Dedication to Joe Fagan

28 years ago today Joe Fagan stepped down as manager of Liverpool Football Club after 25 years of service.

A dedication to Joe Fagan

Joe Fagan looked around at the mess that lay before him. Discarded strips of tape and sticking plasters, chewing gum wrappers - all the usual flotsam and jetsam of a typical football dressing room.

Outside, in the corridor, he could still hear his players raucously celebrating as they playfully reeled their way back to the team bus. In amongst the detritus of the dressing room floor were the spoils of victory, popped champagne corks, and half drunk plastic cups of the finest Moet et Chandon.

For this was no ordinary dressing room, and the celebrating players about to make their way back to Liverpool were no ordinary team. This was the dressing room of the newly crowned League Champions.

With a resigned yet happy shrug he picked up the nearest brush and began sweeping. Someone had to do it and it may as well be him, he thought. It was polite to leave a visiting dressing room as spick and as span as you found it and Notts County's had been very tidy just a few hours earlier.

It had always been a basic tenet of the bootroom philosophy that if a job needed doing, no matter how small, then it should be done and done properly.

With a warm and satisfied glow, Fagan made his own way to the team bus. He knew the press would say this was Bob Paisley's team but he didn't care about that. What was it Bob used to say about the Anfield regime ? "It's communism with a small 'c' here." It certainly was and that wasn't going to change just because a new man was in charge. The only sweeping changes Joe was going to make involved a brush and a couple of bin bags.

It was enough that another trophy had been won, that honour had been upheld, that Liverpool FC had marched on to more triumphs.

Now there was the little matter of Rome and the treble to deal with!

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