This week marks a special anniversary for Workington Reds, currently struggling at the foot of the NPL Premier Division.
It’s 72 years ago exactly since the late, great Bill Shankly was settling into his new role as manager of the Third Division North club.
Only elected to the Football League two-and-a-half years earlier they had been forced to apply for re-election in their first two seasons.
It was feared a third might prove fatal.
Thy were bottom of the league again and on December 19 the Workington directors met the Grimsby manager Bill Shankly in a Blackpool hotel.
On January 2, Shankly resigned as Grimsby manager and on January 6, 1954 he was appointed the new manager of Reds on a temporary contract.
Shankly moved into the manager’s house on Harrington Road which had been vacated by Ted Smith, the previous manager who was leaving football for a job in the prison service.
But life at Borough Park was very different to what he was to find later in his career at Liverpool – or Grimsby for that matter.
At Workington he was expected to do his share of answering the phone and doing the banking but his biggest shock came on his first day when he discovered there was no electricity at the ground.
In those pre-internet, pre-floodlight days all the lighting and heating at Borough Park was gas powered.
His first game was at home to one of his former clubs Carlisle United and 13,000 were in Borough Park for a 2-2 draw.
Suffice to say Reds improved. There was a more professional approach and Shankly became a familiar figure around the town and in West Cumberland – judging beauty competitions and organising sessions on a Sunday morning to assess local talent.
They finished the season out of the bottom four for the first time and the following season had climbed to the heady heights of eighth in the table.
However, in November 1955 the Reds were saying goodbye to Shankly 22 months after his arrival in the town he was leaving to take on the assistant manager’s role with his former Scotland international team-mate Andy Beattie at Huddersfield.
His record at Workington from 85 matches in charge was 35 wins, 23 draws and 27 defeats.
Previous to Grimsby Town, he had managed Carlisle United (his first professional club as a player before a long career with Preston North End) and his record at Brunton Park as manager was 42 wins, 31 draws and 22 defeats across his 95 games in charge.
The rest, as they say, is history as he went on to manage Huddersfield after his friend Beattie resigned and although he only had the Terriers as high as ninth in the old Second Division (12th and 14th) in the other two seasons in charge, he was delighted to receive an offer from Liverpool.
When he arrived at Anfield in December 1959, Liverpool had been in the Second Division for five years and had been defeated by non-League Worcester City in the previous season’s FA Cup.
Shankly was only 60 when he announced his retirement after Liverpool had won the 1974 FA Cup final and he had turned them into one of the most respected teams in the country.
He returned to Borough Park in 1980 to open the bar named after him and said that was the biggest honour he had received in the game. His name continues to live on at the Workington club.
