Tommy Lawrence
Celebrated Liverpool goalkeeper of the Bill Shankly golden era who was nicknamed ‘the Flying Pig’
TOMMY LAWRENCE, who has died aged 77, was goalkeeper in Bill Shankly’s first great Liverpool team; he won the FA Cup and two league titles, as the resurgent Reds became as emblematic of the city in the 1960s as the Beatles.
He joined the club’s ground staff in his mid-teens, when Liverpool had sunk into the Second Division. The years of stagnation dissipated, however, with the arrival of his fellow Scot, Shankly. Lawrence retained vivid memories of the first training session at Melwood, when Shankly demanded to know why the players were merely running rather than working with a ball.
With the team back in the top flight, Lawrence’s chance came in 1962 when Jim Furnell broke a finger. Although the side lost on Lawrence’s debut, Shankly at once called him in and told him that he was good enough and was playing the following week. Thereafter, he made the jersey his own and, once established, only missed five matches in some 350 games.
His 14-stone physique led Lawrence to be nicknamed “the Flying Pig” but he was surprisingly agile for a large man, and adept at getting something, even if a boot, in the way of a goalbound shot. He was also the first stopper to adopt a new tactic inspired by his habit of coming far off his line in five-a-side matches – the “sweeper keeper”.
Ordered by Shankly to patrol the edge of his box when the ball was beyond the halfway mark, Lawrence had at first to endure the advice of the thousands of fans standing on the Kop to get back in goal. “By the end,” he observed, “we were letting in fewer than anybody.” The team’s first triumph was the championship in the 1963-64 season, with Lawrence’s penalty save against Arsenal in their final match helping to clinch the title. Their defence of it the next year fell far short, as Manchester United won at a canter, but Liverpool made up for it by winning the FA Cup.
Their opponents in the Final were Leeds. Both sides had only conceded two goals in the competition and the match remained goal-less after 90 minutes. It sprang to life in extra time, finishing 2-1 as Ian St John’s strike brought Liverpool the trophy for the first time. Lawrence was entrusted with its base but, after a few drinks, managed to mislay it, much to Shankly’s ire.
He had to endure the manager’s wrath on another celebrated occasion when, in a match against Arsenal, he let a shot squeeze through his legs. In the dressing room afterwards, Lawrence gamely put up his hand when Shankly stormed in, admitting his culpability. “It’s not you I blame,” retorted Shankly, “it’s your ----ing mother who shouldn’t have opened her legs!”
Liverpool went on to win the title again in 1966, finishing six points ahead of Leeds, although they lost the final of the Cup Winners Cup against Borussia Dortmund at Hampden Park. Soon after, Ray Clemence arrived at the club, but Lawrence retained Shankly’s confidence for another three years and in 1968-69 set a league record (later bested by Clemence) by conceding just 24 goals in a 42-match season.
A year later, however, Lawrence bore the brunt, with other senior players, of a defeat to Watford in the FA Cup. With Shankly looking to rejuvenate the side, Lawrence only ever turned out once again for the club – and that the following season. Shortly afterwards, he re-joined his former club-mate Ron Yeats across the Mersey at Tranmere Rovers, having played almost 400 times for Liverpool.
Thomas Johnstone Lawrence was born on May 14 1940 at Dailly, Ayrshire. Both his parents were in service and when he was a boy they moved to Warrington in Lancashire. Young Tommy switched his footballing allegiance from Ayr United to Bolton Wanderers, and attended school in Culcheth. He then started work at a wire factory in Warrington.
Lawrence made 80 league appearances for Tranmere in three years before ending his career at non-league Chorley. Perhaps surprisingly, he was capped only three times by Scotland, first in 1963 and then, a full six years later, twice more. Luck was not with him and he had to be carried off in the last of those games, against Wales, having broken his nose colliding with the goal.
After retiring from football, Lawrence returned to the Rylands factory as a quality controller. In 2015, a clip went viral online of a BBC reporter asking passers-by if they remembered Liverpool’s FA Cup tie against Everton in 1967. One elderly gent smiled broadly and assented: “I do, I played in it – I was goalkeeper for Liverpool.”
Tommy Lawrence was twice married and is survived by a son and two daughters of his first marriage and by two sons and a daughter of the second.