How a Fifer transformed the Reds into 'Liddellpool'

Liddell also fell at the hands of this subtle but devastating disease, although not before he had written his name into his club’s folklore in a way no player has ever repeated. One-club men are a dying breed, but few so dynamically and singularly defined their club. Indeed, such was his impact on the team he joined in 1938 from Lochgelly Juniors that the Anfield side was famously re-christened "Liddellpool" in the Fifties, a gesture which articulated the Fifer’s importance to a club who were not then the force they would become in later decades.

Liddell, a miner’s son, was said to carry the team but his contribution was not limited to on the field. Off it he was a man of unimpeachable moral-standing. Incredibly, he remained a part-time player throughout his Anfield career - he was an accountant by profession - though his commitment to the club remained absolute, and he scored 226 goals in 478 league games. Indeed, strengthening the impression he was born to serve the club, even his accountancy firm, Simon, West and West, had Liverpool FC as clients.

Liddell’s 28-cap total for Scotland looks paltry now when one considers even nominal talents can now stride with some comfort into the international Hall of Fame. But this was an era disrupted by war and touched also by idiocy. Liddell was a victim of the SFA’s decision not to travel to the 1950 World Cup in Brazil because the international team had failed to win the British Home Championships. (They finished second but had been invited to the finals in any case).

Still, being robbed of the chance to perform on a world stage - Liverpool’s relegation to the Second Division led to his omission from the 1954 World Cup finals squad - did not make Liddell any less of a legend. Only twice, in 1947 and in 1955 has an official composite Great Britain international team taken the field. Liddlell and England’s legendary Stanley Matthews were the only men to play in both teams.

Indeed, the following narrative proves how his memory still holds its charge down Anfield way. On a website dedicated to Bob Paisley the writer envisages Liddell playing in today’s climate, when his professionalism - never mind talent - would have marked him out as different: "Indulge me for a while and try and imagine with this Old Fogey if our greatest player Billy Liddell had been born in 1981 and had been blessed with half the footballing talent that those that saw him play knew he had. He would now once again be a strapping 21-year-old and just beginning his career. He'd have just signed a lucrative five-year contract and would be a millionaire in the making. Liverpool and Scotland would be boasting a world class footballer, something Scotland would die for at the moment. His popularity would not only rival that of Robbie Fowler and Michael Owen, it would dwarf it."

The writer’s point is an intriguing one, if clearly ignoring the shift in manners from era to era.Liddell and Fowler - he of the ‘cocaine-snorting’ jape - are from different times, but were also cut from a very different cloth. Liddell still travelled by public transport each day to training even though his adequate, if hardly extravagant wages, might have allowed for the purchase of a car. His Fifer’s frugality never left him, although he was able to afford a new house with the 6,000 accrued from his testimonial match in 1960, when Liverpool challenged an International XI including Tom Finney and Nat Lofthouse. Over 30,000 watched this match, a figure exceeded at Anfield on only three other occasions that season.

He died, aged 79, in July, 2001, however, his memory has survived, although, as author John Keith points out, still they wait for a statue to be erected at not just Anfield but also Townhill, the small mining community where he was born in Fife.

• Billy Liddell - The Legend Who Carried The Kop by John Keith (Robson books, 16.95)