Tigers Come from Liverpool - Part 1

Kevin Kewley's journey from Liverpool FC to the MISL

Not too long ago, on a Thursday evening, if you lingered near a condominium patio on the east side of Wichita, Kansas, and filtered out the sounds of 1960s British Invasion rock n’ roll, you might have sworn you could hear two Scousers carrying on about soccer: one accent notably thicker than the other.

Kevin “The Tiger” Kewley, former midfielder for Liverpool FC, the NASL’s Dallas Tornado, and the MISL’s Wichita Wings, found refuge at his old coach’s home after a midlife divorce. After a week of coaching men’s soccer at Pratt Community College, he would return to Roy Turner’s house to stay for the weekend.

“He’d have the wine waiting outside and have the Beatles music on. And he’d say, ‘I’ve got it ready for you, Tiger.’ … It doesn’t get much better than this,” Kewley said.

The beginning of Kewley and Turner’s friendship stretches back to the Ford administration. That’s almost a half-century, or if you want to feel old, equidistant to the Roaring Twenties. The two met in Dallas with Lamar Hunt’s Tornado, with Kewley coming on loan from Liverpool FC to join Turner in Al Miller’s midfield. The pair connected naturally. The reason for that goes back to the old country.

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Beginning in the 1840s, prompted by the potato famine, 1.5 million people fled Ireland for Liverpool, just across the Irish Sea. Most migrants used that English city as a departure point for new destinations. But many thousands of Irish families, including the Kewleys, stayed put in Liverpool. That infusion of Catholics into largely Protestant England produced some natural tension.

“Liverpool had an awful lot of Irish people because it was just across the water. I was a war baby and Liverpool was just getting over the war. On top of that, there was an element of the Irish. I do remember some of the tension with the immigrants: the Orange people, as we called them. I didn’t see violence though,” Roy Turner said.

Though Kevin’s generation was far removed from the Ireland of his great-grandparents, the legacy of that heritage unknowingly made its way into his consciousness.

“My dad would play Irish rebel songs on our record player, but I didn’t really pay attention to them. But when I met up with [Irish soccer player] Sammy Lane, he would play the same songs on his stereo, and I was like, ‘Jesus, I know all these songs,’” Kewley said.

Life was hard and his family wasn’t spared from the privation of those times. Kewley never had a chance to meet his paternal grandfather because that man abandoned his wife and three children to pursue a new life in Australia. Though Kewley’s father stayed loyal to his family, his generation of Kewleys experienced a different sort of tragedy.

“My vaguest memory of my brother was they had the funeral and he was in our parlor in a coffin. Everyone was around. My brothers told me that I kept telling everybody to shut up because the baby was asleep,” Kewley remembered.

Though Kewley, at the age of three, was only a year older than his brother, it was his job to look after the one that came after him. But illness stole him away from the family.

“Back then they didn’t talk about it, because a lot of people didn’t make it,” Kewley said.

With eight surviving children, Kewley’s parents had to quickly move on with their lives. They had no other choice. The family lived down by the docks on Scotland Road, a desperately poor part of Liverpool. The living was primitive. Kewley remembers taking a bath by the fireplace, their only source of heat.

“Very rough area. Liverpool tried to clean it all out. Scotland Road was a place where you went at your own risk. You didn’t hang around much there because it was a very dangerous area in those days,” Roy Turner said.

The local authorities decided to move residents in the worst slum areas, including Scotland Road, to several suburban towns, where new public housing, known in the UK as council estates, would be built. One of these towns, six miles northeast of Liverpool, was Kirkby, the destination for an entire block of Scotland Road residents, including the Kewleys.

“We moved into a 4-bedroom house with indoor toilets, something we’d never had before. I’ll always remember all the kids riding in the back of the moving van,” Kewley said.

Though the schools and homes were all new, the environment of the new neighborhood in Kirkby eventually began to resemble their old neighborhood.

“The Scotland Road people that moved out there made it into another Scotland Road,” Turner said.

Kewley’s father had a good job as an engineer on a tugboat at the port. But when Kevin had the opportunity to see where his father worked, he quickly realized he wanted a different kind of career.

“I went down to the engine room and was just horrified. It was steaming hot, and dad was messing with the engine. I was like, ‘God, I never want to do this,’” Kewley said.

Football beckoned. But, in an ironic twist for a future Liverpool FC player, it was Everton, their fiercest rival, that drew him to the sport. Kevin’s father, an enthusiastic Everton supporter, took Kevin to his first game when he was so small that he had to be lifted on his dad’s shoulders to see the game.

“Kevin will tell you that though he played for Liverpool, he’s still an Evertonian. As you are aware, soccer is a religion. When your father brings you up as an Evertonian, you are always one. He and I always talk about ‘our team,’” Turner said, himself a former Everton reserve player.

Kewley attended the local Catholic school, St. Patrick’s. It was there that his older brother and father identified his potential to be a professional player. When a teacher selected him to play against kids five years older, Kewley went home to tell his father about an upcoming game against rival St. Joseph’s. There was one problem: he didn’t have any soccer shoes. All he had were a pair of “old brown ones” that came up past his ankle. His brother came up with a “brilliant” solution.

“He cut them down to regular size down to my ankle, like Adidas, painted them black, and then painted three white stripes on them. I was like, ‘I can’t wear these.’ He said, ‘We don’t have money to buy shoes, so you either wear them or you don’t.’ I was reluctantly hiding them and trying to get mud on them. No one could afford Adidas back then,” Kewley said.

Next Week: Part 2: Kewley joins Liverpool FC