Haunted by Hillsborough but Dalglish takes hope from families’ strengths
EACH time I speak to Kenny Dalglish over the telephone, he signs off in the same way. ‘Hasta luego,’ he says, whether he is on holiday in La Manga or at home in Southport, drawing the Spanish phrase out in contented Glaswegian so that it exudes peacefulness and rest. See you later.
Dalglish has earned his peace and he has earned his rest. They were strangers to him for a long time, sent into exile by the horror of the Hillsborough Disaster in 1989 and by his unwavering determination to try to bring some measure of comfort and support and justice to the families of the 96 Liverpool fans who were killed in Sheffield.
But now, at last, he has them back. And if there is a terrible sadness at the heart of Kenny, the moving documentary film about his life that had its premiere last week, it remains a story about resilience and sacrifice and the triumph of family and how, for Dalglish, there was indeed a golden sky at the end of the storm.
He has softer edges now than he once did but, as the 66-year-old sits in a quiet room at a Liverpool restaurant, he sighs impatiently when I mention that his wife, Marina, says in the film that Dalglish fell apart after Hillsborough and that he was difficult to live with as he tried to deal with the aftermath of the tragedy.
‘Difficult to live with?’ he says with the quizzical stare that is always the forerunner of amused disdain. ‘For a very short period of time. Not difficult to live with, per se. Jesus Christ. I never noticed. But it must be true if Marina said it. I’m not going to start arguing with her as well.’
This is the Dalglish Code. All his favourite things are in that answer: sarcasm, querulousness, humour, self-deprecation, challenge, a horror of anyone feeling sorry for him, a tip of the cap to his wife, with whom he has formed a happy marriage of more than 42 years. Even conversation is a competition for Kenny.
The first time I met him was six months after Hillsborough when he walked into a post-match press conference in the old cramped little press room at Anfield. He closed the door behind him and stood with his back to the wall, put his head down and answered questions staring at the floor. He hated press conferences anyway but the trauma of the tragedy was still written large upon his face.
‘The most important thing for me was to deal with what the families were going through,’ he says. ‘I dealt with that. If it meant I missed out myself, fine. I was the least important one anyway.
‘If I never dealt with myself, that would not be unusual. I don’t think that’s abnormal. I was there to be of comfort or assistance or help or whatever we had to be and, whatever way the families wanted us to be, we were there. If, sometimes, you put someone else before yourself, I don’t know what’s wrong with that.’
Dalglish is keenly aware that the film suggests that in a different way to those who lost loved ones at Hillsborough, he, too, was a victim of the tragedy.
He smiles at all ‘the sympathy for the interviewee’ he says he has been receiving.
He is also deeply wary of sentiments like that because he knows how much the families of those who died suffered and he thinks comparing his own ordeal with theirs is disrespectful. But when I ask if he and his family were damaged by Hillsborough, he does not demur.
‘I think it damaged everybody,’ he says. ‘As far as we were concerned, we were fortunate that our damage was not as permanent as it was for the families. If we were damaged for a little bit, then fine. For the help that we gave to the people who most needed it at that time, it’s a small price to pay.
‘Have I recovered from it? I don’t know. How would you know what you were going to be like? How would you know if you’d have been different? I don’t know. I just know if I’ve done a little bit to help them, it’s a fraction of what they’ve done to help us. I’ll be the one that’s in the red.’
Dalglish was committed to the importance of the family long before Hillsborough but the love and the loyalty he witnessed from those who lost loved ones have helped him reflect on the love of his own children and the joy of his growing band of grandchildren.
It is good to see the way that he is now. The worry has left his face. He was touched by how meticulously Liverpool planned the ceremony to rename a stand after him at Anfield and how well they treated him and his family.
He is a non-executive director of the club he once graced as a player and manager. Of everyone I know in football, his loyalty to his club is unmatched. ‘It’s next to the family,’ he says. ‘Below family?’ I ask him. ‘Aye,’ he says.
‘I am hugely proud of my kids and I have got a fantastic wife who was the gaffer when it came to bringing them up and making them what they are today. She got a bit of a tough job with myself but she can’t have everything.’