Terry McDermott, who made his Liverpool debut 50 years ago today, graduated from the Boys Pen and the Kop to the Anfield pitch and was an integral figure in the one of the greatest periods in the club’s history
Liverpool over the years have been blessed with some great goalscorers as well as scorers of great goals. Few however have combined both attributes as well as a Scouser whose love affair with his hometown club began by watching the great Billy Liddell playing for the Reds’ reserves towards the end of the iconic Scot’s celebrated career.
He would graduate to cheering on Liverpool’s first team from the Boys Pen and then the Kop and, after cutting his teeth in professional football elsewhere, finally got to pull on the red shirt he adored and won almost every major honour in the game while putting together a showreel of goals of sublime quality and quantity.
Terry McDermott first appeared on the Anfield pitch as an enthusiastic 11-year-old having run onto the hallowed turf with scores of other youngsters in delight when Bill Shankly’s side clinched promotion in April 1962 after eight years in the wilderness of the Second Division.
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The football-mad youngster trooped back to Kirkby that evening with brother Peter dreaming of emulating his heroes one day but would have to bide his time before making it a reality. Although he represented a successful Kirkby Boys team which reached the quarter-finals of English Schools Trophy, he was one of only two players in the side not to sign schoolboy forms with Football League clubs, the other being Dennis Mortimer (who years later would become only the second Scouser after Phil Thompson to lift the European Cup when he captained Aston Villa to glory over Bayern Munich in Rotterdam in 1982).
McDermott would eventually be snapped up by lowly Bury and it was at Gigg Lane where he cut his teeth in the professional game, making 90 appearances and scoring eight goals from midfield before making the jump from the Fourth to the First Division when Newcastle United paid £22,000 for him in February 1973. Despite the step up in class, manager Joe Harvey soon gave the 21-year-old his chance in the first team and he settled in quickly, helped by being sent to live with the family of young Magpies left-back Alan Kennedy who would later become an Anfield team-mate, and by the end of McDermott’s first – and, as it would turn out, only – full season at St James Park the Geordies had won through to the FA Cup final where their opponents would be Liverpool.
It was the dream final for the young Scouser who only the previous season had been plying his trade against the likes of Exeter and Gillingham on the bottom rung of the English league ladder, but it turned into something of a nightmare as Liverpool, in what proved to be Shankly’s last game as manager before his shock retirement the following July, comprehensively won 3-0 to put the pre-match boasts by Newcastle centre-forward Malcolm Macdonald of how he was going to destroy the Reds defence firmly in the shade.
“I always found Malcolm a bit flash for the north east,” McDermott recalled in his autobiography, ‘Living For The Moment’. “I don’t feel bitter towards him now but it wasn’t the wisest thing to do and without a doubt wound Liverpool up. Loads of my family were at Wembley that day with their black and white scarves and rosettes. They had mostly travelled down with the Liverpool fans, some of whom they knew, but for one day they had given up their allegiance to the Reds and were supporting me and Newcastle. The game itself was an utter embarrassment and it could and should have been even worse. I was completely devastated after the game. People were saying I couldn’t lose because of my Liverpool roots. You must be joking. I felt physically sick because we got utterly stuffed. All in all, it was a terrible experience.”
McDermott’s spirits were lifted during the summer when newspaper reports began to link him with a move to Liverpool – Bob Paisley having reluctantly agreed to step up from the Boot Room and take charge after Shankly’s abrupt exit – although the young midfielder initially did not pay the transfer talk much mind until he received a letter from Phil Thompson, another fanatical Red from Kirkby, who had already forced his way into the Liverpool side after coming through the youth ranks but was in hospital waiting for an operation having played against McDermott at Wembley the previous May.
“I was in my hospital bed when Bob Paisley phoned me,” he recalled in his book, Stand Up Pinocchio. “He said, ‘the boy McDermott. I’m reading in the press that he is not happy at Newcastle. Do you know him?’ ‘Not really’, I said. ‘He’s a Kirkby lad, but he’s a bit older than me. I only got to meet him in the Cup final where we swapped shirts’. Bob said, ‘I fancy him as a Liverpool player. Can you get in touch with him?’ I told him there was no phone number for Macca, but I could write and I sent Terry a letter from my hospital bed, saying I understood he was not happy and that Bob Paisley had been talking about him. I explained that Bob felt he had all the attributes to be a Liverpool player, adding, ‘if you know what I mean’.
“I tried to word it as carefully as I could and soon got a letter back saying, ‘if you are trying to say would I be interested in Liverpool, it would be my dream’. I spoke to Bob who said, ‘write and tell him not to do anything daft’ (which was hard for Terry Mac!). Another letter went off and while Terry might have had to decipher it, the message was clear. A little bit of time passed and I got another letter from Terry, which said ‘what’s happening?’ It was like James Bond with all of these cryptic messages changing hands. I told Bob and soon after it was in the papers that Liverpool were interested in Terry McDermott. After a little while longer and a few more ‘love letters’ to each other, he was to come to Anfield where we became firm friends and roomates for many years.”
Liverpool agreed a £166,000 fee with Newcastle in November 1974 and McDermott sped down from the north east to Anfield keen to put pen to paper, stopping only in Kirkby to pick up his dad on the way and barely glancing at the terms of his contract which initially was barely worth any more money than he was on at Newcastle.
“Maybe I should have asked for more but I didn’t care,” he remembered. “It must have been the quickest Liverpool signing ever, there were no negotiations. My dad was made up, what a day it had been for him. What must he have been feeling? He’d been watching the Reds all his life and now his son was about to play for them. I’d picked him up to meet people like Bob Paisley. He was working at Tate and Lyle, which employed thousands, including many Liverpool fans, so imagine the pride he would have had the next day, his lad having just signed for the club. He wasn’t one to shout from the rooftops – that wasn’t the way any of us had been brought up – but inside he would have been elated even if on the outside he was his normal, humble, hard-working self.”
The whirlwind ride continued for McDermott and his dad as within days of completing his move from Newcastle the midfielder was thrust straight into the team for his full debut, exactly 50 years ago today, in the white-hot atmosphere of a Merseyside derby alongside another young player who had become Paisley’s first signing as Liverpool manager only weeks earlier, 23-year-old right-back Phil Neal, who arrived for £66,000 from Northampton Town. The youthful pair held their own as the Reds played out a goalless draw at Goodison Park and McDermott kept his place in the side for the next half-dozen games before being dropped after a 3-1 defeat at Birmingham City.
It would nearly two months before he started another a game and, while he would get off the mark for his new club with an equaliser which earned a point at Burnley and would grab his first Anfield goal against old club Newcastle soon afterwards, he would be in and out of the side for much of his first two years at the club, making only 10 appearances in his first full season as Paisley’s men won a league and UEFA Cup double in 1975-76. It was a frustrating period for the young Scouser who was desperate to prove his worth but, as was often the case at the time, the Liverpool way more often than not was to have young players learn their trade in the reserves and McDermott would go on to admit he was overawed when he first arrived at the club.
He said: “If I thought I had made it in the First Division with Newcastle, I was about to endure a rude awakening. I hadn’t made it – nowhere near. I had to learn quickly but I didn’t so I was in and out of the side. There was also plenty of competition for my midfield role. There was Peter Cormack trying to get into the side and Ian Callaghan sometimes dropped into midfield. Ray Kennedy also had the same problem at first, he didn’t play in every game, and Jimmy Case was also trying to break through at the time. Looking back now, I think I was overawed by who was in the Liverpool dressing room when I joined. I found myself shaking with nerves before my first training session. When I walked into the dressing room for the first time I was absolutely bricking it. I was frightened to open my mouth because I wasn’t the most eloquent of fellas. It was difficult trying to concentrate on my game when I realised I was playing with people I idolised. All in all, I think it took my about two years to realise what it meant to play for Liverpool.”
Although thrilled as a fan to see Liverpool dramatically fight back in the last quarter of an hour of the final league match at Wolves to lift the 1976 league title, the fact he watched from the Molineux dug-out wearing a leather bomber jacket rather than being on the pitch in a red shirt was distressing to the 24-year-old, as was missing out on a medal due to not having played enough games to qualify. He would discuss his frustrations with Paisley and even suggested he might have to leave although the manager always insisted he wanted him to stay and McDermott would later find out interest from Nottingham Forest boss Brian Clough was never fed back to him.
It proved a wise decision for Liverpool and McDermott as the momentous 1976-77 campaign would see him finally establish himself as a fixture in the Reds first team. Although he would have to wait a month for his first involvement, coming off the bench to score in the European Cup first round against Irish side Crusaders, he started the next match against Middlesbrough and kept his place as Paisley’s men hunted down a unique Treble. It should have been the happiest time of his life but behind the scenes he was hiding the secret anguish of watching his mum Maggie die from cancer.
“I had been absolutely flying during the season,” he recalled. “I felt accepted in the dressing room, I was playing for my boyhood team regularly, the fans were singing my name, and I was living every kid’s dream. During that season it became clear that Mum did not have long to live. She was spending most of her time at Clatterbridge cancer hospital on the Wirral. When I visited her, I would often see the great Liverpool comedian Ken Dodd because his long-term partner was also having treatment there. It was so hard seeing Mum the way she was, watching her life ebb away. One day it became too much. I had to walk out of the ward because she looked so gaunt and frail. It wasn’t the Mum I knew. It was probably the most important time of my football life up to then but I knew she was going to die and, looking back, I don’t know how I got through it. But in a strange way, the starkness of the situation imbued me with greater inspiration to be successful. It brought my own life into focus and made me realise how lucky I was.”
After recovering from an injury picked up in the Reds’ FA Cup opener against Crystal Palace, McDermott was back in the side for the run-in and would score of the two of the most iconic goals of a campaign forever written into Anfield folklore. With Liverpool already looking well-set to retain their league title, focus increased on the cup competitions with Paisley’s men being paired with Merseyside neighbours Everton in the semi-finals of the FA Cup and McDermott opened the scoring at Maine Road with a majestic left-footed chip which later won the BBC Goal of the Season competition.
“I’d noticed before against Everton that their goalkeeper David Lawson was often on the penalty spot, which I thought was a bit bizarre, so when Kevin Keegan played the ball to me I pretended I was going to shoot with my right and as Mick Buckley tried to close me down, I quickly shifted on to my left to unbalance him and then chipped it into the net,” McDermott remembered. “The keeper had no chance because it sailed about three or feet over him before dipping in. I’m proud of that goal but I should have worked on my goal celebration. I just went hurtling back towards the halfway line with the rest of my team-mates chasing me. But just as in training when we went on runs, they couldn’t catch me!”
The Reds reached Wembley after seeing off the Toffees following a replay but, having clinched the club’s tenth league title with a game to spare, saw their Treble dreams end when Lou Macari’s shot deflected off team-mate Jimmy Greenhoff to hand Manchester United a fortuitous FA Cup final victory. It could have been a devastating blow with Liverpool’s first ever European Cup final against Borussia Moenchengladbach in Rome only four days away but Ray Clemence famously lifted the mood by declaring his intention to ‘get absolutely p***ed’ and led a sing-song which blew the dark clouds away, enabling Paisley’s men to jet off to Italy on the Monday in good heart and with renewed belief their moment of destiny was at hand.
Inspired by the tens of thousands of Reds fans who made the long journey, Liverpool duly saw off the German champions to complete the mission started by Shankly a dozen years before to make the club champions of Europe for the first time and it was McDermott who grabbed the vital opening goal on that balmy Rome night with a strike which summed up the pass-and-move philosophy the club had become renowned for.
He said: “Walking out into the Olympic Stadium sent a shiver down your spine an hour and a half before kick off. There was a sea of red and white all around the ground and the fans had also forgotten all about the FA Cup. When we saw them, we just knew we couldn’t let them down. I’m convinced that was the inspiration for us to win the European Cup. Kevin Keegan was magnificent in what everyone already knew would be his last game for the club and he played a big part in my goal, his clever run taking experienced defender Bertie Vogts away to the other side of the penalty area. It gave me around 20 yards of space to run into – something you don’t normally get in top-class football. When Steve Heighway released the ball, I was in. I saw their goalkeeper Wolfgang Kneib rushing out. He must have been about 6ft 8in, a real giant. I just sensed this huge shadow looming in on me and thought, ‘I best get rid of this before he gets any nearer’, so I just hit it and it flew into the corner of the net.”
The Germans would hit back to equalise after half-time but Tommy Smith’s header and Neal’s penalty secured a 3-1 victory to make Liverpool only the second club to lift Europe’s elite cup competition and spark wild celebrations on the pitch, on the terraces and across Merseyside. They continued with a vengeance as Paisley’s men flew home to a rapturous reception with hundreds of thousands of people lining the city streets for a triumphant open-top bus tour.
McDermott said: “After that final, it was really non-stop drinking from the minute we got to the hotel after the game. And for me it was a release from my mother’s illness. I had been traumatised by that and the drink was helping. From the airport we clambered onto an open-top bus for the celebratory tour around the city. We soon discovered more beers were on offer. The problem was, with all this drink, where do you go to relieve yourself?
“Going along Queens Drive, one of the major roads in Liverpool, the bus was going so slowly that you could dive off and knock at someone’s door, pleading to use their toilet. We went around the city and the scenes were incredible, fans decked in red and white everywhere. We got off at St George’s Hall, where we were due to be presented to the Mayor. We ended up on a balcony facing the crowd overlooking the Liverpool Empire theatre. There must have been 100,000 in the area – fans as far as the eye could see. We were all looking a bit bedraggled as Emlyn Hughes lifted the European Cup to show the fans. I was at the front of the balcony and I couldn’t move. By now, I’m desperate for a p***.
“I felt there was nothing else I could do but unzip my trousers and relieve myself over the balcony. I was blissfully unaware at the time, but my stream landed all over a nurse who was standing among a group of St John Ambulance staff. The next night we were due to play in Tommy Smith’s testimonial at Anfield. I got a phone call from a reporter at the Sunday People informing me his paper had a photo of me urinating over a nurse. I was completely unaware of what I’d done and so denied it was me. But on the Sunday I picked up the People and saw a picture of me urinating from the St George’s Hall balcony.
“I managed to find out who the nurse was and sent her some flowers, but I still thought I’d be in serious trouble. As it turns out, the club never said a single word. The nurse could have demanded that they sack me but she was absolutely brilliant and she forgave me. If you’re still out there, a very big thank you. It was ridiculous what I did, but you tend to do stupid things in drink. One mischievous fan even sent me an incontinence bag through the post. Not long after, I found myself in Benidorm on a break with my big mate Phil Thompson. I rang home every day to find out how Mum was and then one day I received the news I was dreading – that she had died. She was only 55.”
McDermott’s progress was rewarded with his first England cap against Switzerland the following September and, although 1977/78 proved something of a season of transition at Anfield with newly-promoted Nottingham Forest scotching dreams of three Anfield league titles in a row as Keegan’s replacement – British record transfer Kenny Dalglish who joined for £440,000 from Celtic – along with fellow Scots Alan Hansen and Graeme Souness settled into the side, this was the season the Kirkby-born midfielder felt he really became a Liverpool player.
He said: “What really changed it for me was the realisation I could score goals. I never used to score many. It would just be five or six over the season but the turning point came ironically enough against Kevin Keegan’s new team, Hamburg, in the Super Cup, a game between the European Cup winners and European Cup Winners Cup victors then played over two legs. We’d drawn 1-1 in Hamburg and before the return leg at Anfield Bob Paisley urged me to get forward more and link with Kenny Dalglish. On that night, the penny dropped. I got a hat-trick including one into the top corner from 25 yards, was awarded the man of the match trophy and my confidence just soared after that.”
His season tally of eight goals should have been at least one higher with a strike against Nottingham Forest in the League Cup final replay defeat at Old Trafford harshly ruled out for a dubious handball and McDermott was among a number of Liverpool players to miss a host of chances as Paisley’s men dominated Belgian champions FC Bruges at Wembley as they sought to retain their European Cup before Dalglish’s 65th-minute chip ensured the trophy would be accompanying them on the train back to Merseyside.
Shankly’s vision of Liverpool as a ‘bastion of invincibility’ was becoming a reality as the Reds imperiously regained their domestic crown the following campaign with one of the club’s most dominant ever championship triumphs, Paisley’s men conceding just 16 goals through their 42-game league campaign – shipping just four at Anfield all season – while scoring 85 times and collecting 68 points, which under the modern-day three points for a win system would have equated to 98. McDermott would match his previous season’s relatively modest goal tally of eight but the first of them, the last in the early-season 7-0 massacre of a Tottenham Hotspur side boasting Argentina World Cup stars Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa, was a work of art and is still regarded by many as the finest goal ever scored at Anfield, the midfielder racing the length of the pitch after defending a corner to get on the end of a sweeping move involving Dalglish, David Johnson and Steve Heighway with a flying header.
McDermott recalled: “It started with me leaning against the post when the ball comes into the box and I’m talking away with the lads, ‘Where are we going tonight? Come on, we’re 6-0 up, anyone out?’ It’s not my best goal, because I was on the end of it I get the credit as it hit my head and went in the corner but the build up to it was why Bob Paisley described as the best ever. I can relate that to the punters and they love it. ‘You were leaning on that post and you went from one end of the pitch to the other in 15 seconds and scored?’ ‘You were winning 6-0 and you still did that, why did you do it?’ And I say, ‘I don’t know’. There was a Heineken advert right behind the goal at the other end, maybe it was that!”
It was in 1979/80 however that McDermott’s goalscoring went to a new level as he doubled his tally to 16, winning Goal of the Season again with another extraordinary FA Cup strike as his remarkable volley decided a quarter-final at Spurs although for the second season running dreams of the Double bit the dust in the semi-finals after a four-game marathon against Arsenal and it would remain the only major trophy the Kirkby-born midfielder never got his hands on. Liverpool comfortably retained their league title though and McDermott became the first man to win both the PFA and Football Writers Player of the Year awards in the same campaign, also making history when he and Everton’s Garry Stanley – a good friend of his – became the first players to be sent off in a Merseyside derby in the 20th Century.
“I made contact with Garry’s teeth – or vice versa,” he recalled. “I’ve still got the scar on my hand today and the referee sent us both off. The irony was that Garry and I are good mates and we often used to go out for a drink together. That plus the fact that we were both just about the two softest players on the park. I remember sitting in the bath and laughing when I thought of all those hard men still running about out there, while us two softies had been sent off. I think it was for dropping our handbags. When we had been walking down the stairs we looked each other and said, ‘what the f*** are we doing getting sent off. The two biggest tarts on the pitch’. Then I asked him where we were going out that night.”
McDermott’s liking of a drink and down-to-earth nature meant he had to be cajoled into attended that season’s PFA awards to pick up his Player of the Year trophy and, having left as soon as he got his trophy to make it back his Quarry Green local in Kirkby in time for last orders at his regular Sunday session, he swerved the Football Writers’ awards ceremony a couple of weeks later to go to Chester Races. It was no surprise to McDermott’s team-mates who marvelled at his ability to enjoy himself and lager-defying stamina which never seemed to affect his performances in matches or at training, with Keegan suggesting in the foreword to McDermott’s book his pal – despite the widespread culture of the time – ‘was breaking all the rules on drinking but it was like a fuel to him. Give him a few pints and he’ll run forever. It was like his gas.’
“‘You’ve got two pairs of lungs’, I said to him once and I’m sure Terry did,” Dalglish wrote in his autobiography. “What a player Terry was. He could run and run and his mind shifted as quickly. As a footballer, he was a creature of instinct and intelligence, a killer mix. If I even hinted at darting into a particular area, Terry read my mind. The ball was waiting for me, almost smiling at me. Not only could Terry see a great pass, he could deliver it. Vision and execution are qualities found in only the very best of players and Terry had those strengths. Along with his keen eye for goal, what made Terry even more special was his full-on, committed attitude.”
Few knew him better than his old Kirkby mucker Thompson who told how McDermott’s larger-than-life character proved a perfect fit for the Liverpool dressing room as soon as he arrived from Newcastle. “Terry could drink and get home at two in the morning, but he could still get through any fitness regime you could throw at him the next day. That was never a problem for him. He could go in a sauna for 20 minutes without breaking sweat! He actually hated the sauna. I remember he had a chain that he wore round his neck. I can remember him being in the sauna and the chain must have been getting hotter and hotter. He suddenly screamed in pain. It was really funny. He was just an unbelievable character. The lads nicknamed him ‘Lege’ which was short for ‘Legend’. He was such a bubbly and funny character and helped to make the dressing room light-hearted and relaxed. He was like that from the day he came.”
McDermott himself never hid the fact he enjoyed a night out but he knew his extra-curricular activities would only be tolerated if his performances on the field were up to scratch. “If it would have affected my performance, I wouldn’t have taken a drink,” he said. “But it never affected my game. If it did, I wouldn’t have got away with it for so long. Some players would come in for training and say they had a bit of a cold or a sore throat or they might not even come in. But with me, it didn’t matter what state I was in, I’d come in for training every day and run as far and as fast as anyone else. Some players wouldn’t go out after a Tuesday. Again, I was a little bit different there. I’d still go out on a Thursday. But if I hadn’t been producing the goods, the fans would have turned on me. And Bob Paisley would have turned on me. The likes of Joe Fagan and Ronnie Moran and Roy Evans would have been telling me, ‘hey, you’re out of order’. But that never happened. And when they were starting out, I’d bring the likes of Ian Rush and Ronnie Whelan out with me. It obviously was a good upbringing I gave them because they didn’t go on to have bad careers, did they?”
Having been recognised as the finest goalscoring midfielder in the country, McDermott began the 1980-81 campaign where he left off by scoring the winner at Wembley in the Charity Shield against West Ham United and incredibly would become even more prolific, top scoring for Paisley’s men with a career-best tally of 22. It was an unusual campaign at Anfield with the Reds only managing to finish fifth in the First Division – the only year between 1973 and 1991 they would be out of the top two – but the League Cup was won for the first time after a replay victory over West Ham and the European Cup returned to the Anfield trophy cabinet for the third time in five seasons following victory over Real Madrid in Paris, McDermott scoring one of the most memorable and important goals of the European run with a beautifully-judged chip that decided the first leg of the Battle of Britain clash against Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen in the second round.
The transitional period Liverpool were going through with youngsters like Rush, Whelan, Mark Lawrenson and Craig Johnston being introduced into Paisley’s side was very evident in the first half of the 1981/82 campaign, a Boxing Defeat at home to Manchester City leaving the Reds 12th in the First Division and critics claiming their era of dominance was at an end. Paisley’s decision to replace Thompson as captain with Souness ultimately had the desired effect with Liverpool winning 19 of their next 20 league games to become champions again while also retaining the League Cup with victory over Tottenham, with McDermott again breaking 20 goals from midfield.
But the 30-year-old had been left out of the final dozen games of the season, having been dropped for the early April trip to Manchester United in favour of Johnston who scored the winner at Old Trafford and kept his place for the run-in. Paisley had already indicated he would prepared to let McDermott leave when Bordeaux made a lucrative offer to take him to France and when he found he found himself still sidelined for the beginning of the 1982-83 campaign, the midfielder knew it was time to move on with Newcastle – having just signed Keegan from Southampton – keen to take him back to St James Park.
He said: “When your time is up, it’s up. I could have stayed and possibly have been awarded a testimonial. I still had two years on my contract. But once it’s in your mind they don’t want you, it’s time to go. Before leaving I played one last game, a European Cup tie against Irish side Dundalk at Anfield. There was only 12,000 inside Anfield and none of them would have had a clue it would be my last Liverpool appearance. I wish now I’d done a John Aldridge and thrown my shirt and boots into the crowd – if you could call it a crowd! I saw a photograph later from that game and there’s me in action in front of the Kemlyn Road stand with nobody there!
“I just walked off the pitch as normal at the end and that’s when it really hit me. My heart was pumping knowing Liverpool were prepared to let me go. If it hadn’t been Newcastle with Kevin up there I would probably have stayed. I went up to the north east feeling really hurt. My family were devastated I was going and it was horrible. I never got the opportunity to thank the Liverpool fans who had been so great to me. I’d loved every single minute of going in for training, the banter was great and you never stopped laughing. The camaraderie was incredible but now the stark realisation set in I would no longer be a part of it. I remember getting changed for the last game thinking I didn’t really want to play against Dundalk at a ghostly Anfield. Bob didn’t really say anything. There’s no sentiment. Your time is up and that’s that.”
McDermott and Keegan linked up to good effect in the north east and, after returning with the Geordies to Anfield in an FA Cup third round tie to an affectionate reception in January 1984, helped their new club win promotion back to the First Division the following May. McDermott would join Cork City in Ireland in January 1985 and finished his playing days with APOEL in Cyprus, returning to St James Park as first-team coach alongside Keegan as manager in February 1992. After helping the struggling Second Division side avoid relegation, the pair masterminded promotion to the Premier League the following May and three years later came close to taking them to a first top-flight league championship since 1927 before they stumbled in the run-in, their infamous 4-3 last-minute Stan Collymore-inspired defeat at Anfield which left both former Reds slumped in the visitors’ dug-out in despair proving critical.
Keegan would resign the following January but McDermott stayed as assistant to Dalglish who replaced his former Liverpool team-mate, finally departing when Ruud Gullit took over and brought in his own backroom staff. He would go on to further coaching spells with Celtic (under John Barnes and Dalglish), before returning to Newcastle to work under Souness and then stints at Huddersfield Town and Birmingham City. In recent years, he declared his greatest victory was helping his beloved wife Carole beat cancer and in August 2021 revealed he himself had been diagnosed at the age of 69 as being in the early stages of Lewy body dementia after undergoing a series of hospital visits.
The heartfelt messages of support for him which poured in were testament, not just to the 81 goals he managed in 329 appearances for the club he adored, but to his effervescent character and the joyous way he played the game during an era of Anfield glory which is unlikely to ever be surpassed.
“I used to enjoy my football. I used to enjoy going out at night,”McDermott reflected. “I enjoyed having a laugh. I enjoyed wind-ups. That was just my character. I loved having a laugh with the lads. It was just me. Kevin Keegan and Kenny Dalglish were two of the funniest people you could wish to meet. That’s probably why all gelled together and got on so well. The camaraderie in the dressing room was superb and that’s so important. We were by far the best team for a lot of years. When you look back at it, bloody hell, the team that we had, no wonder nobody could beat us. We knew we were the best team in the country, if not in Europe. Playing for Liverpool was something I could only have dreamed of, representing the club I had watched as a lad, hemmed into the Boys Pen on the Kop. I enjoyed every minute.”
This article was first published in September 2022 and was written by our much-missed colleague Dan Kay. Dan passed away suddenly in May 2023 aged 45. A foundation has been set up in memory of the Hlilsborough campaigner. The Dan Kay Foundation, co-founded by a collection of Dan’s family, friends and ECHO colleagues, aims to tackle stigma around mental health while spreading kindness and creating opportunities for those less fortunate.
For more information, contact [email protected] or follow @TheDanKayFou on Twitter and @dankayfoundation on Instagram for the latest updates and events.
