Every World Cup team would have loved a player like my old mate ‘Doc’
Ihave spent the past week watching the best players in the world perform in a country which has spent a fortune trying to prove itself a worthy host of the greatest sporting show on earth. But my mind has been drifting back to my Liverpool days since I heard that we’d lost one of the great men of the team I played in.
David Johnson wouldn’t have described himself as one of the greats. he wasn’t an england regular, like many of our Liverpool team back then, even though he scored twice in a 3-1 win over argentina in 1980. argentina never took prisoners and were world champions at the time.
David ( right) was a special individual, though, and he leaves indelible memories for those of us who played with him and knew him well.
Like the day, playing at anfield, when I got on the ball, took a touch, sensed there was an empty space where I would expect him to be, took another touch, looked again — and realised he wasn’t actually on the field. When I’d made the alternative pass, I actually did a head count of our team in case my eyes were deceiving me. They weren’t. Only 10 players. he’d had a bad stomach and run off the pitch to avail himself of the facilities. In the middle of a First Division game. and I hadn’t even seen him go!
he was actually the least likely of all of us to have trouble like that, because he used to turn up every day with a bag full of medicines. If you had a hangover, bad stomach or anything else he’d be sure to have the pills for you. Don’t ask me why or how. he just carried this leather bag of medicines around. ‘I’ve got something just for that,’ he’d say. That’s why we all called him ‘The Doc’.
I’ve never forgotten his reaction when I caught him a few times in training, soon after arriving at Liverpool in 1978. ‘hang on a minute,’ the Doc said, pointing at me. ‘has he got a licence to go around kicking people?’ That was the polite version, at least. We were in stitches. We didn’t let him forget that one.
Which brings me to the point about the Doc which is as relevant to today’s football and a World Cup in the middle of the desert as it was to Liverpool 45 years ago.
The need for team players. Lifeandsoul individuals. Those in whose company others really want to be. We’re tripping over data and analysis here in Doha. Managers are getting real-time statistics about aspects of performance we once didn’t even know were quantifiable. But none of that holds a candle to the fundamental human qualit i e s I’m describing.
The Doc was great company on the nights out we used to have, starting in Liverpool’s holiday Inn and ending at Ugly’s nightclub on Duke Street. he wasn’t someone you’d have put at the top of the pecking order. Kenny Dalglish was the shop steward back then. ‘Jocky’ hansen and I also had our say. But he didn’t need a moment’s motivation to give his all in a game. Make no mistake — he was a seriously good player, too. Kenny enjoyed playing with him because he kept wanting to run into the channels, pulling opposition players back towards their own goal. he was quick. his runs would drag a defender and a covering player out of position, so Kenny enjoyed that.
I’ll never forget his major contribution to one of the great goals we scored in that era, during the 7-0 win over Tottenham around the time of that training-ground episode in 1978. We were defending a corner and the ball fell on the halfway line to the Doc, who smashed it wide left to Steve heighway. he hit it first time for Terry McDermott, defending our box just a few seconds earlier, who headed it in at the anfield Road end. Tottenham’s new argentinian signings, Ossie ardiles and Ricky villa, got stuck in an anfield revolving door that day. That kind of delivery wasn’t actually the Doc’s main strength. he was just a good, all-round centre forward, who realised that he had to do all he could to stay in the team, as we all did at that time. he left to rejoin everton in 1982, at a time when Ian Rush was beginning to break through, though I often saw him at Liverpool events, most recently at a Christmas dinner for former players last year. It was clear to me then that he wasn’t in great health. he was quick, athletic, brave and a very good goalscorer. But above all he was a team player. a diamond. all the great teams need them.