It has been expected for a while, since he has been very ill with cancer for some years, but I am saddened to learn that Ian St John - a real footballing hero from my formative years - has passed away at the age of 82. Ian was a native of Motherwell, in Scotland, and was one of the early acquisitions when Bill Shankly set about rebuilding Liverpool FC in the early 1960s. That team became very successful indeed - though most of their glories were after I'd left Liverpool and moved to Edinburgh!
St John was centre-forward in the team with which Shankly won the old Second Division, and which then went on to dominate the First Division in the years which followed. St John scored the winning goal in Liverpool's first ever FA Cup win, at Wembley in 1965, against Leeds United.
There's plenty of scope at present for being upset by the demise of old footballers - they are currently going down like flies, of course, so I tend not to dwell on this steady topic of mortality, but Ian was a bit special, and I am - if not exactly choked up - then certainly a bit wistful this morning.
Back in the day, there was a local joke, which went as follows:
Teacher asks a class of Liverpool schoolkids, what do they think would happen if Jesus came back, to Liverpool, at the present time [1960s]? Correct answer was, "They'd have to move St John to inside right". Yes, it's very silly, but in its way it is an affectionate mark of the man's stature in the common culture.
1965 - Back row: Ron Yeats, Gordon Milne (reserve), Willie Stevenson, Ian St John, Chris Lawler, Gerry Byrne. Front: Tommy Lawrence, Peter Thompson, Geoff Strong, Tommy Smith, Roger Hunt, Ian Callaghan. [Only Yeats, Milne, Stevenson, Lawler, Hunt and Callaghan are still alive, as at March 2021]
He was a coach at Wednesday back in the late 70s under Big Jack (quite a backroom staff we had then) - doesn't get much of a mention in the obits, but fondly remembered by Wednesdayites.
ReplyDeleteYou crack me up Greavsie...
I don't know if he moved away in later years, but for a long time after his retirement he still lived near Childwall Fiveways - he was a tourist attraction there for decades!
Delete82 is not a bad age for many footballers of that generation. My memory of him as a footballer is more from the ‘spoggie’* card packs than seeing him play. But then in those days if you weren’t allowed to stay up until Match of the Day, the best you could hope got was the FA Cup Final.
ReplyDeleteI remember him more from Saint and Greavsie. Maybe the first of the lad-banter football features. Anyway RIP Saint.
* chewing gum in case you’re alarmed. Footie cards (3 or 4) used to come in packs with chewing gum. A sort of precursor to Pannini stickers.
He was something a little different when he came to Liverpool - he was sharp, and unorthodox, and at 5'8" he was small and tricky - not at all your standard Nat Lofthouse type centre forward. He was also very obviously a character - full of smiles and jokes. He came from Motherwell as part of a duo - Motherwell had a very strong young team at this time, and Shankly bought St John and Sammy Reid as a package. The Saint scored a hat-trick on his debut, against Everton, no less (OK they lost 4-3, but hey) and never looked back. Sammy Reid, on the other hand, never got a first team game - mystery - presumably Shankly didn't reckon him?
DeleteWhen St John and Roger Hunt were at their peak, I doubt if there was a more effective striking partnership in England. Serious stuff, football - we didn't have much else in Liverpool to get excited about, circa 1960...
I know what you mean, I was in a bit of a melancholy mood the rest of the day too. It seems parts of one's childhood are constantly flaking away.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside one thing I always like about old footy pictures is the plain unadorned shirts, just an understated club badge and no sponsor's logo splattered across the front.
There's a quote from Bill Shankly that he reckoned LFC lost the 1971 Cup Final because of their jerseys, which he reckoned "hung on them like sacks". Maybe not one of Shankly's better efforts, but there was an interesting video on the LFC website in 2019, when St John last visited Melwood, and he brought in a 1960s Scotland Jersey for Andy Robertson to try on, and all that. Much discussion around the difference between the jerseys then and now - weight, but especially weight when wet. St John said that the old jerseys "weighed a ton" in rainy games.
DeleteI too remember him from the late seventies on ITV with Jimmy Greaves ...and entertains duo
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