Liverpool Boys football team holds 60th anniversary reunion

Jan 19 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

Among the guests will be Gerry Tansey, a forward in the Liverpool team. He is 74, but still speaks of Boy Brennan, as if he was advancing down the field now with the ball at his feet.

“He was outstanding. He really was. He was built like a tank,” recalls Gerry, the son of the seafarer Paddy. Paddy watched the match with Gerry’s sister Kitty.

“I can remember the match as though it was yesterday. It was a nice day as I remember it. It had been very close at Stockport, but at Anfield it was more open,” says Gerry.

“The crowd was fantastic, but they were very sporting and seemed to enjoy it and clapped everyone off. The schoolboys were lucky then. We played our main matches at Goodison or Anfield. The kids don’t seem to play on the big grounds anymore.

“I think part of the reason the schoolboy matches were so popular then was because we were coming out of the war and the relationships between parents and their children were getting back to normal. There were a lot of families in the crowd.”

His brother, Jimmy, played for Everton’s first team during the 1950s, but Gerry didn’t quite make it at Goodison, though he did play three times for Tranmere Rovers.

Strangely enough Jimmy’s grandson, Greg, is a midfielder at Stockport County.

In later life, Gerry, a father of three, who lives in Kirkdale, Liverpool, with his wife Alice, became a deputy district officer with the city’s social services department.

Johnny Tippett, 75, drifted from the right-wing to lead the line when Brennan was tired.

For him and the other Stockport players, the whole day was wonderful. Liverpool was used to big matches, but his team had to make the best of everything that came their way.

Nobody doubted that the outstanding Brennan was largely responsible for their success.

“I remember the rumble of the people above us in the stand and the band playing on the pitch,” he says.

“But I only really felt nervous when the referee blew the whistle and we had to go up the tunnel and on to the pitch. I had always wanted to play at Anfield. The Spion Kop had a great reputation.”

Johnny, a brick technologist by profession, was for many years a banjo player/ guitarist in a jazz band and often visited Liverpool venues including the Cavern.

One of the players on the brink of selection to that Liverpool team was the nippy inside forward Billy Woods, 74, the retired painter and decorator and local historian, who champions the old Scotland Road area of the city.

He would play his only match for Liverpool boys the following season against Wallasey in the semi-final of the Dimmer Cup, but he watched the Anfield match against Stockport.

“Brennan was a brilliant player,” he said.

“It was thought that would give us problems, but the centre-half, Harry Jones, played very, very well against him. You always had big crowds for the schoolboy matches in those days, but never that big before. You have to remember that entertainment was only coming back into being then because we had had the restrictions of the war. The schoolboy leagues were only being reformed at that time.

“I was standing near the front of the Spion Kop for the Stockport game. You still had all the swaying and all that sort of thing which the modern day people claim was theirs.

“I think it was sixpence to get in (2½p). We are all chanting ‘Come on the ’pool’ and there was a song which started, ‘Play up Liverpool you’re noted everywhere, knock their goalkeeper flying through the air’. It was a great day.”

“We want as many people as possible to attend this 60th anniversary match,” says Marcus, the managing director of an office supply company.

“It was a magnificent occasion with huge gates at both ground, which are we unlikely to see again for a schoolboy match.”

Mums and dads and sons went home proud that night. Blessed Virgins smiled on the dressers. It seemed that God had heard the prayers of both teams.

davidcharters@dailypost.co.uk