ROGER HUNT’S FAVOURITE FIVE GOALS

• 1. 1965 FA Cup final v Leeds
• 2. 1965 FA Cup quarter-final v Leicester
• 3. First goal of Liverpool career v Scunthorpe, 1959
• 4. His strike in a 2-1 victory at Chelsea in January, 1969 that broke Gordon Hodgson’s league scoring record
• 5. First goal against Inter Milan in 1965 European Cup semi-final at Anfield

FACTFILE

• Born: Glazebury, Lancashire, July 20, 1938.
• Signed for Liverpool: May 1959.
• Full debut: Liverpool 2 Scunthorpe United 0, September 9, 1959.
• Games: 492 Goals: 286 Caps: 34 (18 goals)
• Honours: League Championship 1963-4, 1965-66; FA Cup 1965; World Cup 1966

WHAT THEY SAID ABOUT ROGER HUNT

“Roger Hunt is a player’s player. He is possibly appreciated more by those who play with him and against him than by those who watch him.” Bobby Moore

“Fernando Torres is the nearest thing I have ever seen to Roger Hunt. When Roger was around if there was a chance inside the 18-yard box then the ball was in the back of the net – there was no question about that. He would get into positions that no-one would ever dream of getting into and that’s the same with Torres.” Tommy Smith

“Most of the football writers back then didn’t grasp his importance to the side but believe me the England players didn’t underestimate his contribution.” Nobby Stiles

THE term ‘legend’ is one bandied around all too readily in the modern game but Roger Hunt is a player truly worthy of the mantle. Now 72, Sir Roger, as he was affectionately christened by The Kop, still has a burning passion for football.

When we meet in a Merseyside hotel, Hunt is soon into his stride, recalling the glory years and discussing the game today. “I work for the Football Pools Panel so I have to keep up with the game but I’m football daft,” he says. “Just like I was back then.”

Hunt’s astonishing goal haul of 245 league goals remains an Anfield record, while he played a key role in Liverpool’s first FA Cup win in 1965 and England’s solitary World Cup win in 1966. Hunt, playing under Bill Shankly, also helped Liverpool to promotion from the Second Division in 1962 when he struck a record 41 goals in 41 games. He also fired 31 and 30 league goals in the Championship seasons of 1963-64 and 1965-66.

In the modern game, where players are routinely discarded at 16, 17 and 18, Hunt – a latecomer to football at the highest level - says the opportunity to don the red shirt would have passed him by. And he even admits there was a stroke of luck behind the big break that saw him go on to make history at Liverpool. “I’d always wanted to be a footballer for as long as I can remember and I used to practice and practice and practice,” says Hunt.

“I played whenever I could but I was never picked up. I signed for Bury when I was 17 when they were in the Second Division. I went for trials after I’d written to every club in the area. They were the only ones who answered.

“I must have done okay because they signed me on amateur forms. But I was working in the family haulage business then and it was training two nights a week then the match on Saturday and I couldn’t do it, it was too much.

“I asked if they would sign me full-time and they were not sure about me. I had a trial for a month and was paid as a professional but there were about 46 players there, a massive staff. I only played twice in the four weeks and I was a reserve for the other two.

“They couldn’t make their minds up and I decided to go back to the family business. I thought I had missed my chance then.”

Hunt continued to play football though, playing up front for Stockton Heath Albion (now Warrington Town). He later joined the army and played for Devizes Town while on national service in Wiltshire, returning to play for Stockton Heath one weekend in three while on leave.

It was at Stockton Heath Hunt was spotted, aged 20, by Liverpool scout Bill Jones, himself a former Anfield player and grandfather of former Liverpool right back, Rob Jones. “It was a stroke of luck that he was there at that game,” says Hunt.

“Bill approached the manager, Frank Worrall (an FA Cup winner with Portsmouth in 1939) and said Liverpool wanted me on trial.

“So I was playing for the ‘A’ and ‘B’ sides when I was home on leave. I’d scored a few goals and just before I was demobbed from the army, Liverpool played me in the Central League (reserves) team.

“All the players were pros – they were dropping a pro to play me – and I remember walking into the dressing room and one said to another, ‘I wouldn’t stand for that, being left out for an amateur!’.

“It was really competitive and we played Preston in a big important match. If we beat them you were paid a bonus. “I scored the first goal but the pace of the game was too much for me – I wasn’t as fit as them. I was playing football but not to this intensity. Joe Fagan was the manager and I remember he came over to me at half-time and said ‘I want more from you’. I was struggling to breathe!”

Hunt was warned to improve his fitness and on the way back from Anfield that day he again had doubts as to whether he would make the grade as a professional. “My dad was driving me home,” said Hunt. “And he said to me ‘I think you should forget any ideas about being a professional footballer and come back into the family business’. I thought that’s good, really encouraging!

“But with Joe saying that I trained and ran and did everything. All through my career I had that at the back of my mind – you’ve got to work, work, work. If you really want it you’ve only got so many years to get it. And I was a bit late.”

Hunt need not have worried. After coming out of the army, he played five games for the reserves, scoring seven goals. And that was enough to convince then manager Phil Taylor to give him a chance in the first team. “It was fantastic,” says Hunt. “I had taken the place of Billy Liddell, a hero, but he was coming to the end of his career. We played Scunthorpe and I wouldn’t say the game passed me by but it was much quicker than the Central League, which was a good standard.

“There were 32,000 people there that night and I’d never played in front of more than 5,000. But I scored and once you do that you feel like you’re 10 foot tall – you can do anything then, it’s a big weight off your shoulders. That was a midweek game and on the Saturday we played Middlesbrough. Phil Taylor told me to have a rest and played Billy and they got beat 2-1. After that it was Scunthorpe then Derby, two games on the trot. We drew at Scunthorpe and we beat Derby 2-1 and I scored the winner.

“After that I was never out of the team for 10 years, I never got dropped. There were no substitutes until the latter end of my career, after the World Cup in 1966.”

Shankly replaced Taylor as manager and kept faith with Hunt amid a clear out of players on his arrival at Anfield in December 1959. “He made a big impression straight away,” recalls Hunt. “There were 40-odd players at Anfield and he got us all in the dressing room, introduced himself and said there’s going to be a lot of changes here. He said to us: ‘We’re going to win things, we’re going to get promotion and if anybody isn’t going to try or isn’t interested, you’re out’. He got rid of a lot of people.”

Hunt, like everyone who played for the great man, clearly has the upmost respect for Shankly and singled out his enthusiasm as the key attribute to his success. But he also emphasised that Shankly was an expert in motivating players, as well as being tactically astute.

“He could transform you,” says Hunt. “He never put you down – you were always better than the opposition. He gave you a lot of confidence. He would take you to one side and give you little tips but he also changed the whole training schedule. He made training like a match situation.

“We used to do a lot of running, 20 laps, and not much with the ball. With Shankly we did loads of stuff with the ball. There were a lot of 3-a-sides and we did a lot of intensive stuff, under pressure. Shankly was very tactical but Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan and Reuben Bennett had a lot of tactical nous, too. They put a lot of ideas in.”

Everyone who came into contact with Shanks has a story to tell, and Hunt is no different. “There are so many,” he says, before pausing to think. “I remember we were playing Manchester City at home. Me and Tommy Lawrence lived in the same area. He was going to the game with his family and I was going with mine. There was a massive traffic jam on the East Lancs Road and we both tried different ways to get to Anfield.

“We both got to near the ground for about ten to three. When we got there Bob Paisley started giving us loads of stick but Shanks came in and said ‘No Bob, take your time, get yourself ready, there’s no problem.’ And off he went to tell the officials the kick off was delayed! I think the club was fined about 300 quid for that which was a lot of money in those days. But Shanks just kept his calm.”

In 1961 Shankly signed Ian St John from Motherwell for £37,500. The Saint formed a lethal partnership with Hunt who says the pairing clicked from the first time they played together. “Ian came in as a centre forward and I was inside right,” said Hunt. “As soon as we played together we had an understanding – we thought the same way.

“We could exchange positions and he would come deep and I would go up front but mainly he was the centre forward. He was great in the air and had this great knack of knowing where to go and seeing where the opportunities where.

“We had a telepathic thing going on – I knew what he was going to do and vice versa. We played together for nearly ten years and it was great to play with him – he was very unselfish.”

Hunt and St John combined to great effect on one of the biggest moments in Liverpool’s history – the club’s first FA Cup win in 1965. The extra-time goal that put Liverpool ahead against Leeds in front of a 100,000-strong crowd at Wembley came from Hunt’s head – a stooping effort from Gerry Byrne’s cross.

Billy Bremner pulled it back for the Yorkshiremen before St John headed home Ian Callaghan’s cross to win it for the Reds and put the famous piece of silverware in the Anfield trophy cabinet for the first time in Liverpool’s 72-year existence.

Roger rates his opener as the favourite of his 286 goals for Liverpool, second only to a volley past Gordon Banks which sunk bogey side Leicester on the road to Wembley that season and sealed a semi-final spot. “The FA Cup was very, very big then,” said Hunt. “It has been devalued now and big clubs don’t treat it the same. It was on a par with winning the league in those days and Liverpool had taken a lot of stick for having never won it.

“Winning the FA Cup, getting promotion from the Second Division and winning the championship in 1964, the first since 1947, were the highlights for me at Liverpool . To be involved, play in the final and winning it for the first time – you just never forget that. The reception when we came back to Liverpool was absolutely brilliant – there was about a quarter of a million people there and they were even on the roof of Lime Street Station!”

Hunt ended the 1966 season a league champion (again) and played a big part in England winning the Jules Rimet Trophy in the summer. While he’s best remembered as the player who swore Geoff Hurst’s goal crossed the line in the final (and still does), Hunt scored three goals in the group stages on the way to the historic win.

“The World Cup has to be the highlight of my career,” said Hunt. “I felt the FA Cup was equally as big at the time but as the years have gone on and we haven’t won it again, it’s made it different.” A legacy of being the closest player to THAT goal is Hunt is asked over and over again if the ball crossed the line. “It always comes up when there’s a controversial goal-line incident,” he said. “I think by now they should have technology for goal-line decisions.

“People still say to me now ‘Why didn’t you just put it in?’ because I was only four yards away. As Geoff Hurst hit it, I anticipated it, Wolfgang Weber was marking me but I got in front of him – I was there, ready if it didn’t go in.

“So it hits the underside of the bar and came down, I turned away because I thought it was over the line and would be bouncing into the roof of the net. But it went in, came back out – I was still convinced – and by then I couldn’t get it because it came out at an angle and Weber headed it over the line.

“I am sure it was over but I’m not sure the linesman could see it. But I loved scoring goals and I was scoring goals all the time. I’m not going to turn away if there was a chance of a goal – it was instinctive. I can’t say I would do anything different if I could do it again.”

Hunt’s halo slipped just once in his Liverpool career, in March 1969. The gentleman of football had fans at Anfield rubbing their eyes in disbelief when he took off his shirt and angrily threw it in the direction of the dug-out after being substituted in a cup replay against Leicester. “I suppose you’ve heard about this,” said Hunt, rolling his eyes. “That was the beginning of the end.

“The substitute rule hadn’t been in that long and at Liverpool it had never been discussed that it would be used tactically rather than just when someone was injured. So I was looking around going ‘who, who, who is it?’ Anyway it was me!

“We had a bit of a row about it and it was just before Shanks started to change things. He decided he was going to bring other players in as even though we had done well we had not actually won anything for three years.”

Hunt dislocated his collar bone which put an end to his contribution in the 1968-69 season but he started the following campaign as first choice until one day he was told by Bob Paisley that he was wanted in the boss’s office.

“I think I had played 11 games and scored six goals. I thought he was calling me in to tell me I was doing alright. He said ’Middlesbrough have made a bid for you’. I was in complete shock. I knew then that was the beginning of the end. I said ‘no, not interested’ but I did eventually leave for Bolton. It was my decision, he said you don’t have to go, but I knew I wouldn’t be playing much.”

Hunt's last goal for Liverpool came against Vitoria Setubal in a European Fairs Cup match at Anfield in November 1969. He joined Bolton shortly after, aged 31. Three years later, he stepped on to the Anfield turf for one final farewell at a well-deserved testimonial. The gates were locked hours before kick-off as fans clamoured to pay their respects. An astonishing gate of 56,000 was recorded, with many thousands more reported to be locked outside.

Hunt had the chance to move into management but after taking his preliminary coaching badge, he decided it wasn’t for him. “I didn’t think I had the temperament to be a manager or a coach,” said Hunt.

“You’ve got to keep a lot of people happy as a manager and I had the opportunity to go into the family business so I opted for that. I’ve never regretted it. I played football for another 20 years in friendly games, charity games, ex-international games.”

Hunt’s contribution to football was belatedly recognised by the Queen in 2000 when he was awarded an MBE. It was nothing new to us though, to Liverpool fans, he’d always been Sir Roger.

WHEN Roger Hunt was banging in the goals for Liverpool in 1959 his salary was £20 a week – a far cry from the mind-boggling pay-packets pocketed by the pampered players of today. To put it in perspective, using the Bank of England’s inflation calculator, Hunt’s wage would be worth £346 a week in modern money. When you consider that Yaya Toure trousers £220,000 a week at Manchester City, it shows how money in football has spiralled out of control. Hunt’s £20 per week wage was the most clubs could pay players then because of a salary cap that stayed in force until 1961.

Manager Phil Taylor actually earned more than the players. He was paid £29 per week. Hunt said: “The ordinary person was on about 10 or 11 pounds a week then, so £20 was a good wage. If you finished your football career and you had earned enough to buy a house it was considered that you had done alright.

“At Liverpool we used to get a crowd bonus. You had to be in the top six in the league and the club would say they needed a 30,000 crowd to break even. Every thousand over that we got a couple of quid so you could earn another 10 quid a week. There was a reason to entertain the crowd.”

HUNT ON THE MODERN GAME “The game has speeded up, that’s definite. The pitches are better, the players’ kits are lighter, balls are lighter and there’s a lot more knowledge on injuries. “Before if you got a knock, you’d be told just run it off. Now they have specialists who tell you exactly what it is and how long you will be out for. “Players are more athletic, and fitter. You don’t see bigger players who can’t run any more. They are all athletes now. “The game is more defensive but on the other hand you have to be able to play in most areas now. Full-backs are like wingers - there’s not as many defenders that just tackle like an old-style defender – that’s why there are so many bad tackles now. “Players used to be able to get stuck in with proper tackles and it was good to see a good tackle. But some you see now you know they can’t tackle. “There’s lot of things in the game I don’t like now. The fouls, the obstructions, the diving and the shirt-pulling – refs have got a tough time. Corners have become a joke – standing in front of the goalkeeper, obstructions. What’s going on?”

HUNT ON LIVERPOOL’S BEST STRIKER “You have got to say Rushie is the best, he’s scored the most goals and he was just so consistent. He left the club then he came back and just carried on scoring. He just always seemed to be there, he was a natural striker. To be a striker you have to get in the right positions, if you don’t you don’t score. Rush was always in those positions. “He used to work hard as well, chase back. He had this goalscoring knack and I don’t think you can teach that. It’s positional, you have to know when to anticipate. I can’t say to you ‘when the ball does that you go there’ – you just know. “Malcolm Allison once said to a goalscorer ‘you’ve got more time than you think in the box.’ It’s true, some people just snatch at the ball, some people will never be goalscorers. You’ve got to know where you are and what you can do – it might be sidefoot, hit it on the volley. “Rushie, like me, used to practice and practice and practice – it’s not a fluke. You just work hard at it. The knack – you are born with it. “Fowler was a fantastic player, he was another natural goalscorer and I would put him right up there as well, and Torres is a natural scorer too, an all-rounder. You can’t leave out Billy Liddell, Michael Owen or John Aldridge who were all great strikers for the club too.”

HUNT ON SCOUTING “I would have been passed by in the modern game, being found at 19-20. Someone at that age now clubs seem to say if he has not made it by then, then he’s not going to make it. “I do think there’s talent about but clubs just seem to think it’s easier to go and buy someone than search it out. There’s got to be players there – all these leagues, all these players, they just need to be given a chance but even when they are picked up there’s not many games for them to play in. “There used to be the Central League and they played the same number of matches as the First Division – 42 games – and that was a good grounding. And the A and B sides had a match every Saturday, too which they don’t now. “Players now can finish up at the club and not get a game for weeks and I think they get disillusioned. When you’re young you want to play every week. “It’s important to have some local lads in the team, the crowd like it, look at Carragher and Gerrard. There are two or three coming through but they don’t seem to play often enough.”

This interview first appeared in issue five of Well Red. Issue nine is available to buy now - click here.