Bill Shankly favourite is new Bromborough captain

May 27 2009 by Our Correspondent, Birkenhead News

ONE of Bill Shankly’s favoured young footballers from the golden years of the 1960s has become the 2009 captain at one of the top clubs on Merseyside and looks back on how the Anfield legend shaped his sporting career and indeed his working life.

George Scott, captain at Bromborough, hosts for the English Amateur in 2005, pays tribute to the Shankly influence from his teenage years to his business life in sales management.

“He did believe everyone should work together as a team,” he says. “He believed in integrity and honesty and I tried to follow that in my working life.”

Scott, who played for both Liverpool and Tranmere, became national sales manager for the United Co-op Health Care Group.

Aged 15, he was playing schools football in Aberdeen when the Anfield scouts noticed his talent and he was invited to Merseyside where he signed for Shankly as one of his first young players.

In the three years from 1963 he made 140 appearances in the reserve team at Anfield and scored 34 goals. Although he moved into the first team squad in 1965 and indeed went with Liverpool to Wembley when they beat Leeds in the Cup Final he never played for the first team.

It seems unfortunate for his career that the club only used 13 players that year and the substitute rule only came into effect the following year, after he left Anfield.

His interest in golf came later. But he remembers how some of the players played golf even though it was without the approval of Shankly,

“Shankly did not encourage his players to play golf,” he says. “He thought it was not conducive to being fit and fast but encouraged slowness, because it was slow.”

At that time Scott was passionate about his football career and remembers his disappointment when he received a letter saying he was on the transfer list. He went to see Shankly to ask the reason.“George son, there are five good reasons why you should leave Anfield now,” said Shankly, adding: “Callaghan, Hunt, St. John, Smith and Thompson. The first team forward line, they are all internationals.”