To celebrate Liverpool’s match in Adelaide against the local version of the Reds tonight, InDaily soccer writer Paul Marcuccitti conducted an extensive interview with former Liverpool legend Craig Johnston.

In part one, the trail-blazing Australian – in Adelaide for tonight’s match – talks about his career in top-flight English football: the crushing doubt that marked his early years, the tragedy that marked the end, and the glory in-between.

Paul Marcuccitti: At the start of your career, when you went over to England (in the mid 1970s), hardly anybody from Australia was doing that. Joe Marston went when he was in his 20s; you were writing to clubs when you were 14. Was it your dad that gave you that idea because it was quite a rare thing?

Craig Johnston: It must have been my dad and the story goes further back. Both my parents are Australian, from Newcastle, and they met by accident on a boat going over to England. Mum was going to London to be a teacher and dad was going to Scotland to try to be a soccer player.

Dad idolised and played with Reg Date (former Australian international) and players of that calibre in New South Wales. And he played for New South Wales so there was football in the family and dad did go to Scotland. He went up to Dundee United and he didn’t do too well so he ended up back in London and met up with my mother again and they got married and had my older sister Charmaine.

Then they came back to Australia but via South Africa and Johannesburg. Dad went there to play soccer and mum was teaching and that’s where I was born. Then when I was six the family came back to Newcastle and I had this inkling that I wanted to do what dad did and somehow it was an unfulfilled wish of his so I should succeed when he never. Johnston & sons if you like!

Funnily enough I told this story at a big conference in London and it was a government conference. I was actually working for the British Government on inner city schools and targeting at-risk kids and using the power of football to get them off the streets in specific times when petty crimes were being committed. It was like a government initiative based on football but I was telling the audience that my mum wanted to be a teacher, my dad wanted to be a soccer player and then a generation later now I’m back in London teaching kids in schools through the power of football.

To answer your question in a bit of a roundabout way, yes it was dad and mum that prompted me but I’d fallen in love with the game by watching Match of the Day on ABC. There was only one soccer show back then and that was it and it inspired me no end. And then, to top it off, there was a movie called Giants of Brazil and it was about the famous Brazilian winning team with Pelé. When I saw that movie I said to mum and dad, “that’s all I want to do with my life – I want to be one of those guys that plays soccer for a living”. So that’s the story of how it all began.

Johnston (second from right – front row) was part of the all conquering 1980s Liverpool side managed by Kenny Dalglish.

PM: The story of Jack Charlton, telling you that you were the worst player he’d seen is pretty well known. And you practiced for many, many hours a day to get better. Charlton was replaced (as Middlesbrough manager) by John Neal. Did that change things? Was Neal a fan of yours?

CJ: It was a comfortable arrangement at Middlesbrough when John Neal came and Charlton went to Sheffield Wednesday. John Neal, I think, saw me on his first day because I was (training) in the car park at Middlesbrough and he asked some of the apprentices, “who’s that bloke in the car park with the long, scruffy hair?” because I had Aussie surfer hair. They said, “that’s the kangaroo” and he said, “is he any good?” and they said, “no, he’s crap!” So I thought that was going to be my reprieve. But he then said to them, “well he does an awful lot of work” and they said, “yeah well he’s here from half past six in the morning and he’s still here when we leave”. So that was my first introduction to John Neal. He would always come out and say hello; he was a lovely man and once he even gave me some money for cleaning his car, so I was on the right side of the manager.

PM: I found an interview from early in your Liverpool career where you mentioned that George Wardell and Bobby Murdoch, the youth coaches at Middlesbrough, were your biggest influences. But you did most of your training on your own. How did they help you?

CJ: They showed me a little bit of kindness and humanity, and a little bit of empathy and understanding. Because I was getting in so early and leaving so late, and doing all the jobs that the apprentices didn’t want to do, they just gave me some warmth which gave me the encouragement to keep going. They basically knew that I wanted it more than anybody else and, not only that, it was a need. I needed to get better and get the skills the other apprentices already had and that’s why I put in so much hard work. And, by the way, I was a good kid and a likeable kid. It’s not like I was an idiot or anything, even though I looked a bit like an idiot with my bleach blond dreadlocks in the cold north of England! They were nice people. And Bobby Murdoch of course was one of the famous Lisbon Lions who won the European Cup for Celtic so he was a man with real credibility.

PM: I have to ask this question Craig because I’m a Nottingham Forest fan. In 1981, you’d become a Middlesbrough star and Graeme Souness, who’d played with you at Boro, is influential in recommending you at Liverpool. But Brian Clough comes for you as well and he was at the height of his powers. People would go to Forest to play for Brian Clough. Was that a close decision or were you always going to go to Liverpool?

CJ: No, no, no. Forest, I think, were second in the league and they’d just won the European Cup. Clough was actually in Spain and he phoned me. And during the week Bob Paisley had phoned me and said, “we want you to sign for Liverpool”. So I had this dilemma where two of the best managers in England, if not Europe or the world at the time, had said, “we want you to play for me”.

I didn’t really know what to do so I phoned my dad in Australia and I said, “look dad I’ve got this problem – a good problem to have – what should I do?” He said: “Well, the way I see it, Liverpool is an institution and Brian Clough is just a man. If I were you, I’d go for the institution.” It was a funny word for dad to use but I got his point so I signed for Liverpool.

The funny thing is when we first played against Nottingham Forest, and I was playing on the wing, Cloughie ran up and down the sideline calling me a cheat. And it caused a bit of a problem because Ronnie Moran, who was assistant manager with Liverpool at the time, started shouting at Cloughie and calling him a cheat. So I’m running up and down the line with Cloughie running after me, now Ronnie Moran is running after Cloughie so they’re all having an argument about whether I was a cheat or not.

I guess when he was saying “a cheat”, that’s how much of a winner Brian Clough was. He couldn’t bear the thought that I’d signed for somebody else. And another little story: when we played for the first time away at Forest, after the game all the players were in the players’ house, the Liverpool and Forest players. I had a bit of an injury and I was getting strapped up so I was a bit late. And when I tried to get in they wouldn’t let me in and I said “why?” and they said because Brian Clough said that you’re not allowed in. Ronnie Moran heard about it and he went in and got all the players and said, “well if he can’t go in no one’s coming in”. And then we left. So that shows you the kind of personality Cloughie was. He was a genius but he was right on the edge. He wanted it so much that he would do anything to wind people up one way or another.

PM: You played a handful of games in that first season (at Liverpool), 1981-82, and you had a knee injury. Did you have any doubts or did you feel like you were a young man settling into one of the world’s greatest clubs and your time would come?

CJ: No, no, no. To the very day I retired I had doubts about my ability and my place in the team. I still have dreams to this day about missing the team coach, and therefore being kicked off the team, and I lived in a constant fear not just of not being good enough but also the politics of football. Like any business that anybody has ever worked in, there’s politics in the business and a hierarchy and a pecking order and cliques, and it’s no different in a football club like Liverpool. A lot of times I’d rubbed people up the wrong way, I was in the wrong clique. You asked me a simple question:  (I was) never, ever confident of my place, which always made me want to work harder and earn my place more through having better skills.

PM: So how would you react if you weren’t in the starting team or if you lost your place in it? Would that just make you redouble your efforts?

CJ: Well, funnily enough, I tried everything. I went down the wrong path at times and would start blaming everybody and going out after the game all night. I realised that that was the wrong route so I ended up doing something daft like getting a key cut for Melwood (Liverpool’s training ground) so that, let’s say we were playing Man United at home and there were 50,000 people at the stadium, you’d go to the stadium and you’d have to sit there. But then, because you weren’t playing, you were leaving feeling flat and horrible. Rather than go out and have a lot of beer and blame someone else I would drive straight to Melwood and basically I would break into the training ground. I would get my kit on and then I’d run around for three or four hours until I was exhausted.

Because what I was saying is the reason I’m not playing is they haven’t picked me because they don’t think I’m good enough and therefore I had to get better skills. If I ever had to admit to people, while I was playing, that that’s what I would do after the game against Manchester United at Anfield, they’d say you were nuts – and they’d think you were nuts – but I took two or three hours of aggression out and would say, “okay well I’ll come out of this with a better touch because I’ve just kicked the ball as hard as I could a thousand times against some targets so something good came of the day”, rather than waking up the next day with a terrible hangover thinking, “oh God I’ve gone out and whinged to the world about my plight”.

PM: You were part of the team that won the league three straight times, was European champion in 1984 and won League Cups under Joe Fagan. A lot of people have said, though, that you were at your best once Kenny Dalglish took over as player/manager in 1985. Did he get the best out of you and, if so, what was the difference under Dalglish?

CJ: It was a little bit like Bobby Murdoch and George Wardell at Middlesbrough. Kenny’s a hard man but he’s got a real soft tender side. He could see that I wanted it and maybe I’d had a bit of an unfair deal politically because I wasn’t in the in crowd. He gave me the opportunity and the platform and I was that upset under Joe Fagan that I would go and do hours and hours and hours at the training ground and nobody knew about it. Maybe Kenny got a whiff of that so he put me in the team and I delivered for him and therefore I think I played all but two of the games that season, and those two I was injured, so the proof’s in the pudding.

PM: It seems extraordinary now but, going into 1986, the FA Cup was proving a little elusive for Liverpool. You’re in a position to do the (League and Cup) double which was a rarity for anyone back then. And you’re playing Everton, city rivals and your toughest opponent in the mid ’80s. At half time, you’re 1-0 down. What was the atmosphere like in the dressing room? What did Kenny say?

CJ: It’s funny, Kenny doesn’t have to say anything. Number one, because of his credibility and respect but, number two, you know when he’s angry and you know when he’s happy. He just refocussed two or three of us, which also meant if you don’t focus you’re coming off. And I knew what he was saying without him saying it but I just went back to all the time in the car park, both at Middlesbrough and Liverpool, and I just thought to myself, just focus back on the basics – foot on ball, win the next tackle.

Then half way through the second half this ball just popped up magically, the goalkeeper just off his line, just at the edge of the box, and I thought, look, it can’t be that easy just to connect my foot with the ball, and it was like that slow motion sweet spot that everybody talks about when your life stands still for a moment.

And I just thought, this can’t be this simple – all I have to do is hit that part of the ball with this part of my foot, like I’ve done in 10,000 hours, like 10,000 times of an afternoon, and I thought well I’d better go ahead and do it then and, like a slow motion video, I just put my foot on the ball and it went in the net.

Then the colour, the light, the noise, the rush, just came over me and everybody started jumping all over me and I just kept saying, “I’ve done it! I’ve done it! I’ve done it!” and Ian Rush, Ronnie Whelan and those guys were saying, “alright, alright, you’ve scored, you’ve scored”. But I didn’t mean “I’ve done it, I’ve scored”, it meant “I’ve done it, I’ve come from Australia, I’ve fought the odds, I fought polio when I was young, I’ve fought all of this stuff – Jack Charlton, everybody”. When I said, “I’ve done it” it meant I’d arrived as a footballer and I fulfilled my dream and I guess a lot of schoolboys’ dream is to score a goal in the FA Cup final. And especially against Everton and especially to win the double. That was the “I’ve done it” moment.

Legends together: Ian Rush (left) and Craig Johnston do a lap of honour at half time during the 2013 pre-season tour match of Liverpool FC against Melbourne Victory at the MCG. AAP image

PM: 1988 was a tough year. You’d had some injury problems, and you’re not getting as many games. But far worse, you were caring for your sister who’d had a terrible accident. Understandably you retire at the end of the season. You haven’t even turned 28 yet. But your retirement became known before the season’s FA Cup final was played. Looking back, should you have made the announcement, or made it known, after that game instead of before?

CJ: The problem was nobody knew about my sister’s tragic accident and the repercussions. She was in a hospital, in a coma and likely to die, and I was going up and down the motorway for a couple of months (to see her). Nobody really knew about that but somebody got a sniff of it and said we want to do a story.

I trusted this person, this journalist, and I said, “well on the absolute strict prerequisite that the story is done after the Cup final”. We shook on it, we did a deal and I did the story. Then the night before the Cup final, the editor of the paper, which shall remain unnamed, phoned me and said, “we’re running the story”, and I said, “you can’t run the story; you’ve made a promise”. He said, “the story’s too big, we’re running with it” and, I’ll tell you what happened, Bruce Grobbelaar jumped on the phone and started shouting and swearing at this guy. Bruce actually knew what was happening, he knew what they were doing to me and then the guy gave Bruce a mouthful and put the phone down.

I had to then phone Kenny and say “here’s what’s happened” and it was really, really unfortunate but I got totally turned over and the journalist himself has never forgiven himself or me for taking the story but it was because of the decision of the paper. And again, it was one of those things that was not consciously done because the thing about Liverpool was team spirit and teamwork and respect for your mates, the club and the manager. I would never have done that knowing what an unscrupulous editor of a paper would do.

Read InDaily sport on Wednesday for part two.

Paul Marcuccitti is InDaily’s soccer columnist. He is a co-presenter of 5RTI’s Soccer on 531 program which can be heard from 11am on Saturdays.