IAN HERBERT: Kenny Dalglish’s greatest achievement is giving a voice to a grieving city after winning the SPOTY lifetime award… his work in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster has obscured his robust beauty as a player

The devastating, sometimes surreal, small details of what Kenny Dalglish faced on that day in April 1989 are not as well combed, because those were times when you were expected to live with it and move on.

He was led by a police officer along with Brian Clough through the Hillsborough kitchens to the police box on the corner of the Leppings Lane stand, where they were both to make an announcement to calm the fans in the depths of the stadium disaster that would claim 97 lives.

The police box microphone wasn't working, so the officer suggested we use the stadium DJ booth a few flights away instead. Clough turned away at that point, so it was left to Dalglish to find the words.

It had taken him some time to ensure that his own son, Paul, who had passed through the Leppings Lane turnstiles to watch Liverpool's FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest, was not caught up in the commotion just moments before. behind them. He had gone out to look for him.

And while it was an overwhelming relief to find him on the field, for the parents who weren't so lucky, the aftermath was the most terrifying part of his memory.

While walking through a hospital in Sheffield where four or five children lay in comas, Dalglish was struck one afternoon by a boy, Lee Nicol, who lay there without a single mark on him.

The child died that evening. All that happened before the funerals – he attended four in one day.

Someone sent a 'stress counselor' to talk to him, in his manager's office in Liverpool, and she encouraged him to sit down and talk about all this. Dalglish, somewhat reining in the suggestion, told her to go upstairs and check on Liverpool CEO Peter Robinson instead.

Robinson called Dalglish a few minutes later. “Thank you very much, Kenny, I don't need a stress counselor,” he said. Those were different times. Harder times.

The Hillsborough disaster left Dalglish, who suffered from what we would today call acute post-traumatic stress, feeling like he was going 'mad'. He resigned from Anfield's trophy room 22 months later, temporarily shaking his confidence and decision-making.

The memory of his ashen face on the stunning black and white front page of the Liverpool Echo that day – 'Kenny Quits' – remains indelible.

There simply wasn't the time to articulate, within the confines of a live BBC broadcast, the enormous role Dalglish was playing at the time, which helped earn him the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award.

But his work in the aftermath of the tragedy, which cemented him in the city of Liverpool and Anfield, may have obscured a full appreciation of Dalglish the footballer and the breathtaking beauty of his game.

It was certainly a robust kind of beauty. Mark Lawrenson and Alan Hansen mischievously told him he couldn't run, couldn't lead and that he had a big backside – which Dalglish wouldn't entirely disagree with.

Perhaps that physique explains why we cherish and remember others more – George Best, considerably more. But Dalglish was unplayable in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Alongside Best, Sir Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore and John Charles, he is one of the greatest footballers from these islands.

It was his speed of thought and intuition that most amazed those next to him. The moment Ian Rush knew Dalglish had the ball he was away and always seemed to follow the pass.

What always struck Lawrenson most, as he watched from 40 yards behind the pitch, was Dalglish's ability to find the pass even when he couldn't even see Rush.

The ball Dalglish played for Rush to score against Watford in 1982 when Liverpool won 3-1 will live long in the memory.

And of course there come the goals. The winner at Stamford Bridge in 1986, who guided Everton and West Ham to the title. The devious finish against Club Brugge in the European Cup final at Wembley, eight years earlier.

He operated at a higher cognitive level than anyone else.

There was a symmetry in Dalglish receiving the award on Tuesday evening in Salford, across the docks from Old Trafford.

Sir Bobby received his in Liverpool, in 2008, when there was hardly a dry eye in the house.

Legends like this transcend cities and their petty football rivalries. Dalglish's appointment to the ranks was so appropriate – considerably more so, it has to be said, than the decision to award gymnast Simone Biles the award – 24 years old and not even retired – two years ago.

Accepting his award, Dalglish spoke of 'supporters who stood by me', even though it was he who stood by them when the grief was still fresh.

He has never forgotten walking up the deserted Kop with his children and father-in-law in the silence of a Friday evening, six days after the disaster, and seeing the tributes to the lost that had been laid there by those who mourned.

He saw two oranges left behind one of the guardrails.

“They were so insignificant and yet so full of meaning,” Dalglish thought years later. “Maybe the two people took turns bringing oranges to games.

Something to share during halftime. I wondered if the person who laid the oranges ever returned to the Kop. It was hard not to cry when I came across such tributes.”

Joey Barton's comments are offensive

I met Gee Walker almost twenty years ago. She told me about her teenage son Anthony, and how her grief for him was most intense when she saw a pile of dishes in her small kitchen on a Tuesday evening.

Tuesday was Anthony's washing up night and he threw himself into the job with characteristic enthusiasm and good humour. Their life together ended when he left one night and never returned.

Anthony was killed by a single blow to the head from a two-foot-long ice axe, inflicted on him “for no other reason than the color of his skin,” the jury that convicted his killers was told.

Those killers were 17-year-old Michael Barton, Joey Barton's brother, who supplied the ax and provoked a confrontation, and Barton's cousin Paul Taylor, 20, who wielded the ax.

Joey Barton recently commented that his family members' conviction was the result of “a**** scrap.” How dares he. I can't imagine how Anthony Walker's family will feel. Scum is a very strong word. It defines Joey Barton so well.

Arteta case unattainable and absurd

For years I covered the real world outside the football bubble – actual news – and that sometimes meant sitting in court and hearing lawyers argue cases of enormous importance.

Lives revolved around the arguments and investigations of Richard Henriques, Anthony Gee, Andrew Edis and other criminal lawyers like them.

Against that backdrop, it was difficult to view the 37-page judgment in the case of 'the FA v Mikel Arteta' as anything less than ridiculous.

The 'written reasons' of the 'independent commission' inquiry into Areta's glowing response after Arsenal were denied a goal and lost at Newcastle read like Dickensian burlesque, with 'The Goal', 'The Third Incident' and 'The Highlighted Words ' prominently in the absurd legalese.

A sport drowning in money is so out of touch with reality that a criminal lawyer, Ian Mill KC, who has defended the likes of Ed Sheeran and Megan Markle, was appointed to defend Arteta in a case that would have resulted in a fine at most. and a few games in the stands. He was acquitted.

While the FA tries to command respect, Arteta was at it again on Sunday: ranting and gesticulating, getting a yellow card, swearing at the referee and then claiming with a smile on his face that he was waving at one of his players. Laughing at a request for decency and respect.