WORDS: JOHN HYNES
Twice in the Sixties, Bill Shankly’s Liverpool secured the league title and on both occasions the Football League trophy was absent on the day of triumph. With the Reds players waiting to celebrate, the fans in the Kop produced a makeshift cup of their own, which has gone down in Anfield folklore…
Waking up on the day your team could become champions of England must bring all kinds of thoughts to mind, and perhaps some nervous activity in the stomach area too.
In the mid-1960s Liverpool twice successfully negotiated such occasions. The first of those triumphs arrived in 1964, courtesy of a 5-0 home win over Arsenal. Two years later London opposition, in the shape of Chelsea, were again overcome by Bill Shankly’s team as they took the title.
In the two decades that followed such victories would almost become the norm at Anfield but back then they were greeted with great fanfare. After all, the club had only recently ended an eight-year spell in the Second Division. However, among the joyous celebrations in front of the Kop one significant part of the usual celebration scene was missing on each occasion: the league championship trophy.
Grainy video footage of the ’64 success clearly shows the squad embarking on a lap of honour with a rather unusual looking cup being held aloft instead of the traditional silverware and the alternative prize is again clearly visible in images from the dressing room, perched on a table as Ian St. John, Ron Yeats, Ian Callaghan, Roger Hunt and Co get stuck in to the champagne.
In 1966, a point for Shankly’s outfit would have been enough to open an unassailable advantage over a Leeds side that still had games in hand. Clearly the men from Stamford Bridge, who provided the opposition on that occasion, were in no doubt about who would be champions as they afforded the Anfielders a guard of honour before kick-off.
Those in the stands were also certain that their heroes would produce the necessary. The Liverpool Echo reported that, prior to the action, “a fan emerged from the packed Kop and went to the centre of the field, where he planted a replica of the Championship trophy on the centre spot”.
It was the same cup that had been used in the ’64 celebrations. And 90 minutes later it was again being paraded around the field in front of a delirious crowd thanks to a 2-1 victory.
But what was this cup? Well, the origins of the unusual object that took centre stage as history was made are fairly simple. A football-mad Scouse family – the Curletts – had created the trophy from an old vase their mother had planned to discard and, naturally, they chose to paint it red and white (it was only in the mid-60s that LFC changed to all red, before then the kit consisted of red shirts and white shorts and socks with a red trim). If you look closely at the cup, you will notice that newspaper pictures of their heroes were also carefully pasted onto the sides.
The youngsters took the “Curlett Cup” to Anfield for the Arsenal game and, when the players were saluting the crowd after the final whistle, it was handed to skipper Ron Yeats. So, with the official league trophy absent, the Scottish centre-half fully embraced the unfamiliar object.
And, when Liverpool edged closer to regaining their title 24 months later, the Curletts again brought their home-made piece of ‘silverware’ to the ground and Yeats again raised it aloft, although he almost broke the base when he vigorously slammed it down amidst the celebrations!
Nowadays the LFC Museum is the location of the homemade cup that twice marked the club’s crowning as champions. In case you are wondering, the real League trophy eventually arrived at Anfield a few days later, on both occasions. Why it was not present immediately after the title-clinching games is unclear, but cynics might suggest the fact that Everton and Man United league triumphs had preceded Liverpool’s brace of successes had something to do with it!