The shake of his fists – that was what it was. Joey Jones just wanted to show that he was doing his best, but without knowing it, he created an inheritance.
You only had to look at clips from him who thundered left to understand what he was part of a team that conquered Europe twice. You only had to talk to him for a few minutes to appreciate why he was universally worn by those with whom he shared a dressing room.
Jones, you see, played football with the same enthusiasm as those who came to watch him at Wrexham and Liverpool, for Chelsea and Huddersfield and for Wales, who slaughtered him 72 times. He was blessed with rare gifts, but knew how blessed he was to have a rare chance.
“I was very lucky that I was not sent to (an institute) for young offenders at a certain stage because of a few things I am at home,” he once said. 'We were not robbers or something, we would just have punch-ups! I didn't need a drink to get going. I was crazy anyway. '
So after those lung fracture stages or those challenges that a tank could have put into his spurs, Jones would shake his fists to the head as a sign that he did it all for them. So popular was the gesture, a connection between pitch and terrace, it followed him for a long time.
“I'm really ashamed,” he once told LFCHISTERY.NET. 'Why did they like me? It is not because of my football skills, it is! All I could do was give 150 percent for them, not 100 percent.
'But it's nice to be remembered for something. I never claimed that I was someone I was not. '
That is what distinguished him. Jones, who died on Tuesday at the age of 70 after a fight with illness, was the boy who grew up in a council slat in Llandudno, where he had pictures of Liverpool players on his wall. One day he removed them from far, the next day he trained with them in Melwood.
Jones, who signed for Liverpool in July 1975, became so popular for three seasons in Anfield that a particularly witty banner was discouraged as recognition for him before their first European cup final.
“Joey ate the frog legs and left the Swiss role,” said it, to recognize the defeats of Saint-Etienne and FC Zurich. “Now he chews Gladbach.”
“It doesn't matter if the Liverpool fans, fans of Manchester United or whatever – they all remember the banner,” Jones said. “It was really the ultimate compliment. They made such a banner for me? That meant everything. '
He was so humble by the gesture, Jones kept the flag in his house in Noord -Wales – the area where he loved so much that he could never leave, not even when Chelsea signed him in 1982. He and Mickey Thomas, his best friend, would either commute to London daily or, occasionally, sleep in the fitness room.
Most people would not last that, but Jones did the trip for three years, so Chelsea would win the Second Division in 1984. Thomas, who remained everywhere by his side, described himself as “deeply sad” that “Sir Joey left us.”
The grief and the void are felt wide and silk. You could not fail to be swept in Jones's enthusiasm. To listen to him, you talk about games in which Wales England had defeated on the racecourse ground, you gave shivers.
Jones played in 1980, four days after England had defeated the reigning world champions Argentina in Wembley, when Mike England's side destroyed their neighbors 4-1, and again in 1984 when a goal of Mark Hughes arranged the game. “The best way to describe the game was a 1-0 hidden,” Jones told me, grinning the phone. “I'll tell you now, the parties were something else!”
After a while there will be a celebration of his life and rightly so. Jones, known as 'Mr. Wrexham', made the first of 479 performances for the club against Chester in 1973, with his last coming in 1992.
He will be commemorated with a statue outside the Racecourse Ground. It will ensure that, just like his vibrating fists and that banner, that he will never be forgotten.