Kenny Dalglish 'never dealt with' Hillsborough, Heysel and Ibrox tragedies, say his family

Former Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish. Photo / Getty Images.

Kenny Dalglish never "dealt" with witnessing three of football's biggest tragedies because he was more concerned with the victims and the bereaved, his family say in a new film that addresses the Liverpool legend's experiences at Ibrox, Heysel and Hillsborough.

Dalglish was in the crowd when 66 were killed at Ibrox in 1971, on the pitch for the Heysel tragedy of 1985 (39 deaths) and in the dug-out when 96 Liverpool fans lost their lives at Sheffield Wednesday's ground in 1989 - a scandal that is still working itself through the justice system.

In 'Kenny', which is due for cinema release on 20 November, Dalglish's daughter, Kelly Cates, says: "He never dealt with absorbing all that information because he felt his need was so much lower than everyone else's." Paul Dalglish, Kenny's son, who coaches in Canada, says: "I've never spoken to my dad about Hillsborough."

In the aftermath of that tragedy, Kenny Dalglish attended numerous funerals and supported the families of the dead. But the trauma was building up inside. Dalglish resigned unexpectedly as Liverpool manager in 1991. Marina, his wife, tells the documentary makers: "He was falling apart after Hillsborough. He was terrible to live with."

Her husband, who developed a rash and needed sleeping pills, decided he had to escape the Anfield dug-out after feeling unable to make a decision about substitutions in a game against Everton. "If I cannae make decisions, I don't deserve to be there," he says in the film. Marina says however: "He wouldn't admit Hillsborough had anything to to do with it."

Heysel is also portrayed uncompromisingly in the biopic, directed by Stewart Sugg. There, 39 mainly Juventus supporters were killed when a group of Liverpool fans charged into their enclosure and a wall at the crumbling stadium in Brussels collapsed. Dalglish was appointed Liverpool manager the next day, after Joe Fagan retired. Of Ibrox meanwhile, Dalglish says: "There but for the grace of God go I."

No great footballer has combined brilliance on the field and success in management with such harrowing proximity to calamities. At Liverpool, Dalglish won six league titles and three European Cups before managing the club to three more league championships. He also won the Premier League at Blackburn Rovers in 1995.

The film is not solely about tragedy. It revisits Dalglish's sublime talent in the No 7 shirt, which placed him in the same paragraph as Bobby Charlton and George Best among great British players, and shows him surrounded by a large and adoring family. His stoicism in pursuing a great career while assailed by what might now be called post traumatic stress disorder is an extraordinary double narrative, without equal in football.

In one remarkable scene in the film, Dalglish parks in a country lane, and looks down from high on a hill to Hillsborough, a place he still avoids.

Phil Scraton, the academic who led efforts to expose the Hillsborough scandal, says of Dalglish: "All the weight fell on him." But Dalglish himself is modest about his role in supporting the victims' families: "We only did what somebody else would have done for us."