Feature'This club is in my blood' - My Liverpool Story… with Rob Jones

Liverpool Football Club is in my blood.

My grandad, Bill Jones, played 277 games for the club and won the league title in 1947. He’s the reason I’ve always been a Liverpool fan and from the age of six or seven he would take me to games.

From there, you just get the bug, don’t you? By the time I was 14 or 15 I was going to the games on my own and would stand on the Kop. My dad was a Liverpool fan too and I think that’s the way it works in families. My kids are the same: my son goes to the game now and he loves it, and it’s not a bad club to support as a kid, is it? I definitely picked the right one.

It was always my absolute dream to play for Liverpool. I would kick a ball around in the garden with my grandad and he always supported me when I was playing Sunday league football – I remember that he’d come to watch me play.

Playing professionally, and for Liverpool, was always the dream, but it’s the dream for a lot of kids and it doesn’t always happen. I had an ability there and you get a bit of luck along the way as well, and I suppose it was strange that I ended up playing for Liverpool like him. We are actually the only grandfather and grandson combination to ever play for the club, so our family has its own unique little bit of LFC history.

My first experience of playing at Anfield was actually against Liverpool, though.

I was 18 and playing for Crewe Alexandra, where I’d come up through the youth system, in a League Cup game. We were in Division Four [now League Two] at the time. That’s like the start of the dream coming true – to get to play at Anfield. I just never thought that a year later I would be there playing for Liverpool!

All my family were there and I can remember the game clearly. I think for the first 20 minutes or so we actually played really well, but in the end they had far too much for us and we lost 5-1. I actually played quite well and it got reported for a few weeks after that Kenny Dalglish was thinking then of possibly buying me.

If remember rightly, I think Liverpool did contact Dario [Gradi, Crewe manager] at that time but he put them off. He said I was too young and not ready yet, so that fizzled out.

But a year later, in early October 1991, the time was right. It all happened so quickly.

I played for Crewe on the Wednesday, then on the Thursday I got a phone call from Dario saying that Graeme Souness had been in touch. Liverpool wanted to buy me and they wanted to meet me on the Friday.

You didn’t really have agents in those days so Dario sent Kenny Swain to drive me to meet Graeme and all the staff. I remember Dario saying, ‘Go there but if it’s not right and you don’t want to sign, you don’t have to,’ and I was thinking, ‘Mate, there is not a hope in hell that I am going there and not signing for Liverpool!’ The money just didn’t matter at all; this was my chance to play for Liverpool.

I met Graeme and Ronnie Moran, and Graeme gave me a kit and drove me to Melwood. The team were playing a five- or six-a-side game and he just took me over, introduced me quickly, and there I am stood in front of John Barnes, Steve Nicol, Ian Rush, Mark Wright and the rest. It was just surreal.

I joined in the game, I actually did OK. I was a young kid and going into a situation like that, you could crumble – nerves could get the better of you, and I was quite a nervous player. But something just took over and I did well.

Afterwards, Graeme took me back to Anfield. On the way we were chatting and I’ll never forget the conversation…

“How do you fancy playing on Sunday?”

“Where?”

“Old Trafford. We’ve got Man United away. Do you think you could cope?”

“Yeah!”

He said he’d been told I was a fast player and the coaches thought I might be able to mark Ryan Giggs. Graeme had only seen me play live once, on the Wednesday night a couple of days earlier. I think Tom Saunders had watched me a couple of times and Tom obviously knew my grandad so I think my name had been around the club a little bit, but Graeme took a big gamble.

When we got to Anfield he asked me how much I was on at Crewe, which was £250 a week. He said, ‘How about we double that, then?’ and I went: ‘Yes, that’s fine, don’t worry about that!’

I obviously signed and then the following day I was travelling with the team for the United game. I even remember the name of the hotel we stayed in – the Cottons Hotel in Knutsford. I roomed with Mark Walters and it just went so fast.

Some of the stuff I can’t remember because it was a bit of a blur: not just making your Liverpool debut, but doing it away at Old Trafford, is a big one. Talk about getting thrown in at the deep end! But I did well.

I managed to play well against Giggs and even today, the amount of people I see out and about and they’ll say, ‘I was at your debut.’ I think I must have met everybody who was in the away end that day! But I did well and that was the start of it.

That first season, 1991-92, was like a fairy tale.

I signed for Liverpool in the October, made my England debut against France at Wembley in the February, then won the FA Cup and got voted into the PFA Team of the Year. I was just enjoying my football while playing in a great team. I was a full-back who used to bomb up the flank and get crosses in but, from my time at Crewe, I was used to having to get back in and defend too.

I had a great season and was loving it, but I look back now and I was only 19 or 20, and I think it took its toll. It wouldn’t happen nowadays – I was playing two games a week constantly for that whole season and although I didn’t want to rest, by the end of the season I think it had taken its toll on my body.

The shin splints kicked in towards the end of that first season. I played in the FA Cup final with it and I’d had it for a while by then. It just wouldn’t go away and if that happened now, I would only be allowed to play a certain number of minutes before having a break and getting back in gradually, but it was different in those days.

I remember speaking to Michael Owen about it and he says the same thing. When you’re a teenager and you’re good enough, you get picked every game and you want that. You don’t want to rest but you don’t realise that your body can’t take it.

I was pretty much ever-present in the team in my first five seasons and 1994-95 was another really memorable one as we won the League Cup and I got voted into the PFA Team of the Year again.

We had such a good team and played some amazing, exciting football. Steve McManaman and I used to work really well down that right wing. It was just free-flowing football and so enjoyable. Everyone knows about the talent Macca had and even in training he was unbelievable.

We worked so well together and had such a good understanding. We talked about our relationship on the pitch but we never did much work on it in training. We were friends off the pitch and we always looked after each other.

It just worked between us and it was a shame when I had to move over to left-back because we lost that a little bit, but these things happen in football and I had to adapt. I adapted OK – I preferred right-back but I was helping the team out by moving to left-back and I did a job. I suppose I was probably one of the first inverted full-backs actually!

I played the most games of any season of my Liverpool career in 1995-96. I made 47 appearances and we were involved in the title race while reaching another FA Cup final.

But things weren’t right with my body and I had a back injury. I played in the cup final but had been struggling with my back for about six months by then.

I was sent for a scan but nothing showed up so it was just treated as a muscle injury. I was just playing the games and getting on with it but I was struggling all the time. I felt like I was moaning at times because I was coming in after games and saying to the physio and doctor, ‘It’s just not right, it’s still sore,’ and they’d say it was just a muscle problem because we’d had a scan.

After the final, I went into the changing room at Wembley and was in agony with it. I said to the doctor again that I was really struggling, I was actually kind of limping while I was running, and the club then sent me to a back specialist. He scanned me and there it was, a stress fracture under the vertebrae. In a way I was happy that something was found because I knew there was something wrong, something worse than just a muscle injury. I was glad that they found something so it could be treated and the treatment was to rest for three months, then get back into it.

I came back towards the end of the 1996-97 season and got back in the team but at the start of the following season, my knee problems started. The first time I felt it was when we played Celtic away, when Macca scored that incredible solo goal in the last minute. (I actually assisted him, by the way, but no-one remembers that bit!)

It was my patellar tendon and in those days that was quite a common injury. Usually, with a bit of rest you’d be OK, but it would just not go away and in the summer I had an operation on it. The surgeon scraped the patellar tendon and when I came back it was even worse. What we know now, which we didn’t in those days, is that you should never scrape the tendon. It just doesn’t happen now but it happened and my knee then just went from bad to worse.

The 1998-99 season was a poor one where I was just out injured and the amount of times I’d come back and try… but my knee just wasn’t right and kept going all the time.

I left Liverpool in the summer of ’99 and while it was heartbreaking, I think I’d already come to terms with the fact it was going to happen.

Gerard Houllier had come in and he wanted his own players, which I understood. It was sad but I did know that the time was coming.

I was on a free transfer and spoke to Harry Redknapp at West Ham. He said: ‘Why don’t you come here for a couple of months and see how it goes? If you play a couple of games there is a contract on the table for you.’ I thought that was great, it was a fresh start. I moved my family down to London, we stayed in a hotel for a few months, and I gave it a good go. But in the back of my mind I knew my knee wasn’t right. I mean, it was swollen like a balloon all the time. I played in a friendly and I was literally limping as I was playing. I’d already had three operations and went to the surgeon again but he said it’s just not ever going to get better.

So, then I sort of knew that was it and my career was over. I was only 28, which is very young to finish.

A lot of people say that I was riddled with injuries but when I look at the amount of games that I actually played for Liverpool, it was nearly 250 (243 to be exact) and most of them came in less than five years. We played all the time and I was never really a sub, I pretty much always started, so I played a lot of games and achieved a lot.

My grandad passed away in 2010 and the fact he watched me play for Liverpool just like him makes me so proud. I’ve got a photo at home of him presenting me with a Player of the Month award before a game at Anfield and that was actually probably the last game he could come to.

That was a great moment for the whole family, to see him come onto the pitch to give me the trophy. He was a quiet man who didn’t say much, but he got to see me play for Liverpool and I’m sure he was very proud.

Overall, I don’t have any regrets at all. It was a privilege and a dream to play for Liverpool and the times that I had I will treasure forever.

Even when I finished playing I believe that it was meant to be and from then on my path went to opening children’s nursery schools around the world.

Your life changes and it changed again when Brendan Rodgers asked me to come back to the club in 2013, which was a bit like signing all over again. I’ve been a mentor at the Academy since then and it’s amazing to be part of it.

Myself, Macca and Michael Thomas are there and we just help the players and coaches as much as we can. Football is about ups and downs and that’s what I mention to the kids now at the Academy.

As a player, you are going to get injured, you are going to have great games, you are going to have bad games. That’s all just part of being a footballer and it’s great to be able to pass some of the experiences I had on to youngsters trying to make their own way in the game.

It actually feels I’ve got a second chance at the club that I love and it’s a job I absolutely love doing.

Jones was speaking to Liverpoolfc.com's Sam Williams.

Read more from the 'My Liverpool Story' series...

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• Sami Hyypia
• Lucas Leiva
• Gary McAllister
• Emile Heskey
• Ragnar Klavan