"Listen to them!" he would say to his players. "Just listen to them! How can you let those people down?"
It's a classic Shankly tale, told best in Gordon Milne's recent autobiography. But there's a side to the story that has never been told. Shankly's words were, in fact, an echo of an earlier age. To find out why, we need to go back to the biggest day of his own playing career.
April 4th 1938
It was all happening. A week earlier, Preston had beaten Aston Villa in the FA Cup Semi-Final. Now came the news that four of the team had been chosen for the other big Wembley occasion - the England v Scotland game:
Five days later, Shankly pulled on a Scotland jersey for the first time, making his international debut at the home of the old enemy - a home that had been invaded. At least half the crowd were Scots, and they all seemed to be wearing a tammie - the bonnet whose name comes from the poem written by one of Shankly's heroes, Robbie Burns:
Six minutes into the game, Hearts' Tommy Walker scored a famous goal:
They held on to that lead fo...