Fifty years ago today Bill Shankly left Huddersfield Town for Liverpool FC

Nov 30 2009 by Barry Gibson, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

The story of former Huddersfield Town manager Bill Shankly has been republished. BARRY GIBSON reports.

TODAY is the 50th anniversary of the day Bill Shankly took over as manager of Liverpool – propelling the Merseyside club to decades of success.

But the Anfield side’s gain was Huddersfield Town’s loss, as the Scottish boss quit his job at Leeds Road – and left generations of Terriers fans to reflect on what might have been.

To mark the milestone, his autobiography Bill Shankly: My Story has been republished.

In Chapter 6, he looks back on his time at Town.

Back in 1955, Shankly was an up-and-coming manager, with spells at Carlisle, Grimsby and Workington under his belt. It was then that he got a call from Town manager Andy Beattie.

“When I was at Workington, Andy was having a bit of a struggle as manager of Huddersfield Town. He’s an independent chap, so when he admitted he was struggling, then that was authentic.

“One day, right out of the blue, Andy telephoned me and said, ‘Would you come down and be assistant to me? Eddie Boot is here. I think we can manage it.’

“I jumped at the chance, because I had known Andy for years, from the days when we both played for Preston and Scotland.

“When I arrived at Huddersfield I was put in charge of the reserve team, though I mixed in with the first team during the week as well to try to boost morale. The unfortunate thing, I feel, is that Andy and I didn’t work together with the first team all the time.

“Andy thought the team was going to stay in the First Division and he wanted me to prepare boys like Denis Law and Ramon Wilson, who were to become great players later on.”

But – despite Shankly’s best efforts – Town were relegated at the end of the 1995-56 season.

“Huddersfield won their last match of the season at Tottenham with ten men, and if Preston had drawn at home against Aston Villa that day, Huddersfield would have stayed in the First Division. But Villa beat Preston – and Tommy Finney missed a penalty. So our fantastic result at Tottenham was eclipsed by a hell of a result at Preston.”

A few months into the new season, the Town board lost patience with Beattie.

“The following season I was still looking after the reserves and had pushed one or two players through to the first team. The reserves were doing well. They had played sixteen matches and were undefeated.

“One Saturday night after a reserve-team match I got a telephone call asking me to go back to the ground. The chairman, Bernard Newman, met me and said, ‘Would you like to be manager? Andy’s finished. We’re offering the job to you.’

“When I left the ground I went round to Andy’s house and I thought we would discuss what had happened. I was surprised that Andy had packed it in and I was waiting for him to say something. We sat in the house together and talked about this and that, but the manager’s job was never mentioned. I was waiting for Andy to say, ‘Oh you’ve done it. You’ve got the job. Good luck’, or something like that. Then I would have said, ‘I’m sorry about this, Andy. I should have come to see you before I accepted it.’

“Nothing was said. I knew I was the new manager, he knew I was the new manager, but we never mentioned it. It was a kind of mutual embarrassment. It could have been my fault or it could have been his fault.

“How I got that job is one of my biggest regrets. In some way I felt as if I might have let Andy down. I was embarrassed by the way it was done. I’m not suggesting that it was done dirtily, they had told Andy all about it and he was agreeable.

“My first game as manager of Huddersfield was at Barnsley and I think we beat them 5-0. I remember the papers saying ‘miracle-worker’ and that kind of stuff. That was just the beginning, and we didn’t need very much to make us a team because we had an array of talent on our books.

“Bill McGarry was the first-team captain, and we had Law, Wilson, Mick O’Grady, Clive Clark, Les Massie, Kevin McHale and Kenny Taylor. Young Wilson had number six on his back and I put him back to number three in the reserves. And I brought Law into the reserve team at fifteen and played him with number eleven on his back so that I wouldn’t take too much out of him.