IAN HERBERT: Kenny Dalglish’s greatest achievement is giving a voice to a grieving city after winning the SPOTY lifetime award… his work in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster has obscured his robust beauty as a player

• Kenny Dalglish went through devastating moments in aftermath of Hillsborough
• Liverpool icon was awarded SPOTY lifetime award for his work after the disaster
• Where is Liverpool’s Declan Rice? If Jordan Henderson hadn’t taken the Saudi cash, he’d be in Jurgen Klopp’s team – It’s All Kicking Off

The devastating, sometimes surreal, small details of what Kenny Dalglish had to contend with on that April day in 1989 have not been combed through so very much, because those were times when you were just expected to live with things and move on.

He was led by a police officer through the Hillsborough kitchens, with Brian Clough, towards the police box at the corner of the Leppings Lane stand, where they were both to make an announcement to calm fans in the depths of the stadium disaster which would claim 97 lives. 

The police box microphone wasn’t working, so the officer suggested they use the stadium DJ’s booth instead, a few flights further up. Clough turned back at that point, so it was left to Dalglish alone to find the words.

It had him taken some time to ascertain that his own son, Paul, who had passed through the Leppings Lane turnstiles to see Liverpool’s FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest, was not caught up in the crush just beyond them. He had headed out to find him. 

And though there was an overwhelming relief to locate him on the pitch, the aftermath for those parents who were not so fortunate was the most haunting part of his remembrance.

One of Kenny Dalglish’s greatest achievements in Liverpool has been giving a voice to a grieving city

It cannot be understated the role the Liverpool legend has played in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster

Walking through a Sheffield hospital where four or five children lay in comas, Dalglish was struck one afternoon by a boy, Lee Nicol, lying there without a single mark on him. The child died that evening. All of that came before the funerals – he attended four on one day alone.

Someone sent a ‘stress counsellor’ in to speak to him, in his Liverpool manager’s office, and she encouraged him to sit down and talk about all this. Dalglish, bridling slightly at the suggestion, told her to go upstairs and check on Liverpool’s chief executive, Peter Robinson, instead. Robinson called down to Dalglish a few minutes later. ‘Thanks very much, Kenny, I don’t need a stress counsellor,’ he said. They were different times. Harder times.

The Hillsborough Disaster led Dalglish, suffering what we would today call acute post-traumatic stress, to feel he was ‘going mad.’ He resigned in the Anfield trophy room 22 months later, his self-confidence and decision-making temporarily shredded. The memory of his ashen face on the Liverpool Echo’s stunning black and white front page that day – ‘Kenny Quits’ – remains indelible.

There was simply not the time, within the confines of a live BBC broadcast, to articulate the enormity of the role Dalglish played back then, which contributed to him being awarded a BBC Sports Personality of the Year lifetime achievement award.

Dalglish stood by Liverpool supporters when their grief was so fresh in a tragedy that gripped the entire country 

There was not the time to articulate the enormity of the role Dalglish as he was given the BBC Sports Personality lifetime achievement award

But his work in the aftermath of the tragedy, which cemented him into the city of Liverpool and Anfield, has perhaps obscured a full appreciation of Dalglish the footballer and the breathtaking beauty of his play. 

It was a robust kind of beauty, for sure. Mark Lawrenson and Alan Hansen told him, with mischief, that he couldn’t run, couldn’t head and he had a substantial backside – none of which Dalglish would entirely disagree with. 

Perhaps that physique explains why we cherish and remember others more – George Best, considerably more. But Dalglish was unplayable in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He sits alongside Best, Sir Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore and John Charles among these islands’ greatest footballers.

It was his speed of thought and intuition that most astonished those alongside him. The moment Ian Rush knew Dalglish was on the ball, he was off, and the pass always seemed to follow. What always most struck Lawrenson, watching from 40 yards back up the pitch, was Dalglish’s capacity to find the pass even when he couldn’t even see Rush. The ball Dalglish played for Rush to score against Watford in 1982, when Liverpool won 3-1, lives long in the mind.

The role Dalglish has played in the aftermath of Hillsborough has obscured the robust beauty he displayed as a player

And there the goals, of course. The winner at Stamford Bridge in 1986 which pipped Everton and West Ham to the title. The dinked finish against Club Bruges in the European Cup final at Wembley, eight years earlier. He was operating on a higher cognitive level than anyone else.

There was a symmetry about Dalglish receiving Tuesday night’s award in Salford, across the quays from Old Trafford. Sir Bobby received his in Liverpool, in 2008, when there was barely a dry eye in the house. Legends of this kind transcend cities and their petty football rivalries. Dalglish’s appointment to the ranks was so appropriate – considerably more, it should be said, than the decision to hand gymnast Simone Biles the prize – aged 24 and not even retired – two years ago.

Accepting his award, Dalglish referenced ‘supporters that stood by me,’ though it was he who stood by them when grief was fresh.

He has never forgotten walking onto the deserted Kop with his children and father-in-law in the still of a Friday evening, six days after the disaster, and observing the tributes to the lost which had been placed there by those who grieved. He saw two oranges, left behind one of the crash barriers.

‘They were so insignificant and yet so full of meaning,’ Dalglish reflected years later. ‘Perhaps the two people took it in turns to bring oranges to matches. Something to share at half-time. I wondered if the person who laid the oranges ever returned to the Kop. It was difficult not to weep, coming across tributes like that.’

Legends like Dalglish transcend cities and their petty football rivalries as he was given the esteemed honour

I met Gee Walker nearly 20 years ago. She told me about her teenage son, Anthony, and how her grief for him was at its fiercest whenever she saw a pile of dishes in her small kitchen on Tuesday evenings. Tuesday was Anthony’s night to wash up and he threw himself into the chore with characteristic zest and good humour. Their lives together ended when he headed out one evening, never to return.

Anthony was killed by a single blow to the head from a 2ft ice axe, inflicted on him ‘for no reason other than the colour of his skin’, the jury which convicted his killers was told. Those killers were 17-year-old Michael Barton, the brother of Joey Barton, who supplied the axe and provoked a confrontation, and Barton’s cousin Paul Taylor, 20, who wielded the axe. 

Joey Barton recently observed that his relatives’ conviction was the result of ‘a f**** scrap.’ How dare he. I cannot begin to imagine how Anthony Walker’s family will feel. Scum is a very strong word. It defines Joey Barton so very well.

Joey Barton infuriated the family of the late Anthony Walker after claiming his brother’s conviction for his murder was the result of a ‘f***ing scrap’

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For many years, I reported about the real world beyond the football bubble – actual news – and this sometimes entailed sitting in court, hearing barristers arguing cases of huge significance. 

Lives turned on the arguments and examinations of Richard Henriques, Anthony Gee, Andrew Edis and other criminal barristers like them.

Against that backdrop, it was hard to view the 37-page verdict in the case of ‘the FA v Mikel Arteta’ as anything less than ridiculous. 

Mikel Arteta laughed in the face of a request for decency and respect as he ranted and gesticulated at officials on Sunday

The ‘written reasons’ of the ‘independent commission’ examination of Areta’s incandescent response after Arsenal were denied a goal and lost at Newcastle read like Dickensian burlesque, with ‘The Goal,’ ‘The Third Incident’ and ‘The Highlighted Words’ prominent in the absurd legalese.

A sport drowning in money is so out of touch with reality that a criminal barrister, Ian Mill KC, who has defended Ed Sheeran and Megan Markle amongst others, was engaged to defend Arteta in a case which, at most, would have brought a fine and a few games in the stands. He was acquitted.

As the FA attempts to engender respect, Arteta was at it again on Sunday – ranting and gesticulating, being booked, drawing abuse on the referee and then claiming, with a smile on is face that he was waving at one of his players. Laughing in the face of a request for decency and respect.

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