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shankly.com is part of the
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'Some people believe football is a matter of life and death.
I'm very disappointed with that attitude.
I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.'
That Quote: A Personal View
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'Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I'm very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.' That Quote: A Personal View |
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Many of the quips and quotes of Bill Shankly have passed into legend
down the years. The most famous and oft repeated one is of course is the 'life and death' one.
The quote has become the definitive Shankly, the one destined to find
it's way into all those smart books of quotations in years to come. It
has of course taken on extra resonance in post Heysel and Hillsborough
Britain, particularly in Shankly's own beloved Liverpool, the city that
bore the brunt of those twin disasters. And the shattering irony is that
The Shankly gates, erected in his honour on Anfield Road, stand shoulder
to shoulder with the Eternal Flame Hillsborough monument - a planning
decision of hideous insensitivity or an accidental stroke of genius ?
It is difficult not to agree with those who mock Shankly's words now. In the wake of the Taylor-Report induced revolution that has swept our game, few would stand by such an outrageous statement, the recent memories still fresh, the injustice of lives cut short still hurting. Indeed, Ian St. John, who claims to have been in the room when Shankly uttered the words, is adamant that they were taken out of context and meant only as a half serious aside. However, my own feelings are that we should look beyond the stark words for a deeper truism Shanks was hinting at. 
The Hillsborough Eternal Flame monument stands side by side with the Shankly Gates. When he uttered them, in the late 60s, the words were gleefully received as an astute insight into the minds of those who passionately followed football the world over. They struck a chord with anyone who found himself wistfully day-dreaming in the office on Thursday morning about next Saturday's game. They registered as true to all those who sunk into a deep depression over the weekend because their team had just lost to a last minute howler. The real potency of the words was that they applied to EVERYONE who was a fan, whether your team was a bunch of no-hopers or accomplished title contenders. If you cared, you cared deeply, and that passion was passed on from father to son, from son to grandson. That was the way I was brought up too. My dad carried me over the turnstiles at Anfield from an early age and I was indoctrinated with the passion of the game. It mattered. The shared joy and anticipation of standing together on the terraces bound us all together. I think this is where Shankly's sentiments were coming from. His words were not meant to trivialise life and death, but instead, were aimed at glorifying the game he, and millions of others, loved so much. Of course football's not more important than life and death and I don't think Bill Shankly thought so to. I do think, though, that he recognised a central tenet of humanity - that there's little point in having a life if you don't care for anything during it. That's the real meaning - that there should be a passion in people's lives. Whether or not you think it should be filled with football is another question altogether ! That Quote: A personal view, Derek Dohren |