'Accrington Stanley, who are they?': The milk advert that went down in Liverpool folklore | OneFootball

A cutting remark selling milk has endured for almost four decades

"Accrington Stanley, who are they?" That is not a question Liverpool boss Arne Slot was asking himself this week, thanks to a cult milk advert from the late 1980s.

Stanley are perhaps best known among English football fans for a Milk Marketing Board television commercial in the 1980s, which gently mocked the team’s obscurity.

In the milk advert, two young Scouse boys in Liverpool kits come in from a kickabout and set about making themselves drinks. One wants lemonade the other – much to his friend’s disgust – pours himself a glass of milk.

"Milk? Eurgh," actor Kevin Spaine says. Carl Rice replies: "It’s what Ian Rush drinks, and he said if I didn’t drink lots of milk, when I grow up I’d only be good enough to play for Accrington Stanley.”

“Accrington Stanley, who are they?” Spaine replies. “Exactly!” is the cutting response, and one which has gone down in Accrington folklore.

“I do know about the milk advert,” Slot said when asked about what he knows about the relationship between Liverpool and Stanley. “Immediately after the [draw] there was a clip of a player that was so happy that he was going to play at Anfield. So these kinds of things, I know.

Rice - who was paid £90 for the role - went on to enjoy a career in television, from Casualty to Brassic, and was most recently seen in a small role in the Oscar-nominated film Cruella.

Rice told the Liverpool Echo recently: "A couple of years ago I was walking down Oxford Street in London. I had a massive beard at the time and someone came up and asked ‘Was that you on that milk advert?’ How is that possible?"

Rice's co-star Spaine, whose face was never seen on camera, followed a different path and in 2023 was given a life sentence for murder.

Spaine was convicted of the killing of Learoy Venner, who in July 2022 was assaulted so severely he suffered a brain injury compared to that of a victim of a car crash.

The murder happened on Belmont Drive, which is less than two miles from Anfield, the site of Saturday's FA Cup game. It was the culmination of - as his defence lawyer, John Harrison KC, said - "a very long history of criminal offending".

Spaine's criminal record includes convictions for dealing heroin and crack cocaine, assault with intent to rob and, just three weeks before Venner's murder, he has been handed an eight-week suspended sentence for assaulting an emergency worker.