Well Red Interviews

Well Red tracks down a famous Kopite and asks them all about LFC. Here it’s stadium announcer, the voice of Anfield... GEORGE SEPHTON.

HE’S not strictly a Kopite. And he’d probably tell you he’s not famous, either. But his booth is near enough to the great stand, and to thousands he is every bit as much a part of match day as singing You’ll Never Walk Alone and clapping the opposition keeper. Oh, and he’s been on Match of the Day 2.
By RICHARD BUXTON

THE press room in Anfield’s inner sanctum is always heaving on match days but it is a very different place before the journalists converge.

Amidst staff pacing the corridors outside, Ronnie Moran pops his head through the door; no doubt taking a trip down memory lane about the legendary boot room he founded with Joe Fagan and Bob Paisley before the media men took residence.

Sitting a few feet from him is George Sephton – the club’s veteran stadium announcer – who clearly doesn’t class himself as part of the press pack that will arrive here in just two-and-a-half hours’ time.

“I don’t think I’m allowed in here,” he says with a smile.

But the 64-year-old – once described as “part of the furniture” by former chief executive Peter Robinson – is as much a part of Liverpool’s legacy as the managers and players that have graced Anfield’s hallowed turf.

His unmistakable voice has trickled down the terraces and stands of  Anfield for nearly four decades after he became the long-term successor to Merseyside broadcaster Alan Jackson.

“Early in the 1971-72 season, the voice changed on the PA system and I made a sarcastic crack to my wife one night about this guy because he did a couple of silly things,” he recalls.

“He played records at the wrong speed once or twice and he would give out announcements when the ball was in play, causing havoc. My wife said, ‘It’s all right for you down here. I bet you couldn’t do that.’

So I went home and wrote to Peter Robinson, basically saying ‘Dear Sir, Giz a job’.

“The next thing I knew I was sitting in his office and then in the roof of the Main Stand. Suddenly I’m the tannoy announcer. It was just surreal.”

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On that sunny Saturday afternoon in August against Nottingham Forest when Sephton first took to the stadium’s airwaves, he shared his debut as a club employee with a promising 20-year-old from Scunthorpe whose name would reverberate around the Kop in next to no time.

But unlike Kevin Keegan, George nearly incurred the wrath of the legendary Bill Shankly later that season over an announcement given during a Youth Cup game. “We were up for the championship with Leeds United who were playing Huddersfield Town that night,” he remembers.

“Peter rang me up midway through the first half and said ‘Huddersfield are winning 1-0. If there’s a break in play, give the score out’.

“So I did and there was a big cheer but halfway through the second half Peter rang me again and told me that Leeds were winning 3-1.

“When a break in play came I gave the score out, heard a bit of a groan and thought nothing more about it until I got downstairs after the game when the girl on the reception desk said ‘George, get out of here – Shanks is after you!’

“Apparently he said I’d personally destroyed the atmosphere in the ground. He was going to rip me limb from limb from what I could make out!

“The funny thing was that three days later I came in here for the First Division fixture on the Saturday and who was the first person I bumped into but Shanks.

“I was petrified, but he just looked at me and said ‘Morning son’ and there was never another word said about it.”

Still going strong 39 years on from when he first set foot in the gantry, George plans to enter the voiceover and after-dinner guest circuit but has no intentions of relinquishing the Anfield microphone anytime soon.

“I don’t want to retire. When the Americans turned up, a journalist I was talking to put me onto a book about American baseball.

“Traditionally, stadium announcers continue until they drop. Apparently they’ve got announcers who are 90 odd years old.

“At the moment I’ve got absolutely no plans to retire but somebody else might have,” he adds.

Sephton’s traditional, no-nonsense approach to broadcasting has become a rarity amongst the booming, over-dramatic MCs that most clubs now employ to deliver the forced razzamatazz that currently plagues English football.

Amidst all that supposed glitz and glamour George’s reluctance to step into the limelight, unlike his counterparts, has earned him a place in the hearts of Liverpool supporters, media men and the many local bands he has  regularly championed down the years.

“A couple of weeks ago Sam Wallace said in The Independent that the pre-match atmosphere at Anfield is still the best and he mentioned me by name which was nice,” he says.

“I was also listening to Radio 5 Live one morning and Danny Wallace was slagging off stadium announcers in general, saying we’re all halfwits.

“But Colin Murray said ‘They’re not all like that. What about good old George Sephton at Anfield’.

“Kevin Day from Match of the Day 2 was down here in September and he said somebody said to him I’ve got a voice like a warm blanket.

“At times you feel like jumping off the top of the Kop stand but when somebody says things like that it makes life worthwhile.”

Making Turkey out of Jose my Anfield highlight

THE first semi-final against Chelsea in 2005 wasn’t the greatest match ever but what made it special was the fact that it got us back into a European Cup final after such a long time away.

I’d been to the previous final we were in back in 1985 and that point we never for a moment thought it’d be 20 years almost to the day that we were back in another one.

The fact that we’d done it and a whole new generation of Reds can experience what it was like was something else.

Some strange things happened on that night – the goal Luis Garcia scored, that Jose Mourinho is still whining about all these years later, and the six minutes added time.

If you listen to recordings of that night there’s a gap between the fourth official holding his board up and me saying ‘six minutes added time’ because I couldn’t believe it.

I was just gobsmacked when that came up.

People were screaming and booing and quite a few approached me in the street after that and said ‘why did you give the six minutes added time?’ But I don’t! It’s on the board so I can’t do anything else.

I’d like to have said that there would be one minute but I’d be out of here If I did that!

I quite often say if I was at home instead of here, I would have got up, made a cup of tea and done the crossword to just to calm my nerves down because they’re absolutely shredded when it’s 1-0 and there’s 10 minutes to go.

As far as I was concerned, Shanks was God

It’s crazy because I started coming here as a spectator about a month after he had joined the club as manager and as far as I was concerned he was God, and still is. I flew out to Paris on the same plane as Shanks in 1981 for the European Cup final which was the famous trip when the late John Peel achieved his lifetime ambition by carrying Shankly’s bags into the hotel.

When I came home I got terrible earache from my wife because I came out the airport with Bill and he was carrying his own bag.  On the plane flying out, no one would sit next to him. Not because they didn’t want to speak to him but because they were so overawed.

The last person on board was the guy who sat next to him because that was the only seat available - next to Shanks.

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AS Alan Kennedy walks into the room it is impossible not to be impressed.

Not just because of his honours – five league titles, four League Cups, three Charity Shields and, most notably, two European Cups – but because he looks supremely fit for someone who is 55.

“I’m going for a jog later,” he says, explaining the tracksuit.

Kennedy has a talent for putting people at ease – a necessity for a man whose visits to Anfield these days are largely for corporate hospitality. As if to prove his credentials as an after-dinner speaker, he quickly starts firing the sort of anecdotes that fans lap up.

“Bob Paisley knew my family as he was from the same village as my mother,” he says.

“He used to buy his fish and chips from her shop. So he knew he was signing someone from a good background and a hard worker.”

Most Expensive Defender

The £330,000 that Liverpool paid Newcastle made Kennedy the most expensive defender in the game.

It wasn’t Liverpool’s style to splash about that sort of money but Paisley was determined to get him.

“In previous years Liverpool had experimented with a number of players at left back but they wanted someone to sort the issue once and for all,” Kennedy went on.

“When Paisley signed me, he said that if I didn’t become an England player he would jump in the Mersey. Having thought a bit about it Paisley then added: ‘When the tide is out!’”

Kennedy did play for England albeit only twice – Kenny Sansom had made the role his – but club success made up for any disappointment.

This despite a shaky start.

“My debut wasn’t a great debut – in fact it was terrible,” said Kennedy.

“Players and fans were probably wondering why the club had spent so much money on me. Liverpool had learned this trick of playing the ball nice and easy in little triangles.

“My philosophy was to get rid of the ball, to send it to the other side for as long as possible. I would be finding Terry McDermott or David Johnson but everyone would be caught short so it was a waste of time.

“I hadn’t learned much in the four or five days that I’d been at Liverpool and when I came in at half-time against QPR, the manager was fuming.

“He whispered – he didn’t shout – ‘I think they shot the wrong bloody Kennedy!’ It was said in jest but the message was that I had to improve or I was out. So I learned a lot from that particular game.”

Kennedy nailed down the left-back slot for seven years. “In our first season, we let in 16 goals,” he says, matter-of-factly.

“During my time at Anfield we established ourselves as the best team in the country with our traditional 4-4-2. We didn’t think too much about our opponents.

“There was so much self-belief that we always took the field determined to play our own way and our main goal was to push forward and score goals. Football in those days was easier to understand as emphasis was not so much on tactics.

“The secret behind Liverpool’s success was unity in the group. Everyone played for each other and that made us a very difficult team to beat.”

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Achievements

Liverpool’s self belief was also fuelled by their achievements – at home and abroad.

It was in Europe that Kennedy enjoyed his biggest success – his winning goal against Real Madrid in the 1981 European Cup final is an obvious talking point. “It was at the time,” he answers when I ask if was the high point of his career.

“I’d scored in the previous Cup final against West Ham (League Cup) but the game ended in a draw.”

“When Bob Paisley picked the team he picked it on quality and strength. I was lucky enough to be part of it and, in the end, scoring the goal was just a bonus. I didn’t expect to score it, I didn’t expect to be up there but I’d had a couple of shots earlier and in the end I decided to have a go from that acute angle.

“I shouldn’t have really but I did and the ball hit the back of the net.”

Three years later he took Liverpool’s final penalty against Roma.

Kennedy confirms with a laugh that he had been terrible when taking penalties in training but that didn’t stop him from stepping forward.

I ask what it was like to take on Roma in their own back yard.

“They were confident,” says Kennedy. “In the tunnel beforehand they were sticking their chest out, flicking their hair and giving the message that ‘this is our place’.

“But we just rolled our sleeves up and and decided to attack them straight away.

“It wasn’t a good game – it was tight and there was pressure on all the time. When the penalties came around the manager was looking around for players to pick.

“I don’t think anyone was that bothered about volunteering and it was just a quiet word. I was really, really surprised when he picked me. I didn’t imagine that he would come up to me and say those words.

“I was that surprised that I didn’t join the other four lads giving their names to the referee. I didn’t realise that it was now up to me.

“They say never change your mind during the run up to a penalty – well, I did. I was thinking to myself ‘put it to the goalkeeper’s left’ but in the end I slightly hesitated and opened my body up and the ball went in. It was a great feeling.”

A year later, Liverpool and Kennedy were once again in the final of the European Cup.

Sadly, that ended in the tragedy at Heysel. One of the sad side-effects of that night is it completely overshadowed the departure of the long-serving Joe Fagan.

“He was a quite man but he was also a man that we respected because whatever he said, you did. And when he raised his voice you did it even quicker,” Kennedy recalls.

“I remember on a number of occasions him whispering to a couple of players ‘sort it out between you’. What that meant was to forget Bob Paisley, to forget Joe Fagan and sort any problems that we had between us on the pitch.

“But once he went to Heysel, there was no way back for Joe. He wasn’t very happy with how things had gone. He was always the unsung hero, the guy who did the job in the background whilst Bob was under the spotlight. Joe was just happy to get on with the job and did it well with Ronnie Moran.”

Kennedy is just as passionate in his praise of Paisley.

“He wasn’t the most fluent of talkers; he was very shy. He got on with his job,” he says.

“He didn’t like confrontation. But where he was strong was in making decisions and he made decisions on what was best for the club, not what was best for the individual.

“We all had our problems with the manager sometimes but he was a strong character and he was well supported by Joe Fagan, Ronnie Moran, Roy Evans, Tom Saunders and Reuben Bennett. His record might not be beaten in terms of what he achieved in a short space of time: you’re talking from 1977 to 1984.”

Current Left Backs

Talk turns to the current Liverpool side and I ask what he thinks of the present left-backs. His reply is typically diplomatic: “Since we let John Arne Riise go we’ve had a little bit of problem. Insua is a young player who has come in and I would encourage him to get forward a little bit more. Defensively he can be better. Aurelio, for me, is probably a better full back because of his experience but his injury problems hold him back.”

Given the dearth of left-backs, Kennedy must wonder what might have been had he still been playing.

“I don’t think players of yesteryear would have coped with playing today,” is his somewhat surprising answer. “They’d have to change; they’d have to be told how to play the game of football.

“Nowadays you don’t have to think on the football pitch. Managers and coaches do it for you. It is no longer a game for the spectator – you don’t see many brilliant games any more. The win is all important now.”

But was it really so laid back in Kennedy’s day? “Yes, yes it was,” he says. “A lot of players played individually but Bob Paisley always told us to play as a team. In our days there was no strategy. It was just a case of go out there and play better than the opposition.”

So why didn’t Kennedy go into management? “I didn’t feel that I was management material. I was quite happy to be a player,” he says. “I played until I was 42 in non-league football which is quite an age.”

The final query relates to what the fans mean to him: “The supporters were the be-all and end-all. The manager and the chairman used to say that it was all about the supporters. The supporters are very important: we all saw what happened in Istanbul and it was them who got the players back into the game. They can win games for Liverpool.”

Read more from Paul Grech at:

aliverpoolthing.com or follow him on twitter at: twitter.com/aliverpoolthing

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Issue Two of Well Red featured an interview with former Liverpool manager Roy Evans. In case you missed it, here's what he had to say.

FOUR consecutive top-four finishes, a genuine title challenge, a League Cup in the trophy cabinet and an FA Cup final. It’s a quartet of campaigns that would have fans of clubs from across the land in raptures. Add an exciting brand of football, arguably some of the best seen at Anfield in the last 20 years, and suddenly Roy Evans’s reign looks far from the failure many fans would have you believe it was.

BY GARETH ROBERTS

TWELVE years on and the same old clichés are trotted out: Spice Boys, white suits and a man who was too close to the players to instil the discipline needed to achieve success.

After 33 years’ service to Liverpool as a player, coach, reserve team manager and ultimately boss, doesn’t being remembered for players’ fashion mistakes annoy Roy Evans?

“Spice Boys was quite a unfair tag on a lot of the lads because a lot of them were good professionals and played some great football,” said Evans.

“We’re disappointed that we didn’t win more than we did in the four years but it’s strange because when you’re in a job people will say ‘you’re rubbish’ - a couple of years down the line and people will stop you in the street and say ‘I love the way your team played’.

Bootle-born Evans, a left back, signed for Liverpool after impressing for England schoolboys. Chelsea, Wolves and Everton were also on his trail but for 15-year-old Evans, a Red, there was no only one choice. He was soon turning out for the reserves but first-team opportunities were limited – Evans made just 11 first-team appearances from 1969 to 1974.

He even had a spell on loan in America, making 19 appearances for Philadelphia Atoms.

But the highlight was going toe-to-toe with Manchester United’s George Best. “We played Man United at home and I think we beat them 2-1 or 2-0,” said Evans. “I played against Besty and I played really well. He even said to me ‘Great, you played well – and you didn’t try to kick me to death!’

“It was great playing against Man United in front of the Kop and winning. That was probably the highlight but I loved my games in the reserve team – we were a very successful group of lads and we played great football.”

Evans won five Central League titles as a reserve-team player between 1968 and 1974 but the time came when he began to weigh up a move away from Anfield. [For context, in 1974 Liverpool beat Newcastle 3-0 in the FA Cup Final - see pic]

“Shanks had just packed up and Bob Paisley had taken the job and people were all pretty confused,” he said.

“At the start of the season I went back in and Bob offered me the job as a coach. I said to him ‘Coaching? I’m 26. You obviously don’t think I’m going to make it as a player at this level but I want to play. A lot of people tried to persuade me but I turned it down two or three times. But Tommy Smith, my best mate at the time and best man at my wedding, said why don’t you try it? In the end, Joe Fagan said try it for a year and i f you don’t like it go back and play football and I was persuaded -  I took the job and it was obviously the best part of my career.”

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Evans was the last manager to emerge from the legendary boot-room production line at Anfield.

But with football now unrecognisable from Evans’s days, he knows no-one will ever emulate his route to the top job at Liverpool.

“I came through the system, I’m probably the luckiest Liverpudlian of all time to come through as a player, do every job and end up as the manager,” he said. “I don’t think there will be another player who does that.”

The boot room has long gone at Anfield, the space where so many of the club’s great minds gathered is now used to host the press on match days.

For Evans, it was the people that sat in it, rather than the room itself.

“People talk about the boot room as if it’s a place - it was: a grotty room with boots and baskets, a case of beer and a bottle of whiskey, a place where Bob Paisley used to keep our bits.

“The boot room was about the people that were in it – Shanks, Reuben Bennett, Joe Fagan, Paisley, Ronnie Moran, Tom Saunders, myself – we all added to it.

“We used to invite teams in after the game and we might have beaten them 3-0. We’d say ‘well played’ and shake hands but we were always the ones asking the questions – ‘What do you do in training, how do you do this, what you do after the game?’ You would think it would be the other way round, that they would want to know how we were successful. But we tried to learn off everybody who came in there.

“The secret to the success of the boot room was that we had a really good balance in the staff. But also to be successful as a coach you need good players and that’s what they were good at getting – Shanks brought his share in, Bob was a good judge of players as well.

“But we had the balance – Ronnie Moran was the sergeant major; I would put my arm round one or two of them if I had to; Joe Fagan was straightforward and honest; Bob wasn’t the greatest talker of all time but he would get his point across and he was a great judge of player. The boot room was about people with experience talking about football. Not 24/7, half an hour on a Sunday, when we used to go in and do the kits – there were no kitmen then!”

The kitmen were certainly in place by the time Evans succeeded Graeme Souness as manager in January 1994.

And a Sky-inspired media revolution of the game perhaps gave him an aspect of the job to deal with that had never been so apparent for the man in the hotseat at Anfield.

“The media had started to go to a different level, they used to just concentrate on football,” said Evans. When I got the manager’s job it was just starting to pick up on the social side, outside of football.”

STORY-HUNGRY journalists got just what they were looking for when Evans signed Stan Collymore for a then British record transfer fee of £8.5millon.

Initially a success, and undoubtedly talented, the striker formed an extremely effective partnership with Robbie Fowler. ‘God’ was at the peak of his powers during Evans’s reign.

An injury-time winner in the memorable 4-3 match with Newcastle is probably Collymore’s highlight in the red shirt of Liverpool.

But while he scored 35 goals in 81 appearances for the Reds, he also rocked the boat, missing training sessions, refusing to play for the reserves, and crucially, never relocating to Merseyside from his hometown of Cannock.

So does Evans regret signing ‘Stan the Man’?

“No, because for the first 18 months he did what we wanted him to do,” said Evans. “He came here and he was a player. We paid a big fee but he did the business.

“But after 18 months he started not to turn up; the press got onto the case - they would look to see if his car was there and it became ‘Stan Collymore watch’ – it became difficult for the lads.

“You’d fine him, then he wouldn’t play for the reserves. For the good of the team we had to sell him. It was all really because he didn’t move up from Cannock.”

It’s now 13 years since Collymore left Anfield for Aston Villa with a gleeful Liverpool gratefully clawing back £7million for the striker.

So has Collymore ever apologised?

“No, he has never said sorry,” said Evans. “I don’t think he’s got that in him. He’s one of those people who knows all the answers, it’s never Stan’s fault - some players are like that. Somewhere along the line he’ll realise he had a great career in front of him.

“I’ve spoken to Stan since – now he has articles in the papers and he’s got all the answers but he went through a patch in his life – he went to Villa then to Spain then he quit Spain – he self-destructed a little didn’t he?

“Stan had always been a big fish in the small pond, and when he came to us he was just a fish in a pond. But as I say, no regrets. Stan will have more regrets than I will. People will always say he was a bad signing…and I will say ‘no’.”

IF his Anfield indiscretions weren’t enough, he also decided to stick the knife on Evans in his autobiography, questioning whether the players were so close to the manager at Old Trafford.

This fuelled the Evans stereotype: that he was just too nice.

It’s an accusation that the man himself refutes. “That was always my side of the job at Anfield,” Evans explained. “But there was a streak of me that could throw teacups if you like and have a shout and bawl – the lads will tell you that.

“But I’m a great believer that you can praise people and you can pat people on the back and say ‘well done’. I’m a great believer in enjoying football - and these days I don’t always see that enjoyment factor.

“I believed that if I patted people on the back when they did well it gave me the right to have a right good go when they didn’t.

“I did things in an honest way – Joe Fagan was pretty much the same – he was a straightforward man, too.”

Whatever the rights and wrongs of Evans’s approach, it so very nearly brought the Anfield Holy Grail – League Championship Number 19.

In 1996-97 if Liverpool had beaten Manchester United at Anfield in April they would have gone top with three games to go. It was not to be. With hindsight, what went wrong?

“We had a couple of bad Novembers in different seasons for whatever reason – they cost us,” said Evans.

“And like all managers I’d probably say we were a couple of players short. If we could have been a little bit more solid defensively we probably could have won it.

“We just could not get that balance. I ended up playing with a back three because I always felt we were a bit vulnerable through the middle – we just couldn’t get a couple of solid lads in that position and that was a factor. We were always capable of scoring goals but we needed to be a team that didn’t give them away, too.”

Marcel Desailly and two players who eventually ended up at Anfield at a later stage – Karl Heinz Riedle and Jari Litamen – were among the players Evans wanted during his reign.

But the one player he fancied who he believed could have made the difference was Teddy Sheringham.

“I had a chance to bring Teddy in but the club policy on transfers was no players over 28. He went to play until he was 38, or was it 48!

“But we needed that experience. We had John Barnes, a bit of Rushie but we needed a little bit more with those younger players.

“Teddy was a great player and knew when to party and when to play and he could have told those kids ‘This is the right time, this is the wrong time’ – that sort of help for Barnesy and Rushie might have gone down well.”

DESPITE the entertaining football – the 4-3 against Newcastle in April 1996 was voted the best match ever screened by Sky – the Anfield hierarchy started to wonder if a departure from tradition would benefit the club.

It was then that discussions began about a change to the managerial structure. Perhaps, they wondered, the club would benefit from a director-of-football-style appointment?

That thought spelt the start of the ill-fated joint manager role with Gerard Houllier – and the beginning of the end for Evans.

“The game was moving at a fast rate to a more European game and my experience was all Liverpool,” he said.

“We spoke to John Toshack who of course had experience with Real Madrid but he wanted to be a number one and the name Gerard Houllier came up.

“France had just won the World Cup and he had been technical director. We went over to meet him and things sounded OK - we had similar ideas on how we wanted to play.

“I was there with four or five directors but what I didn’t know then was they had been there the week before without me knowing. That was probably a little bit out of order but that’s the way football is.

“To my naivety, and just coming back of my holidays maybe I didn’t have my head in place, I said job titles mean nothing to me – and someone said joint managers.

“I should have said no, anything but joint manager, director of football, chief coach, call it what you want. I should have stood up for myself and the players – I didn’t and that’s probably my biggest regret in football. The rest is history – it would have been difficult if you did it with your best mate.”

The cracks in the managerial marriage soon began to appear and after just four months Evans made the heart-breaking decision to call time on the partnership, and said a tearful goodbye to the club he loved.

“I knew it was going to happen but I didn’t know it would happen so quick, he said.

“It wasn’t doing the club any good, the players were getting two sides to each story – I don’t think we lost the lads but it was becoming more difficult so I made the sacrifice, it was never going to be Gerard - it had to be me.

“It started to break down pretty quickly over little decisions – I kept more or less control of team selections, Gerard had some say, but we had different ideas.

“We always liked to meet the players and tell them they weren’t playing but Gerard wouldn’t be there so you’d do it on your own – little things like that. It was niggly things – ‘what time does the bus leave?’ – stupid things. But the lads started to say ‘who is in charge?’ and I thought it was time to go.

“We tried to sort it out internally, they asked me go on the board, but that was not my scene.”

Evans is now a coach for Wales and works for LFCtv but does he still miss the full-time demands of a managerial role?

“You miss getting up and going in, the crack with the lads, the buzz of it. But you don’t miss the stick you get when you lose a game.

“But you get out of that. I do a bit with John Toshack and Wales, 10 games a year, and it’s fulfilling to see the kids coming through. It’s a challenge and it gives me time to play golf!”

Finally, we talk about the modern game.

Evans, like everyone who has an interest in football, is concerned about where the game is heading money-wise and fears Portsmouth may not be the last top-flight club to go into administration.

But what about the actual football? With the science, the stats, the Pro-Zone, is the modern game actually better? Not for Evans: “It’s not always exciting to watch – people say it’s faster and quicker but entertainment-wise there are some pretty poor games.”

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