The original “This is Anfield” sign from Liverpool Stadium has fetched £115,000 in an auction. The amount is said to be 7.6 times the guide price, and was earlier expected to be sold for £15,000. Notably, the sign was installed by Bill Shankly in 1972 and is now said to have been taken down some time after 1979, with a second sign replacing it. The final commission and VAT will take the final total of £138,000. Budds said famous players including Alan Hansen, Kenny Dalglish and Frank McGarvey had been pictured with the sign after joining the club between 1977 and 1979.
The lore behind the sigh goes back to the time when a groundsman proposed the original idea for the sign to club secretary Peter Robinson before Shankly suggested the amendment to “This Anfield.”
As per Shankly, the sign was intended to remind Liverpool players who they represented while acting as a form of intimidation for visiting teams as they walked into the ground to take the game. Not only this, but former Reds player George Scott said Shankly wanted any opposition player passing beneath the sign to know they were “going into a cauldron and they weren’t going to come out with a win”.
David Convery, spoke on behalf of Budds, added: “We pride ourselves in bringing to auction historical and emotive football items.” “The sign with its exceptional photo-matched provenance and detailed family history had Liverpool fans worldwide bidding for what is a talismanic sign.”
Speaking about the sign once, Sir Kenny Dalglish admitted that he was ‘terrified’ of the sign when he made his home debut back in 1977. “We were playing Newcastle in the first game I played,” Dalglish recalled back in 2016. “We drew 1-1 at Middlesbrough in the opening league game and on the Tuesday night Newcastle came. “There was a boy called Tommy Craig, who was the first £100,000 teenager I had grown up with. He actually never grew up much – he was only about 3ft2!
“We played for Glasgow schools together and then for Scotland schools when we were 15. “He was in the Newcastle dressing room. We came out to come down the steps and we got to the ‘This is Anfield’ sign. I said ‘That’s supposed to frighten you’. He said ‘Yeah’. I said ‘I’m terrified!’ “That was it, we went out and Ray Kennedy knocked one through in the second half, I went on and scored. It was special from that day onwards,” he was quoted as saying per ECHO.
