SPECTATOR SPORT
Unerring aim
Frank Keating
LAST WEEK, 25,000 Liverpool football supporters paid over a quarter of a million pounds to pay tribute at a testimonial match to the club's goal-scorer of 14 years, Ian Rush. In his 600 matches for the Anfield club the bony, foxy-faced North Walian has potted 330 goals. If he contin- ues his unerring aim, it will not be too long till Rush has in his sights, in the all-time 'netfinders' hall of fame, George Camsell, who scored 348, Steve Bloomer (352), and Jimmy Greaves (356). But with his next birthday his 34th, Rush is unlikely to over- take the two on the topmost plinth, Dixie bean, 379, or Arthur Rowley, 434.
I saw Rowley once in the early 1950s, Playing for Fulham. My Uncle Vincent took me, and with all the other boys I was Passed down like a stretcher-case over the beads of the throng to the touchline river- bank corner at Craven Cottage. Rowley biffed and barged and snorted around the Penalty area in the white shirt. When he wasn't snorting he just grinned. He scored a Couple — and soon after waddled off to Leicester City, and then down to the Severn of Shrewsbury Town, where he riddled the rigging for hatfuls more.
, Dean might have been the Rowley type, out Greaves and by all accounts Bloomer
were not hurly-burly bullocks. I saw a lot of Greaves, right through his prime and beyond. What a player — all the old clichés well up and overflow — the baggy- trousered philanthropist who could make as well as take, the artful dodger, the penal- ty-area pickpocket. His England mate Johnny Haynes used to say, 'Jim would shoot about two seconds before I'd even thought about it.'
Was that like Bloomer? One of the game's eminent historians. Ivan Sharpe, played with Bloomer, and wrote, 'Steve scored with sudden shooting. His great haul came principally with first-time shots. His was instantaneous marksmanship, aimed at beating the goalkeeper's eye.'
Bloomer was Derby County, and Camsell Middlesbrough. The latter was said to hover, inches onside, and then use his speed to burst onto long through-passes from Jack Carr, who said, 'I'd just hit the pass, then sit on my "hunkers" and watch George score.'
The quality of Rush is that he has a bit of every style. In other words, he has the lot. In his time, his long stride, like Camsell's apparently, would leave defenders as root- ed as trees. And, like Greaves, his close- quarter work is as delicate as it is terminal: an instinct for minute angles as well as one for killing. And of them all, only Dean was, by repute, probably the better header.
Rush is a delightfully approachable mil- lionaire, self-effacing, with no 'side' at all. His junior club was Chester, but apart from one lucrative if bewildered year with the Italian club Juventus he has been dyed-red Anfield through and through. The Italian supporters were devoted to him, but he could not settle to the food or the language. On his fast return to Liverpool, he cheer- fully admitted that as soon as he had arrived at Juventus, 'I knew the writing was on the wall,' adding nicely, 'Not that I could read it, mind you.' He said at least he had learned the Italian to tell waiters how he liked his steaks cooked. 'I just said "Bravo" — you know, "well done"'.
Bravo: you bet.
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