A great player, an even greater man – why Kenny Dalglish deserves his knighthood
henry winter, chief football writer
Kenny Dalglish was sitting in the small room leading to his study at his neat home in Southport, struggling to talk about Hillsborough. Too personal, too soon. Even as we spoke in 1996, he couldn’t articulate the individual and communal grief. He wouldn’t think about the toll the personal disaster wrought, leading him to drink more, suffer from stress-related blotches on his body and eventually leave Liverpool to save his physical and mental health. Dalglish thought only of the Hillsborough families.
He thought only of those parents who wished beloved offspring well as they set off on a sunlit day towards Sheffield on April 15, 1989, for an FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough, a famous old English ground turned into death-trap for 96 innocents and countless others injured by the authorities’ shameful neglect.
He thought briefly of his own momentary tremor of paternal fear that his son, Paul, had gone through the Leppings Lane End with a friend but carried on, through the paddocks where so many Liverpool fans were later crushed. Paul was safe. But it is Dalglish’s response to Hillsborough, immediately comforting fans and families, and his eternal compassion that defines him as a great man, an altruistic servant to club and community. Nobody would walk alone with Dalglish around. He was there for them, whatever the cost to his mind and body.
And so the myriad plaudits for Dalglish’s deserved knighthood read, “He selflessly made himself available to the families of the bereaved, attending most of the funerals, organising hospital visits, and attending annual memorial services held at Anfield. He has been a steadfast supporter of the families in their quest for justice and throughout the Hillsborough Inquiry.” My God, Kenny Dalglish did more than that. He fought for them. He took on the FA, Fleet Street and the Establishment. Dalglish did the right thing.
He did it to support the parents, sensing as a family man how wretchedly impossible it must be to bury your own. It was why Dalglish found it so difficult to open up when we came to the Hillsborough part of the first book that I helped him write. I delayed chronicling this deeply emotional passage of his life to the last moment, hoping to have built up enough trust by then. Dalglish just sat there, fidgeting, deflecting.
Then Marina glided through, handing her husband a glass of white wine, reminding Kenny quite forcibly of all the countless letters from Hillsborough families in boxes under their bed upstairs, profusely thanking him for being there for them, for showing support. Marina told Kenny he owed it to the families to deliver the truth. And so it began.
And this is why Dalglish deserves this knighthood. Not for his myriad feats as a sublime, intelligent, prolific forward for Celtic, Liverpool — “and could he play!” — and Scotland. Anyone of sound mind would place him alongside Sir Bobby Charlton, George Best, Bobby Moore and John Charles in the revered firmament of greatest British players of all time. Nor for his managerial accomplishments of winning the English title with two teams (Liverpool and Blackburn Rovers). No. King Kenny should be Sir Kenny for his stature as a man, for his principles, for being strong for his community when most needed. For doing the right thing.
And so, after a long pause, watching Marina serenely vacate the room, Kenny spoke. And as the tape silently turned, he began: “I’ll never, never forget 15 April, 1989.” He paused again. This was huge, from the bottom of his heart. “I cannot even think of the name Hillsborough, cannot even say the word, without so many distressing memories flooding back.”
And then it flowed, a dam breached, the torrent spilling into the tape, as Dalglish spoke with barely contained anger of the “terrible mistakes of the authorities, both police and football, [that] ended with 96 of our supporters dead”. The chapter ran to 10,000 words, recorded largely verbatim. As a ghost-writer, there felt no need to enhance his words, simply transcribe and spread them across the page, the pain in print.
For all his phenomenal achievements, and I was in the Shed with Chelsea mates in 1986 when Dalglish scored a sumptuous volley to guide Liverpool towards the ‘double’, it is Hillsborough that defines Dalglish. When a club required a beacon, a source of comfort and hope, Dalglish stepped up for Liverpool. They’ll never walk alone. He was there for them. He supported the supporters.
At one point, Kenny and Marina went to so many funerals they needed a police escort. When they returned to Southport, slumping drained on the sofa, bereft and speechless at the loss suffered by other parents, they found themselves singing Abide With Me. They’d heard it so often at funerals. They went as a family to Anfield, laying floral tributes on that famous grass fast disappearing under a cloth of wreaths.
One morning, at a deserted Anfield, Kenny tied one of his children’s teddy bears around a goalpost. When a club-appointed psychologist knocked on his door, asking whether he needed help, Dalglish politely turned him away. He was doing the right thing, solely concentrating on the grief-stricken. He helped organise players to go to funerals to “read from the scriptures”.
He deserves this knighthood. As a player he did the right thing, linking and scoring. As a man and as a manager, he did the right thing at Hillsborough. When we talked, he was still numb. Remember, this was 1996. Dalglish knew the Establishment strived to cover up calamitous police mistakes. He knew parts of the media were culpable and complicit. Dalglish knew the real truth.
An introverted, slightly chippy but driven kid from Glasgow, Dalglish always questioned the London Establishment, wondering why the great Bob Paisley was never knighted, suspecting arrogance in Whitehall, and loathing elements of Fleet Street, particularly Kelvin MacKenzie, the contemptuous editor of The Sunwho ran that poisonous, inaccurate and hugely damaging front-page headline of “The Truth” about Liverpool fans’ behaviour at Hillsborough. Dalglish knew right from wrong, knew that Liverpool fans were being vilified unduly.
At a time under Margaret Thatcher when this country swelled its wallets and lost its moral compass, Dalglish knew his north, south, east and west.
Even now, Westminster, Whitehall and the Hampstead intellectual and media elite lack a connection with the nation that Dalglish has, lack his family values.
To understand Dalglish is to understand the power of family. His footballing family is important, whether Celtic, Liverpool, Blackburn or Scotland, and he was the king of dressing room repartee, but it is the flesh and blood, his wife and four children that shape Kenny.
He’d be lost without Marina, his rock. His four children, Paul, Kelly, Lauren and Lynsey, are all different characters, all real characters, and are his world. I’ve been in his kitchen in Southport when Paul’s car has broken down in Texas, and Kenny has co-ordinated recovery operations from 5,000 miles away. Sir Kenny cares.
‘I thought it was the taxman’
Kenny Dalglish accepted his knighthood in the Queen’s birthday honours yesterday with a typical mix of humility and humour by joking that, when the citation dropped through his letter box, he thought it was a tax bill. He dedicated the honour to his family and those involved in his career, but did admit that it “doesn’t feel right” (Paul Joyce writes).
He said: “I opened it and I saw a wee bit of the crown and I thought, ‘We better have a look at this.’ I thought it was the taxman.”
The 67-year-old was known as “King Kenny” during his playing career with Liverpool and Celtic, but now has the full title of Sir Kenneth Mathieson Dalglish. Recognition has been bestowed not simply for a glittering career as a player and a manager but for the support he, and his family, offered in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 and for his charity work. He and his wife, Marina, have raised more than £10 million.
“Obviously it takes everything you have done in your life into consideration,” Dalglish said. “Football was part of it and a very important part of it. So is the charity that we have in Marina’s name and obviously Hillsborough must have been part of it as well. Someone in their wisdom has thought it was deserving of some recognition. I am hugely proud to have accepted the accolade. It is hugely humbling but also very gratifying.
“You start off in your life just hoping to be a footballer. You become a footballer and have a bit of success and that seems to give you a platform to go on to other things. We only set out to do the best we possibly could, even through all the other stuff. The charity or Hillsborough; it was to help people because somebody helped us.”
Dalglish was quick to credit the people who have influenced his life on a journey from being the son of an engineer in Glasgow to a knight of the realm.
“All I can say is that from my own point of view I am definitely no more deserving of an accolade like this than Jock Stein, Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley were,” he added. “I would like to dedicate this honour to them because without the standards that they set at Glasgow Celtic and Liverpool, individuals like myself would not have been able to thrive as much as we did.”
