The best stories are often the ones which provide an unlikely hero.
Liverpool’s history is littered with them, from the likes of a hobbling Geoff Strong - injured and only shoved up front for nuisance value because substitutes didn’t yet exist - heading the goal against Celtic which took the Reds to their first European final back in 1966, to Vladimir Smicer and later Divock Origi doing similar in Champions League finals, certain individuals have grasped moments which suddenly presented themselves to write their names into folklore.
Few if any have done it as consistently however than an unheralded full-back who arrived at Anfield with little fanfare but became a key element in one of the Reds’ most dominant eras and possessed the happy knack of popping up with vital goals in the biggest of games.
Alan Kennedy may have been born in Sunderland but made his name with their north-east rivals Newcastle United, working his way through their youth ranks and playing against Liverpool after less than 20 first team appearances when the Magpies were beaten 3-0 by Bill Shankly’s Reds in the 1974 FA Cup final.
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He was one of his team’s better performers on the day along with young Liverpool-born Terry McDermott but while the midfielder would get his move to Anfield within six months of the Wembley encounter, Kennedy would have to wait another four years for his big break. Injuries played a part in initially hampering his development but his gradual progress at St James Park made him an England B international and when Newcastle were relegated from the top flight in May 1978, Bob Paisley swooped to bring the 23-year-old to Anfield for a then British record fee for a full-back of £330,000.
It was a move Kennedy was ready and waiting for and, even though it came during a difficult period in his life, whatever concerns he felt over moving to Merseyside were soon eased when he learned of a surprise link between his own family and the man who would now be managing him at Anfield.
“I thought Liverpool would have signed me when they signed Terry McDermott”, he admitted. “I didn’t think it would take that long. I wasn’t happy with Newcastle’s management and I realised if I wanted success I’d have to leave. There was talk of me going to Leeds United but as soon as I heard Liverpool wanted me, I was delighted and wanted to go. I agreed to sign but it was a very difficult time. My mother had just died and a move would mean leaving my father and sister in the north east. I explained this to Liverpool and went home but after speaking with my family they agreed I should move to Merseyside. Driving back down I had problems with my car and as there were no such things as mobile phones then I couldn’t let them know. I turned up three hours late but Bob Paisley was still waiting and I signed.
“I couldn't believe the medical. Nowadays they have massive ones where they check your heart, your body and all that. Mine lasted one minute. The doctor put me on the bed, took my temperature, took my pulse, took a couple of other things and said: 'Fit as a fiddle!' And that was my medical. I‘m thinking to myself: 'I can't believe this.' The doctor just said basically, ‘Fit as a fiddle, Mr. Paisley. He can run forever, no problem.’
“I think the seeds of my transfer to Liverpool were sown in the North East more than 40 years earlier. Bob was born and grew up in the Durham mining community of Hetton-le-Hole and as a teenager in the 1930s he used to buy fish suppers at the fish and chip shop my mother, Sarah Ann, and her sister Mary, worked in. My mother and Bob became quite friendly and she’d go along to watch him play in the local football team and then for Bishop Auckland before he left to sign for Liverpool in 1939 shortly before the outbreak of war. I was born in 1954 and as my own career developed she often said to me, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice for you to go and play for Bob Paisley one day?’ Very sadly, she died just a few months before that became reality. I know she’d have been very proud.”
Paisley was initially delighted at his new acquisition who he hoped would provide the solution for him at left-back which during the previous season, when Liverpool had retained the European Cup they'd won for the first time in Rome twelve months before but lost their league title crown to newly-promoted Nottingham Forest, had become something of a problem position with Joey Jones, Tommy Smith and new signing Alan Hansen all featuring.
“He will be a first-class capture”, the Reds boss said. “He is fast, likes to move up to attack and should fit into our side very quickly. There would be seven men challenging for the back four positions - Hughes, Thompson, Hansen, Neal, Jones, Kennedy and Irwin. I wanted Kennedy because I wanted more competition for places. If this lad doesn‘t play for England I‘ll throw myself in the Mersey... when the tide is out.”
Within days, Kennedy was preparing for his Liverpool debut as the Reds prepared for their opening game of the season at home to Queens Park Rangers and it would be a day to remember for the young defender if not necessarily for the right reasons, which began when he met legendary former manager Bill Shankly beforehand in the Anfield corridors who asked him how he was feeling.
“I was thinking to myself ‘this is the great Bill Shankly’ and said ´I am alright, Mr. Shankly. I am a little bit nervous’”, he recalled. “He went into his pocket and pulled out couple of tablets. I thought,´What has he given me here?’, but it‘s Mr. Shankly and whatever he says is right. All of a sudden my mind was going back to the World Cup earlier that summer where there was a Scottish player, Willie Johnston, who got banned after taking some kind of drug and so in the end...he might have given me drugs like. I better have a little look. When I brought them out there were two sweets there and that's all they were, just two sweets. I thought if Mr. Shankly had given me them they must do me good so I ate them the sweets. I felt great now. I didn't really. It's like somebody telling you to eat a steak before a game, it makes you feel good. It doesn't make you feel good. It makes you feel terrible. It just made me more relaxed.”
Kennedy’s Liverpool career would get off to a winning start with goals from Kenny Dalglish and Steve Heighway giving Paisley’s men a 2-1 victory but, despite the debutant’s pre-match supplements, nerves betrayed him initially and led to to his first experience of the biting wit at the heart of the Anfield dressing room which on this occasion was delivered by the manager himself.
"Early on I miskicked with my right foot - the one I use for standing on - and knocked a policeman's helmet off’, Kennedy remembered. “I also conceded a couple of corners and made a few errors. I just wanted half-time to come to get some reassurance from the manager but when I got back to the dressing room, Bob said to me, 'I think that they shot the wrong bloody Kennedy!’”
Despite his less than auspicious start to life at Anfield, Kennedy soon settled in to his new surroundings and became a regular fixture as the Reds imperiously regained their league title after winning their opening six league matches and never relinquishing top spot all season. The defence Kennedy was now a regular part of conceded a record low tally of just 16 goals in their 42 league matches (with only four of them being at Anfield) and he bagged the third goal of his maiden campaign in the 3-0 home win over Aston Villa which clinched the title with two games to spare.
Yet it wasn’t as easy a transition as it appeared. Although Kennedy had been encouraged by Bob Paisley to play with freedom and get forward to support the attack when he could, his occasionally wayward raids down the left flank did not always go down well with the man positioned in front of him, his namesake Ray Kennedy who once said of his fellow north-easterner, "I had Alan Kennedy playing with me and that wasn’t easy. You’d go short and he’d hit it long. You’d go long and he’d hit it short. I used to say, ‘Alan, you took five years off my career.’ When people asked which Kennedy I was I’d say, ‘the intelligent one.’"
“Coming to Liverpool was very, very difficult”, Alan admitted. “I was just the new kid on the block coming from Newcastle and hadn‘t learnt too much about football. I could be a bit of dreamer. There were intimidating characters like Ray Kennedy, Graeme Souness and Jimmy Case there and these players were way above me, internationals. I had to compete with them and I learnt very quickly. If I didn‘t learn quickly I would be out of the game. Ray in front of me was an experienced player who I looked up to. When I first came to the club he said to me, 'Listen, give me the ball whenever you're in trouble, I'll help you out, and I'll be ghosting in at the far post in case a cross comes in from Jimmy Case.´ The old nerves came out sometimes in me and he wasn't happy about it. But I found it difficult to communicate with him. The easiest pass to him - the short one - became the hardest pass for me. The easiest ball became hitting a 60-yard pass into the opponent's box. We worked together okay, but Ray was a stubborn man. He was difficult to get on with. He thought he was the best in the team, so his ego was way above mine and Graeme's. Ray was a perfectionist."
Despite the tension between them however, the Kennedy pair would combine perfectly for the first truly seminal moment in the junior partner’s career. After his second season at Anfield had ended similarly to his first with a league championship medal but disappointment in the FA Cup semi-finals, the 1980/81 campaign became all about the cups.
Although Paisley’s men suffered a relatively poor league campaign - finishing fifth behind surprise champions Aston Villa - and were knocked out of the FA Cup by Everton in the fourth round, they went all the way to Wembley in the League Cup where Kennedy thought he had become Liverpool’s matchwinner after breaking the stalemate against West Ham two minutes from the end of extra time when cracking the ball home with his rarely-used right foot from the edge of the penalty area. Ray Stewart’s stoppage time penalty earned the Second Division side a replay at Villa Park where goals from Kenny Dalglish and Alan Hansen ensured the trophy was heading to Anfield for the first time but the Reds’ left-back would not have to wait long to become a bona fide cup final hero.
A week later the Reds took on Bayern Munich at Anfield in the first leg of the European Cup semi-final but were only able to manage a goalless draw with Kennedy suffering a broken wrist in the game that required the insertion of an uncomfortable steel plate and threw his participation for the rest of the campaign into doubt. Paisley’s injuries woes increased early into the second leg in Germany when his side - already featuring reserve team players Colin Irwin and Richard Money in defence with captain Phil Thompson also absent - lost Kenny Dalglish to an ankle injury but stand-in skipper Ray Kennedy’s 83rd-minute volley secured the 1-1 draw which took Liverpool to the Paris final on away goals.
Their opponents would be Real Madrid, the Spanish giants who had dominated the early years of the competition after its formation in the 1950s but who hadn’t lifted the trophy since their sixth triumph fifteen years earlier. Kennedy’s participation following his broken wrist the month before was in doubt right up until Paisley named him in his starting line-up on the afternoon of the game, much to the north easterner’s relief.
"The city was excited about the team, although that season things had not gone well in the league. It wasn’t a special week, we travelled on the Monday and went to the stadium and saw how bad the pitch was! We looked at what we had to do and then Bob Paisley named the team. He named it quite close to the actual kick-off because he didn’t want anyone to know what it was going to be. I had an injury – a broken wrist – and whether they were taking a chance on it nobody knew until the final moment.”
It was a gamble which paid off handsomely as, with a dour and physical match heading towards extra time goalless, the two Kennedys on Liverpool’s left flank combined to devastating effect with just nine minutes remaining.
“Ray took a throw-in and I have to say I didn't particularly want the ball, I wasn't looking for it”, Alan recalled. “I was just trying to help other players out to create a little bit of space. He threw the ball in, it hit me on the chest, and it bounced down. It was one of those occasions that the player came in - Cortez - to take me out of the game and nothing happened. Then you're thinking, 'what are you going to do?’ The goalie expected a cross but I opted to shoot and basically just blasted the ball with the best shot I could muster and the goalkeeper made the fatal move to the left. The ball went over his shoulder and into the back of the net. I just set off behind the goal to celebrate in front of all the jubilant Liverpool fans. It was fantastic, I was trying to get to them and they were trying to get to me then I got mobbed by all our players, what a tremendous feeling. I thought we’d get another one but it was the winner. The celebrations afterwards were fantastic and I’m surprised we actually managed get the cup back to Merseyside as so many people must have held and kissed it all the way down the Champs Elysees.”
Despite the confidence boost of a third European Cup in five seasons though, Liverpool’s league difficulties continued for the first half of the following campaign with a Boxing Day home defeat to Manchester City leaving Paisley’s men 12th and many in the media declaring the Reds’ unparalleled period of dominance over, the Daily Mirror describing the Anfield empire as ‘crumbling’ and even the Liverpool Daily Post suggesting it might be time for Paisley to step down. The manager reacted by switching the captaincy from Phil Thompson to Graeme Souness and normal service was resumed, with his side winning 19 out of their last 20 league matches to win back their league title while also retaining the League Cup with victory over Spurs at Wembley. For Kennedy, as crucial a factor as any in the Reds’ resilience was the team-spirit and camaraderie within the squad which was fostered just as much through their regular drinking sessions as hard graft on the training fields of Melwood.
“Booze was a way of dealing with the time you weren‘t at training”, he said. “I think the club were happier I was drinking rather than risking getting injured doing something else. As long as we came in the next day, Bob was happy. We were being treated as men at Liverpool whereas at other clubs we heard that players were treated like kids. How we became so successful, the amount we drank, I just don‘t know. We had drinking games, swearing games, anything we could do. The culture in those days was to have a drink. We all liked the beer and we all socialised together and that was a good thing about what Liverpool were all about. We enjoyed ourselves and had a drink, as long as it didn’t reflect badly on the club or interfere with the football.”
The ‘Red Machine’ kept rolling on with the league title retained comfortably the following campaign in Bob Paisley’s final season in charge before retirement and, while his players were unable to win the FA Cup for him - the only trophy to elude him during his career as both player and manager - after a shock home defeat to Second Division Brighton, they did provide him with one more victorious trip to Wembley as the League Cup was secured for a third successive season with Kennedy rifling home a vital 75th minute equaliser against Manchester United after Norman Whiteside’s early opener before Ronnie Whelan’s stunning extra time winner.
"I was on a cruise with the Norwegian branch of the Liverpool Supporters Club”, he recalled years later, “and they presented me with a picture of the goal I scored in that game. You can see all the Liverpool players laughing in the background — almost in disbelief — that my shot was on target! They shouldn’t have been: a couple of minutes earlier I’d had a crack from a similar spot that missed by inches, so I was just finding my range. I remember a fantastic game between two closely matched sides. It was only in extra time that we got on top when Ronnie Whelan settled it with a brilliant goal. As we had won it the previous two years, it had become a special competition and the gloss was applied when Graeme Souness insisted that Bob Paisley go up to collect the cup, as he was retiring at the end of the season. It was a fitting tribute to a legend."
The amusement Kennedy’s team-mates identified in his sometimes ungainly yet often very effective style of play was identified too by Liverpool supporters who nicknamed him ‘Barney Rubble’ after the character in popular television cartoon show, The Flintstones. “I think the Kop thought I looked like him when I ran with my head down”, he admitted. “I first heard it during a warm-up when they started chanting, ‘Barney! Barney!’, and one of the players said ‘I think that’s for you’. I turned round and acknowledged them with a clap. It just stuck. But I never minded and people still call me it to this day. It was always meant in a friendly way and the fans always treated me very well. The players called me far worse I can tell you!”
Any concerns Paisley’s departure may impact on Liverpool’s consistent trophy-gathering were soon scotched when Joe Fagan stepped up from the Boot Room and led the club to a third successive league title in 1983/84 - emulating Arsenal and Huddersfield Town, the only two sides to have achieved such a feat back in the 1930s - along with a fourth successive League Cup after victory over Merseyside neighbours Everton. An unprecedented treble lay in wait when victories over Odense of Denmark, Spanish champions Athletic Bilbao, Benfica of Portugal and Romanians’ Dinamo Bucharest sent the Reds through to yet another European Cup final but they faced the daunting task of facing Italian champions AS Roma on the own ground with the match being staged at their own Stadio Olimpico.
The Reds’ run to the final however had been built on strong form on their travels with all four away legs en route to the final resulting in victories and, after startling the under-pressure Italians in the tunnel before kick off by belting out Chris Rea’s ‘I Don’t Know What It Is But I Love It’ which had become the team’s theme tune in the dressing room that season, Kennedy’s veteran full-back partner Phil Neal put Liverpool in front after 14 minutes only for Roberto Pruzzo to head an equaliser just before half time. There was no further scoring which meant Europe’s showpiece match would be decided for the first time by a penalty shoot-out, not a prospect which fulled many of the Reds’ players with great optimism but it would be prove to be the crowning glory of Kennedy’s career.
“We’d gone to penalties in a pre-season game against Feyenoord and we weren’t very good, in fact we were pathetic", Kennedy admitted. "Joe Fagan wasn't too concerned about penalty shoot-outs because he thought we would win it before it got that far, we did have a practice shoot-out against the youth team before we left for Italy and lost badly to them so were all hoping it wouldn’t come to that! When it did go to penalties, Joe was walking on the pitch and in his mind I don't think he particularly knew which five to pick. To this day I've got no idea why he gave me the opportunity to take a penalty. He may have panicked. He asked how I was feeling and I said I was fine because I hadn't been picked. He said ´Ok´ and walked off then pointed to Graeme Souness and Ian Rush. Phil Neal was always going to take one. But the two others, Steve Nicol and me, thought no chance. He picked Steve Nicol, the youngest man of the team and all of a sudden... I didn't realise he had picked me at the time. It suddenly sinks in and I panicked. I was panicking about the situation. I didn't want it to happen.
“Steve missed our first one but Graziani and Conti missed for them and that might have seemed to take the pressure off. But I didn't feel that way as I was going forward. All I could see were photographers behind the goal, all of them shooting and taking pictures. I wasn't looking forward to it. I just didn't want to be there. I wanted to be somewhere else, totally somewhere away from this situation. I felt nervous, I felt poor, I felt terrible. I hadn't had a bad game in the 120 minutes, but in that situation you have to stand up and be counted. I felt no player had any confidence in me. In the end they were looking at themselves and thinking to themselves, 'He's bound to miss this one. Who's going to take the next one?' That didn't obviously give me the confidence I needed when I am walking up there.
“You put the ball down... I thought of my family, my girlfriend at the time... I just felt I can't let these people down... We were so bad the week before we had to abandon the practice when the kids beat us in the penalty shoot-out. They say you should be clear, be focused and never change your mind with penalties. I didn't have any of those three in my mind. I opened up my body at the end... I didn't know why I did it... Tancredi the goalkeeper went to his left-hand side and I got the ball into the right hand side of the goal. You can't imagine the relief I had at that particular moment when the ball hit the net. I peeled away and saw all the lads running towards me with looks of disbelief on their faces as if to say, ‘I can believe he’s actually done it again!’ We had a fantastic celebration in a villa near Rome, we were singing and dancing until the early hours and we didn’t get back to our hotel until about 9 in the morning. Then they said, ´You've got to have pictures taken now´ and I can remember Joe Fagan sitting there on a deck chair with the European Cup. We had a few pictures taken and then we came back to Liverpool and got a terrific reception, the amount of people both Liverpudlians and Evertonians congratulating us, it was just amazing and what a way to finish off a season to became the first English team to win a treble. Without doubt it was one of Liverpool’s best-ever achievements because the League Cup was every bit as tough as the FA Cup back then, no-one fielded under-strength teams, so to then go on and beat a team on their own ground in a European Cup final was unbelievable as no-one really gave us a chance beforehand.”
Fagan’s second season however would be very different story as, with captain Graeme Souness having left to join Sampdoria in Italy, Liverpool never truly recovered from a poor start which saw them in the relegation zone in October and although they eventually finished a distant second to Howard Kendall’s resurgent Everton, defeats to Manchester United in the FA Cup semi-final and Juventus in a European Cup final overshadowed by the Heysel tragedy meant a first trophyless campaign at Anfield in a decade.
Kennedy would miss the final months of the season with an ankle injury and, while he was fit again by the following August, with new player-manager Kenny Dalglish having taken over from Fagan and looking to revamp the team and in particular its ageing full backs, the writing was on the wall for the 31-year-old north-easterner who did not get the conclusion his stellar Reds career deserved.
“I scored in my first Liverpool game which was Jock Stein’s testimonial so it was ironic I found the net in my last one as well. It was against Oxford United who had just been promoted and had some good players. We were winning 2-1 very near the end when the ball comes down the middle and with John Aldridge chasing me, I put the ball back towards Bruce but instead of putting it wide of the goal, I put it towards the middle of the goal. Well, Bruce thought I was putting the ball wide of the goal so he‘s gone way wide and the ball goes in the back of the net. Two apiece, a minute to go, no chance of recovery. Kenny Dalglish was not happy afterwards, comes into the dressing room and has a go at me, he has a go at Paul Walsh for whatever reason and that was my last ever game. I knew I had to go. I knew it was going to be impossible. The youngsters will always win against the older players and that was the thing. It‘s never nice when it happens when somebody says to you,' You‘re not good enough.' Jim Beglin was coming in to take my position and in the end Jim unfortunately broke his leg about 18 months later. If I'd stayed at the club I might have still had a chance to get back into the team. I ended up going to Sunderland and your career goes downhill after that I‘m afraid. I should have signed for Newcastle.”
Following a difficult spell at Roker Park, Kennedy moved to Hartlepool before spells with clubs in Sweden, Belgium and Denmark and he moved back to England to play for Wigan Athletic and Wrexham, finally retiring at the age of 42 in 1996 after playing non-league. Since then, he has combined youth coaching with after-dinner speaking, hospitality work for LFC and media appearances where his pride at what he was able to achieve for Liverpool is always very evident.
“When that red shirt went on I was prepared to give everything. I was not the most skilful, but I was determined and dedicated. My greatest strengths were pace and attitude. I would never give up and always give 100%. Coming to Liverpool really made me feel I could play football because if you could get into that team you could get into any team, any young Englishman would have paid to play with them. They were so strong and so good and I felt comfortable. There were quite a few players who tried to take my position but I felt I was good enough to beat all of them although I never could have imagined I’d score winners in two European Cup finals. If you had played in that Liverpool side, you knew that you could do it in any club in the world. There was a huge good competition, but at the same time, you felt wonderfully good there. We were all proud to belong to Liverpool. I love Merseyside and the people, that’s why I still live here.”
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