it was painful. It was painful to look at, never mind to experience. I’ve seen one or two broken legs in going on 50 years in the game and none made me really wince but Jim’s did.”
“A mile high and an hour late”, was the verdict of Liverpool captain Alan Hansen and the anger within the dressing room was still evident when Beglin was visited in hospital by Kenny Dalglish soon afterwards.
“Word came to me that Gary Stevens wanted to come and see me”, Beglin told Off The Ball. “Kenny Dalglish came to visit me in the hospital and said to me, ‘Don't do it’. I said to him, ‘Gaffer, if I had done that to somebody, I would want to go and tell them that I didn't mean to do that... maybe he wants to do that to me.’ He said ‘I’m telling you now, all he wants to do is put himself in a better light and move on. It is going to be a PR thing for him if he does it.’
“I ignored that advice and immediately regretted him coming to see me, because I'm all drugged up and in a lot of pain. He came in and he just sat there. Clive Tyldesley, who was at Radio City in Liverpool at the time, came as a mutual friend. Not to be part of anything, or to report on anything. He sat on the chair beside my bed, and Clive sat in the corner. He said nothing. I'm sitting there thinking: 'What's the point?' I said to him, 'Did you know you had broken it?' and he said 'No, I didn't - I went into the tackle, got up and got on with it.' I just immediately switched off. It was very abrupt after that; very short. I hadn't taken Kenny's advice and I was wrong. He went straight to Matt D'Arcy, an Evertonian who was working at, I believe, the Daily Star at the time. The back page headline the next morning was: 'I Don't Blame Gary'. I had fallen into the trap that was set - that Kenny had alerted me to and I ignored.”
Surgery and a long period of rehabilitation followed with Beglin suffering the further blow of a serious knee cartilage injury when attempting a comeback in the Reds’ reserves in October 1988. With Gary Ablett and David Burrows having now emerged as replacements in the left back position, he left Anfield to join Leeds United the following June but suffered further injury problems and was only able to make 19 appearances for the Yorkshire side before brief spells Plymouth Argyle and Blackburn Rovers and premature retirement from football at the age of only 27 in 1991.
"There was a lot of self-pity - 'why me?' - and I went through every emotion in the book”, he admitted. “I hated myself. I got terribly down and lost my confidence, not just as a footballer but as a person. Football was my life. Football gave me my confidence. And all of a sudden, it was gone. I ended up training and playing in pain, stupidly, and went on probably for a year or 18 months too long when I should have retired. But back then, it was all about being a man, about not quitting. I just kind of got wrapped up in that whole world and stupidly, I kept going, hoping that things might improve injury-wise. But that was never going to happen. It's all mental health these days and I probably suffered at that time, but the whole culture at the time was: be a man, shut up, get on with it and behave. I bottled it all up. I thought it was something that I had dealt with well, but - looking back - I didn't and I could have done with some assistance.
“It was my knee that retired me in the end, and I’ve now ended up with an osteoarthritic knee. But it’s not the worst thing in the world. Of course, the one thing I would change in my career is going in for that tackle at Goodison. But what I will say is I won the ball. The guy who caught me didn’t. And that’s what obviously ended what could have been a great run. I’d like to think I could have gone on to win a lot more with a club like Liverpool. My attitude was never going to change. What the injury did, unknowingly, was start my media career. I had no designs on chasing a media career. I wasn’t leaning that way. All of a sudden, I was asked to do bits and bobs, so I had little bits of experience of it. I was thinking about coaching and staying in the game but then the phone started ringing and thank God, it’s still ringing.
“Nothing will ever replace the lost years because of my injury and what might have been. But you can’t keep dwelling on that. I can’t keep thinking in those terms, because all you do is get bitter. So I’ve had to find a way of putting it to bed. I can’t change what occurred, so I just have to move on and I did that a long time ago. And life has been kind to me, I’ve been lucky. I’ve always worked hard, I’ve always had a good attitude towards whatever I do — try to be the best at it and that’s something I stick to.”
A regular presence in the broadcast and print football media for many years now, Beglin’s enduring love for the game and Liverpool in particular always comes shining through and was never better highlighted when he penned an emotional poem which he shared with the ECHO in tribute to Jurgen Klopp's side ending the Reds’ long thirty-year wait for a 19th league title in 2020. Titled ‘Thanks to Shanks’, it read:
The mighty ambition of Shanks
Strengthened LFC ranks
He brought the thirst
To finish first
And will always merit great thanks
The next in line was Sir Bob
Who concocted a thoroughbred mob
Three European Cups
Plus many more ups
And a wholly magnificent job
The succession meant genial Joe
A treble to increase the flow
A streamlined team
All set to gleam
Then Heysel, a harrowing low
And so a call for the king
A double to start with a fling
But Hillsborough came
It was never the same
96 etched forever that spring
A return to the club for Souness
With designs on a spell of excess
But too much change
Reduced the range
And slowed the run of success
Evo stepped up to the plate
With knowledge of how to be great
Spice boy nous
Filled the house
LFC found a healthier state
A Frenchman entered the fray
Gerrard Houllier planned to make hay
A different style
A trophy pile
He did it all his way
Now Rafa could script a good tale
Of a team that just wouldn't fail
Istanbul heaven
From the wrong starting eleven
A historic fifth holy grail
Roy found it tough from the start
A struggle with LFC art
Inspiration was lacking
The fans chanted sacking
There were better fits for the part
Sir Kenny was back in the seat
With the hope of a little more heat
From a hasty assembly
There were three trips to Wembley
A standard Dalglish feat
Brendan had licence to thrill
SAS and their sumptuous skill
Times were exciting
The exception was biting
Two points from climbing the hill
Then Jurgen came through the door
Heavy metal was brought to the fore
A few years of yearning
Completed the learning
The Liver bird ready to soar
Big ears was back in the mix
Madrid after Kiev, the fix
It triggered a spark
That set a new mark
The count had moved onto six
A Premier League now the aim
The spark has turned into flame
A thirty year search
To get back on the perch
Time to uncork the champagne.
Hats off to Bill on his throne
He set the club’s standards in stone
Navigating a storm
Is a Liverpool norm
You’ll never walk alone.
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