{"id":504933,"date":"2025-10-16T19:40:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T19:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/504933\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T19:40:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T19:40:19","slug":"liverpool-give-historic-league-winners-medals-to-14-former-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/504933\/","title":{"rendered":"Liverpool Give Historic League Winner\u2019s Medals to 14 Former Players"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Over the decades, elite football has evolved from a game focused primarily on the starting eleven to one built on increasingly deep squads, in part to allow clubs and players to handle increasingly busy fixture lists.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">From no substitutes in the earliest days to very limited substitutions strictly to replace injured players to the tactical tool today allowing as many as five in three windows, substitution rules have changed radically, and with it there has been an increasing willingness to acknowledge the contributions of squad players.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">That hasn\u2019t always been the case, though, and in the past plenty of players have been deprived of winner\u2019s medals\u2014medals they would qualify for in the present day\u2014for their contributions to title and trophy winning sides.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">This week, Liverpool sought to rectify that, acknowledging the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.liverpoolfc.com\/news\/former-reds-receive-historical-league-medals-special-anfield-presentation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">contributions of past squad players<\/a> in the club\u2019s storied history and awarding medals\u2014sourced to match the originals\u2014to fourteen former League Winners who didn\u2019t receive them at the time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">From the 1980s this included League Winners medals for <strong>Ronny Rosenthal<\/strong> for his eight appearances in 1989-90, <strong>Jan Molby<\/strong> (seven appearances) and <strong>Paul Walsh<\/strong> (eight) for 1987-88, <strong>Alan Kennedy<\/strong> (eight) and <strong>John Wark<\/strong> (nine) for 1985-86, <strong>David Hodgson<\/strong> (five) and <strong>John Wark<\/strong> (again with nine) for 1983-84, and <strong>David Fairclough<\/strong> (eight) for 1982-83.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">For the 1970s, the club gave medals to <strong>Sammy Lee<\/strong> (seven appearances), <strong>Colin Irwin<\/strong> (eight), and <strong>Steven Heighway<\/strong> (nine) for 1979-80, and then <strong>Alec Lindsay<\/strong> (six), <strong>Terry McDermott<\/strong> (nine), and a posthumous medal for <strong>Joey Jones<\/strong> (13) for 1975-76.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The medals were given out at a ceremony at Anfield on Wednesday evening by Kenny Dalglish, with the final medal given to <strong>Chris Lawler<\/strong>, who made six appearances in Liverpool\u2019s 1963-64 league winning season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">It may have taken a while, but especially in light of current rules that have rightly and significantly expanded who qualifies to receive a League Winner\u2019s medal, it\u2019s good to see all of these former Reds formally\u2014if belatedly\u2014acknowledged for their contributions to the club\u2019s history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the decades, elite football has evolved from a game focused primarily on the starting eleven to one&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[748,393,4884,179,8934,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-504933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-liverpool","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-liverpool","12":"tag-liverpool-team-news","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115385547095190585","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}