The footballer Billy Liddell, who has died aged 79 of Alzheimer's disease, was so esteemed at Liverpool that the team was nicknamed "Liddellpool". He was almost too good to be true, the perfect sportsman - fast, hard but impeccably fair - a convinced Christian; a diligent worker with boys' clubs; a wartime Bomber Command pilot officer and pathfinder, and a teetotaller who, when he beat Liverpool's appearance record held by the illustrious goalkeeper Elisha Scott, was presented, inter alia, with a cocktail cabinet.
Liddell was a winger in the old "raiding" tradition of pace, power and incisiveness, a left-winger for choice who could play just as well on the right flank: and eventually became a successful centre forward.
Liddell was born at Townhill, near Dunfermline, the eldest of the six children of a coal miner who eventually died of silicosis and was determined that Billy would not go down the pits. Billy's first club was Kingseat Juniors, who paid him half a crown (12.25p) per game.
Ironically he was spotted, as a 15 year old playing for the Lochgelly Violet club, by Matt Busby, destined to become the famous manager of Manchester United, but then a half-back with Liverpool. Busby had been due to play golf with his former colleague at Manchester City, Alex Herd. But Herd did not appear. Instead, Busby went with the manager of Hamilton Academicals, Willie McAndrew, to look at the young Liddell.
Hamilton could not offer Billy the part-time job on which his father insisted, Busby recommended him to Liverpool, and there he stayed for the whole of his career - although he did play as a guest for Chelsea during the second world war. He won his first cap for Scotland - though an unofficial one - against England at Hampden Park in April 1942, one of Scotland's very rare wartime victories against the English: 5-4 was the score and Liddell got one of the goals.
The war over, and football re-starting on a full basis in 1946, Liddell settled down on Liverpool's left wing, a torment to any full-back. He was a special nightmare to Alf Ramsey, when Ramsey was Tottenham and England's right-back.
"I always knew I was in for a hectic afternoon when I was marking Billy," Ramsey said. "The only way to try to hold him was to beat him to possession of the ball. Once he had it, he was difficult to stop."
Liverpool that season won a championship protracted into summer by appalling weather. Liddell played 34 games for just seven goals, but by the time he finished playing for the team in 1960 he had scored 216 in 495 games. The cry from the Kop, "Give it to Billy" had become endearingly familiar.
In May 1947, Liddell was on the left wing for Great Britain against the Rest of Europe, contributing to a 6-1 victory. Remarkably, he was picked for Britain again, in 1955, in Belfast, though on that occasion the Europeans won 4-1.
Things might have gone differently in the 1950 FA cup final at Wembley had Liddell not been painfully fouled by the Arsenal right-half, a fellow Scotsman, Alex Forbes. "I couldn't put my jacket on the next day," he later recalled.
"Lucky Arsenal?" wrote JPW Mallalieu in the Spectator. "No, just a little dirty." Liverpool lost 2-0.
When Liddell, in a collision, broke the ribs of the England goalkeeper, Frank Swift, in an international at Hampden, Swift himself insisted, "It was fair. Billy doesn't know how to be
anything but fair."
In 1958, Liddell was appointed a justice of the peace. He had successfully combined his football career with working as an accountant, and it was as such, when he finished playing, that he operated as a bursar at Liverpool University, watching Liverpool as a modest season ticket holder.
For Scotland, he played 28 games, scoring half a dozen goals but never appeared in a World Cup. Standing 5ft 10ins and weighing 12 stone 9lbs, Liddell in full flight drove through defences like a preoccupied tank.
"There wasn't a weakness in Billy's game," said an admiring Matt Busby. "He was as strong as a bull on the ball. Defenders found him a real handful, but always respected him." Billy Wright, the captain of England and often an opponent of Liddell, said that "Scotland have had few greater players. He could conjure goals out of nothing."
Not only with both feet, but with his head. He once headed a goal from outside the 18 yard penalty box.
Liddell leaves a wife and twin sons.
• Billy Liddell, footballer, born January 10 1922; died July 3 2001
