Ron Yeats Obituary | Football

Footballer Ron Yeats, who has died aged 86, was captain of Liverpool in the mid-1960s when the club made another breakthrough to the top. The club won the League in 1964 and 1966 and the FA Cup in between.

For most of the previous decade, Liverpool had been nothing more than a respectable Division Two team. But a new manager, Bill Shankly, arrived in 1959 and set about rebuilding the club, with Yeats, a fellow Scot, as his leader on the pitch.

Yeats, a stocky 6ft 2in centre-back nicknamed “the Colossus”, had formidable physical and mental strength, making him an ideal captain for Shankly. Within two seasons he had led the team to Division One and within two more seasons he had secured the 1964 League Championship.

The following year he won the FA Cup for the first time in Liverpool’s history after a 2–1 extra-time win over Leeds at Wembley in which he excelled, and he lifted another Division One trophy in 1966. As well as his captaincy, Yeats was most valuable for his committed tackling, fine distribution of the ball and solid partnership with fellow centre-back Tommy Smith.

Greater things seemed to be in store under Yeats’s confident leadership, but in the remaining years of the 1960s he and his team-mates were unable to win another national title or make a significant mark in Europe. By 1970 Shankly had decided on another rebuild and Yeats, now in his 30s, was a victim of the ensuing cull.

Despite the disappointment of that ending, the years of success that Yeats helped create during his 10-year captaincy provided a solid platform for Shankly to create further triumphs in the early 1970s and for another manager, Bob Paisley, to pile up domestic and European glory from the late 1970s onwards. Shankly himself said that the arrival of Yeats, along with striker Ian St John, “was the very beginning of Liverpool’s rise”.

Yeats was born in Aberdeen, where his family home was destroyed in a bombing raid in World War II. He played football for the Aberdeen Lads Club and represented Scotland in the under-15 team. He then left school to become an apprentice bricklayer in his uncle’s firm.

When the company went bust, Yeats became a slaughterman at Aberdeen Cattle Market. In 1957, at the age of 19, he was taken on part-time by Dundee United, a club in Scottish Division 2. United were promoted in his first season, after which he was able to give up his job at the slaughterhouse to concentrate on top-flight football. He was given special permission to play for the club during his two years of national service.

Liverpool came knocking in 1961 after spending four seasons at Tannadice, where Shankly had noticed his defensive prowess and leadership qualities. Captaining his first game at Anfield, he led his new team-mates to promotion from Division Two in his debut season, and they made an immediate impact in the top flight, finishing eighth in 1962–63 and winning the title in 1963–64, four points clear of Manchester United.

When Yeats received the FA Cup from Queen Elizabeth II the following season, there was consternation among some officials when he confided to Her Majesty that he was “absolutely exhausted” – an expression considered far saltier at the time than it is today. The Queen herself, however, seemed unfazed by his language.

Liverpool regained the Division One championship the following year by a margin of six points from Leeds, but there was no sustained success under Yeats’ captaincy after that, although nothing worse than a fifth-place finish in the League. By the time Shankly’s axe came in 1971, he had played 417 games as Liverpool captain, a record only surpassed by Steven Gerrard. Despite his significant achievements in the domestic game, he was only capped twice by Scotland, in 1964 and 1965.

After being deemed surplus to requirements at Liverpool, Yeats left to spend three years as player-manager at Tranmere, followed by two seasons in the same role at Barrow. In his late 30s he spent a year with Los Angeles Skyhawks in the American Soccer League, and after spells with non-league teams in the shape of Formby and Rhyl, he retired from playing at the age of 40.

In 1986 he returned to Liverpool, where he had spent 20 years scouting. In 1999 he was responsible for the attractive transfer of Sami Hyypiä, a central defender and leader who looked a lot like Yeats himself.

He is survived by his wife Ann.