John Toshack

Well, I mean, it's very much that, that Sgorio is, is why I was more Madrid.

Um, 'cause the f- uh, you know, the first season that I was really getting into football was the John Toshack season when he was the manager, won the league and scored 100 goals.

Um, who...

I don't know if you saw, Matt, John Toshack was out and about over the weekend.

He was-

He was.

Um, on Saturday, the, the Swansea squad of, uh, 1980, '81 were there.

John Toshack was there.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, if, uh, you know, no, the greatest Swansea city manager of all time, you've got to say.

Yeah, so it was nice to, to see them out there, and nice to, to show their appreciation as well to the, uh, uh, there'll be a lot of the crowd who are a lot younger who would obviously not have, never have seen them play, but, you know, for what they've done for the football club, it was nice for them to be there.

Yeah.

And we know that J- John Toshack, you know, he's, he's, he's had, uh, some health difficulties.

Mm.

So even when like I had some money, I thought, right, you know, I've been going to the home games.

I've watched the rubbish and the Toshack, even though we know we celebrate the Toshack era now.

and I've never really got to do it, which it always makes me really, cause I love football.

I love the Wales national team.

Did it feel like that for you as well, moving from the Vetch to this vast stadium?

Yeah, the Vets was great for us, wasn't it? I think it holds so many memories for a lot of us players, obviously the supporters with the Toshack years and even years before that.

But the way football was moving, teams were moving to obviously these brand new stadiums, bigger capacity, better facilities for the supporters, if you like.

And like you say, we always remember going along, seeing the stadium being built bit by bit and getting excited thinking next season, wow, we're going to be playing in this.

right and uh you got started pretty soon after swerve driver with uh solo stuff right toeshack highway adam franklin and bolts of melody

Yeah, Toshack Highway, yeah, which was named for two Liverpool footballers from the 70s, John Toshack and Steve Highway, although his name had an E in it.

And I just thought Toshack Highway was a good name.

But then I kind of thought it's not very universal because people didn't know what it meant.

Okay.

Uh, we move on to John.

You said age first, like I'm older than John.

Well, I'm just going down over this way.

[laughs] Okay.

Correct.

27 is gone.

Next number please, John.

Kenny was third, which is quite interesting.

In fact, Kenny was joint third with Ray Clements and then followed in the top ten, Highway, Callaghan, Toshack, Case, McDermott and Cormack.

And the young sung hero in third place was David Fairclough with four votes.

In second place, Callie with five.

and a human wave lifted me up and almost unhinged my neck from my spine.

When John Toshack's head powered home the equaliser, I flew 30 feet forward and was hurled back up like whiplash.

With six minutes left and my ears ringing from 28,000 voices bellowing you'll never walk alone, I saw Alec Lindsay floating across.

I missed Toshak's head making contact with it, but saw his downward flick land at the feet of Chris Lawler, who had ghosted in unseen to volley home the winner.

And this is Shankly's second team just starting to come through now.

You've got Highway, you've got Toshack, you've got these names.

15 minutes to go, Highway scores, then on to Toshack, 2-0, and Chris Lawler gets the winner.

I'll describe to you how I, I mean, I was petrified.

I was a thin lad from Eighton and I was thrown all over the place.