Mighty Mouse and a sunny day in May 1974

There's a whole blog post to be written about football culture in the UK before and since its total commercialisation and the formation of the English Premiership in the 1990s. But that's for another time. I was stopped in my tracks slightly a couple of days ago by the news that Kevin Keegan, the former Liverpool striker christened Mighty Mouse because of his diminutive (5 feet 7 inches) stature, had died at the age of 75.

Kevin Keegan in his Liverpool pomp.

I don't watch much football these days, domestic or international. Although I still regard it as the Beautiful Game and can easily get excited when I see displays of footballing genius - and it is a form of genius - I tend to be repelled by almost everything else about the culture around the sport - the money, the tribal animosities, the cynical exploitation of fans. The World Cup ended just a few days ago and for the first time since we were first able to watch the tournament back in the 70s I found myself actively avoiding anything to do with it; holding a winter tournament in Qatar was bad enough, with all the corruption and the mistreatment of migrant workers tasked to build the venues which didn't yet exist, but the antics of President Trump and Gianni Infantino, his poodle at FIFA, this year were the final straw.

But hearing about Kevin Keegan brought me back to a time when the game seemed a more innocent thing, full of joy and wonder; and his dazzling play and the part it played in the success of Liverpool Football Club during the 1970s was a major part of all that. In particular it brought me back to Saturday May 4th 1974 and the FA Cup Final.

Liverpool were playing Newcastle United in the Final at Wembley and given the two teams' track records in the competition complacency was not an option for Liverpool. They were playing in their fifth final but had only won the trophy once, beating Don Revie's formidable Leeds United side in a nailbiting final back in 1965 (a match that had more than a little impact on my family, compelling my eldest sister to postpone her wedding; neither guests nor vicar particularly wanted to spend the afternoon in a church when the Reds were playing in the final on TV). By contrast it was the Magpies' 11th appearance in the final and they had won it no fewer than six times, the first as far back as 1910 and the latest in 1955.

The FA Cup final was a big thing back in 1974. Like all other top flight matches it kicked off at 3pm but it would be the only match played that day. TV coverage would start early in the morning and would run right up to kick off, with features covering each side's route to the final and interviews with players in their best suits. For kids whose team was in the final it was a day of mounting excitement which became unbearable as 3pm approached. Attending the actual game was, of course, out of the question. At the time I had left Liverpool only twice, both the previous year: once on a day trip to York with my primary school and once in December for my sister's wedding in Bradford. A trip to London to watch a football match was about as likely as going to explore Antarctica. Like most fans we would have to watch the action unfold on the BBC with the assistance of veteran commentator David Coleman.

The day dawned bright and sunny as FA Cup Final day always does - even now I can't remember a single Saturday final that was played on a day when the sun wasn't shining on the pitch. As soon as breakfast was over I was up at my mate Carl's grandma's house to watch the TV coverage with him and breathlessly share our expectations of the match to come. I remember one ritual in particular. Carl had a poster on his grandma's wall showing that Liverpool squad of 1973-4 sitting together with all their names underneath. Carl and I stood in front of it and, focusing on each player in turn, sang a terrace chant together with the name of the player inserted: "We love you Toshack we do, We love you Toshack we do...We love you Clemence we do, We love you Clemence we do...". We were trying in some way to quiet the anxiety we felt, for, despite the undoubted genius of our side, especially King Kev the Mighty Mouse and the partnership he had with John Toshack, victory could by no means be taken for granted.

That squad.

We must have sat in front of a sun-dazzled Wembley and twiddled our fingers at the pre-match traditions, the National Anthem and Abide With Me (I always wondered why Abide With Me was sung at the cup final; such a sad and dour, though beautiful, old hymn seemed ill suited for a major sporting event. Apparently it has been sung every year since the Welsh fans lifted the rafters with it at the 1927 final between Arsenal and Cardiff City) before finally the players emerged from the tunnel in two lines led by their managers, the legendary Bill Shankly leading the Reds and Joe Harvey for the Magpies. We probably sang along with the red-clad hordes in the stands, breaking the peace of Breeze Lane L9 with a shrill rendition of You'll Never Walk Alone.

Then the match was on and in fact it quite soon transpired that we didn't have a lot to worry about. Liverpool bossed the match from start to finish and although it was goalless at half time there was a definite feeling that it was only a matter of time before a Red player put the ball in the net, with the Newcastle players consistently failing to make much of an impact in the Liverpool area. Early in the second half Alec Lindsey scored a fantastic goal, only for it to be ruled offside - in error, since the last touch before the goal was from a Newcastle boot. Shortly thereafter, in the 57th minute, Liverpool were ahead, inevitably from the boot of Kevin Keegan. The goal came from far and away the most casual dummy I have ever seen played on a football pitch; Tommy Smith crossed the ball in from the right and John Toshack quite slowly and deliberately placed himself full length on the ground so that the ball found its way over him to an unmarked Keegan in the centre of the box, where it was an easy matter for him to hoof it into the net. At that point we must have exploded in a paroxysm of joy along with many thousands of other Liverpool supporters.

After that the result was never in doubt. Newcastle didn't manage a single shot on goal in the last half hour of the game. A second Liverpool goal came courtesy of a rocket by Steve Heighway and, with just minutes remaining, Keegan deservedly got his second and Liverpool's third, turning in from close range another cross across the face of the goal by Tommy Smith. Keegan became the first player to score twice in a cup final since Mike Trebilcock for Everton in 1966, while the 3-0 scoreline represented the heaviest defeat in a cup final since Wolves' victory over Blackburn Rovers in 1960. It all became part of the ongoing legend of Liverpool FC as it rose to dominance of the English and European game. Perhaps aware of the dawn of the new era, some Liverpool fans ran onto the pitch after the full time whistle blew to bow down at the feet of a bemused Shankly, an event captured by photos of the day.

Fans bow to Bill Shankly at the end of the match.

It was the last trophy Shanks was to win with Liverpool, as he announced his retirement a few short weeks later, to the dismay of the fans. Kevin Keegan remained with the team until 1977 when he moved to Hamburg and was replaced at Liverpool by another brilliant and alliterative King of the Kop, Kenny Dalglish. During those years he continued to win Liverpool and English hearts with his skill and charm, not to mention his spirit: an iconic TV moment of the 1970s was when Keegan came off a bicycle in 1976 when competing in the BBC show Superstars, in which elite athletes from various fields competed against one another (a show that Carl was much more into than I so I only saw any of it when I was watching with him at his grandma's). The accident happened at some speed on a gravel path and as a result Keegan suffered painful cuts and abrasions that made his back look like a pizza, but he refused to give up the race. Commenting that "These people here in the stands have come here to see me make a fool of myself and they've got a right to it!", he insisted on an immediate rerace and won.

It has been noted that Keegan provided a successor to George Best as the glamorous footballing superstar, though without the latter's demons, and a successor to Bobby Moore as captain and heart of an England team that was sadly not at its best during those years. To me he seems a figure from a receding past, a beautiful man and a wonderful footballer who yet remained a modest and decent human being and never seemed to let himself become corrupted by the growing money and manipulation that was in the game (his tirade when managing the Magpies against Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson as the 1995-6 season approached its climax showed how unsuited such an old-fashioned player/manager was to dealing with the mind games that had come into football management, of which Fergie was the undisputed master). Watching him score those goals on that fabled sun-soaked Saturday felt like witnessing something out of a Roy of the Rovers comic, something pure and far away from the gamesmanship and cynicism that seems to surround us in the modern game. He seems now the embodiment of that period when Liverpool were at the heart of an English football that could still inspire a sense of wonder and hope. Years later in the 80s and 90s when travelling in the Middle East and India people would ask me where I was from and when I replied Liverpool the response was more often than not a thumbs-up, a wide grin and the exclamation "Liverpool! Kevin Keegan!". I'm not sure we will see his like again.