Source: Liverpool_Echo
Ronnie Moran: ‘How could I forget Bill Shankly’s first Liverpool FC game? I played in it.’
TWO days a week you will find a man walking around the perimeter of the Melwood training pitches.[LNB]Recently, Fernando Torres pulled Sammy Lee to one side and asked: 'Sammy, who is that old guy who walks by the walls?'[LNB]'Who is that?' exclaimed the Liverpool assistant manager. 'Follow me. I'll show you who that is.'[LNB]He took Torres inside, past the changing rooms to a corridor where pictures of former players adorn the walls.[LNB]With Billy Liddell behind him, Lee stopped and pointed to a print of Ronnie Moran in a white Liverpool shirt.[LNB]'That's who he is,' he told Torres.[LNB]Now, when Moran crosses Torres' path, the Liverpool striker shakes his hand and stops for a chat.[LNB]'Quite a few of the young lads will do that,' says Moran.[LNB]'Glen Johnson's another one who went out of his way to speak to me when he arrived. I'm not sure how but he seemed to know all about me.'[LNB]And so he should.[LNB]Under the auspices of Bill Shankly, it's men like Ronnie Moran who helped put Liverpool on the map.[LNB]By the time Shankly arrived in 1959, Moran had graduated from 15-year-old apprentice to club captain and was Liverpool's first choice left-back.[LNB]The Reds were languishing in the old Second Division at the time.[LNB]Within three years Shankly had transformed Liverpool into champions of England, while laying the foundations for sustained success at home and abroad.[LNB]There was little evidence of this, recalls Moran, when he took charge of the team for the first time 50 years ago yesterday - 14 December 1959.[LNB]'How could I forget Bill's first game? I played in it,' says Moran.[LNB]'It was Cardiff at home and we lost 4-0.[LNB]'Walking off at the end with Alan A'Court I remember saying to him 'I wonder what will happen now. I bet we get kiboshed!'[LNB]'But Bill wasn't like that. The only time I saw him get really angry was with one of the reporters who'd written something in the Echo that was incorrect.[LNB]'Shankly was in the bootroom this day and, as he saw the reporter pass, he didn't half give him a rollicking.[LNB]'But he never did it in the dressing rooms. He wasn't one of those tea-cups at the wall types.[LNB]'He'd have a cup in his hand but he'd be sipping hot water out of it. He'd take a sip then spit it out of the corner of his mouth.[LNB]'You could see he may be angry but he'd never go for a player in that way.'
