Rushie still singing from the Liverpool hymn sheet

It might be hard to imagine Graeme Souness, the Roy Keane of his era, taking to the pitch for even a routine assignment with anything other than his most ferocious battle face on but, as he revealed in his Sunday newspaper column at the weekend, he and his Liverpool team mates were “larking around like 12-year-olds” in the tunnel before they walked out to play Roma in the latter’s own backyard in the 1984 European Cup final.

Ian Rush — who, along with Souness, would be successful from the spot as Liverpool went on to win their fourth European Cup in a penalty shootout that night — confirmed the story in Dublin yesterday.

“The memory for me was in the tunnel singing that Chris Rea song, ‘I Don’t Know What It Is But I Love It’,” the legendary striker recalled with a grin.