by David Peace
They look up from their boots. From their socks and their tags. Their eyes blank –
‘Do you?’
They shake their heads. They nod their heads –
‘Right then, well bloody well get out there and show me that fucking answer!’
They stand up from the benches. They file out of the dressing room –
Into the corridor. Down the tunnel. Onto the pitch –
The grass and the earth. The soil and the dirt –
The heavy, heavy mud.
* * *
Everyone has heard about your adventures in London; the chairman, the directors, the players and the fans. You made bloody sure they did. You might not have got Bobby Moore, you might not have got Trevor Brooking, but you still got what you wanted; no way for the board to refuse you transfer money now, so you got your new signing: Henry Newton for £120,000 from Everton –
And all this talk of new signings, of trips to London, of Bobby Moore and Trevor Brooking, all this talk means there’s no need for a team talk today –
Saturday 22 September 1973; Derby County vs Southampton:
There’s a penalty after seven minutes and, on the retake, Alan Hinton scores. Twenty minutes later, Roger Davies brings down a Hinton cross on his chest to score the second. Ten minutes after that, Hinton crosses again and this time Kevin Hector scores. Southampton pull one back before half-time, but it doesn’t matter. Ten minutes into the second half, Hinton leaves two Southampton players standing and crosses again for Hector to make it 4–1. Southampton then pull another back, but again it doesn’t matter. Hector sets up Davies for the fifth and then Davies sets up Hector for his hat-trick.
It is the first time Derby County have scored six since they beat Scunthorpe United in April 1963. Kevin Hector’s hat-trick was also Derby’s first in the league since 1969 and means Hector has now broken Jack Parry’s post-war league scoring record with 107 goals in 287 games –
Derby County are now back up to second, Leeds United still first.
* * *
It was a good game, the best yet. They played for their pride and they played with their hearts. Especially in the first half as Lorimer, McGovern, Giles and Yorath passed the ball the length and width of the field, opening Queen’s Park Rangers up so that Yorath scored one and McGovern had one cleared off the line by Terry Venables. Rangers then equalized early in the second half, but it was still a good game. The best yet –
‘We have come on a ton tonight,’ I tell the microphones and the pens, the cameras and the lights, on the pitch and in the tunnel. ‘And when you get it into perspective, when you remember we still have men like Bremner, McKenzie, Madeley and Jones out, it was marvellous. We should have really wrapped it up in the first half, we were that much on top. But at least there are no further injuries.’
It was a good game, the best yet. They played for their pride and they played with their hearts. But there are still no smiles on the team coach out of Loftus Road. No smiles and no laughter. Just the murmurs and the whispers, the paperback books and the packs of cards. I plonk myself down next to Syd Owen again –
‘Do you think I should wear this every match day, Sydney?’ I ask him.
‘Wear what?’
‘Wear this,’ I tell him, pointing at my old green Leeds United goalkeeping jersey.
‘Why?’
‘I think it might just be my lucky jumper,’ I tell him. ‘My lucky colour.’
‘I thought you didn’t believe in luck, Mr Clough? In superstition?’
‘Well, you know what they say?’ I ask him. ‘When in Rome …’
‘Are you going to wear it tomorrow then?’
‘Tomorrow?’ I ask him. ‘What’s tomorrow?’
‘Just the FA disciplinary hearing.’
* * *
You have been beaten 1–0 by Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane, drawn at home with Norwich City and watched Henry Newton struggle in both games. The board have refused Peter permission to write for the Derby Evening Telegraph. The board have refused your wife and Peter’s wife tickets for the game at Old Trafford this Saturday.
It is Thursday and you are late again for the weekly board meeting. In your absence, Sam Longson has called for your sacking –
‘For bloody breach of fucking contract?’ you repeat.
‘There is a clause in your contract,’ states Longson, ‘that requires you to give your whole time and your whole attention to the affairs of Derby County Football Club.’
‘Hypocrites! Bloody hypocrites! When I was invited to sit on the last World Cup panel, three years ago now, you lot bloody told me I must do it. And in those days I even fucking took him with me,’ you tell them, rail at them, pointing at Longson –
‘And he bloody lapped it up, fucking loved it he did!’
‘Stop him doing television,’ Peter tells them, ‘and you’ll take away part and parcel of his management job from him. That’s unfair. Brian’s right, you were the ones who encouraged him in the first place. Egged him on.’
‘Not me,’ says Jack Kirkland. ‘You’ll not be laying that one at my door.’
‘Well then, what about this?’ asks Longson and hands out a piece of paper –
It’s an invoice for your expenses for your trip to Amsterdam; your trip to Amsterdam to watch Poland play Holland, the warm-up for the England game –
The England game you will be watching and speaking about for ITV.
‘That’s a mistake,’ you tell them. ‘A genuine mistake. The TV pays for that.’
This time the board believe you. This time Sam Longson loses the vote to sack you. You have lived to fight another day –
But Jack Kirkland still has the last word:
‘Stay off the bloody television and cut down the newspaper work,’ he tells you. ‘And get on with the fucking job we’re paying you for.’
It is Thursday 11 October 1973.
THE FIFTH RECKONING
First Division Positions, 28 August 1974
P W D L F A Pts
1 Ipswich Town 4 4 0 0 7 0 8
2 Liverpool 4 3 1 0 6 2 7
3 Carlisle United 4 3 0 1 5 1 6
4 Everton 4 2 2 0 6 4 6
5 Man City 4 3 0 1 7 5 6
6 Derby County 4 1 3 0 4 2 5
7 Stoke City 4 2 1 1 6 3 5
8 Middlesbrough 4 2 1 1 5 3 5
9 Wolves 4 2 1 1 6 5 5
10 Chelsea 4 2 1 1 8 7 5
11 Arsenal 4 2 0 2 5 4 4
12 QPR 4 1 2 1 3 3 4
13 Sheffield Utd 4 1 2 1 5 6 4
14 Leicester City 4 1 1 2 6 7 3
15 Newcastle Utd 4 1 1 2 8 10 3
16 West Ham Utd 4 1 1 2 4 7 3
17 Leeds United 4 1 1 2 2 5 3
18 Coventry City 4 0 2 2 5 8 2
19 Luton Town 4 0 2 2 2 5 2
20 Burnley 4 0 1 3 5 9 1
21 Birmingham C. 4 0 1 3 4 9 1
22 Tottenham H. 4 0 0 4 1 5 0
First thing every morning, last thing every night –
I recite Psalm 109.
Twice a day for one whole year.
If I miss one morning, if I miss one night –
Then I die, not you –
But I am a Cunning Man. And I am a Clever Man –
And I never miss.
Day Twenty-nine
It’s gone two in the morning when the bus drops us back at Elland Road and the taxi comes to take me to my modern luxury hotel. The bar is closed, the piano silent. I go up to my room and I pick up the phone to call my wife and kids, to call my brothers, to call John, Billy or Colin or any of my family and my friends not here with me tonight –
My mam and Peter.
I dial room service and I order champagne. Then I get out my pens and I get out my papers. I spread out the Evening Post and I start on the league tables and the fixtures. There’s a knock on the door and the waiter wheels in the trolley –
The bucket and the bottle.
‘Thank you very much,’ I tell him. ‘Now
pick up that phone and call your gaffer and tell him you won’t be back down for the next hour because Brian bloody Clough has requested the pleasure of your company and then go get yourself another glass, pull up a pew and raise that glass in a toast with me –
‘To absent friends – fuck them all.’
* * *
No one speaks when you meet in the car park at the Baseball Ground. No one speaks as you get on the team bus. No one speaks on the drive to Old Trafford. No one speaks at all; the players don’t speak; the trainers and the coaches don’t speak; Jimmy and Peter don’t speak; you don’t speak; Longson and Webby don’t speak; Kirkland and the other directors don’t speak. No one speaks at all. No one says a single bloody word –
Things have come to this; month by month, week by week, day by day. Now things can’t get any worse; the month is here, the week is here and the day is coming, the hour and the minute. Tick-tock, tick-tock, go the hands on your watch. Tick-tock –
This is the end, you think. This is the end. This is the end.
You and Peter stay with the team in the dressing room, your wives in the stands on scalped tickets, the ground filling up, the ground opening up –
Tick-tock, go the hands on your watch. Tick-tock.
You go down the tunnel with the team, your team, and out onto the pitch. You walk along the touchline. You look up into the stand for your wife. You see her in the stands. You put two fingers together and salute her with a wave. You take your place in the dug-out, on the bench, with Peter and with Jimmy –
Tick-tock, go the hands on your watch.
Just four minutes in and Forsyth underhits a back pass to Stepney, and Hector nips in and tucks the ball into the corner of the net. Just four minutes in and it’s as good as over, good as over until the seventy-ninth minute when Kidd and Young hit the bar. But the score remains the same until the end –
This is the end, you think. This is the end.
‘I know that Don Revie studies the league table every night,’ you tell the press and the television. ‘And I know he’ll be looking at that table and thinking about Liverpool and Newcastle. But I also know one club will hit him right in the eye, and that club is Derby and this time I reckon we’ll be ready for Don Revie and Leeds United when he brings them to the Baseball Ground on November the twenty-fourth.’
‘You’ll still be there then, will you?’ they ask. ‘Still the manager?’
Peter pulls you away. Peter takes you to one side. Peter says, ‘Winning here doesn’t happen very often. Let’s take the wives upstairs to the boardroom.’
‘I don’t think it’s a good idea,’ you tell him.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Might never happen again.’
Tick-tock, tick-tock, go the hands on your watch. Tick-tock –
‘Go on then,’ you tell him, ‘but I’m not staying more than half an hour.’
So Peter goes off and finds your wives and then the four of you go upstairs to the Manchester United boardroom, the Manchester United boardroom where Longson and Kirkland and all the other Derby brass are having the time of their bloody lives, with their cigars in their hands and their wives on their arms, the time of their lives until you four walk in and the Manchester United boardroom goes quiet, silent –
Tick-tock, go the hands on your watch. Tick-tock.
But then the glasses clink, the coughs come and the conversations start back up.
‘This must be the first time you’ve been in here?’ asks Louis Edwards as he cracks open another bottle of champagne. But Peter is already pulling you away, already taking you to one side and saying, ‘Time we were going back down.’
‘Fuck off,’ you tell him. ‘We’ve only just bloody got up here.’
‘But I don’t like it here,’ he says. ‘Not my kind.’
‘Looks like someone wants a word with you though,’ you tell him, and Peter glances back to see Jack Kirkland crooking his finger, beckoning him over.
‘No one bloody crooks their fucking finger at me,’ hisses Peter.
‘Just go and see what the twat wants and then we’ll get off,’ you tell him –
Tick-tock, go the hands on your watch.
But as Peter is walking across the Manchester United boardroom towards Jack Kirkland, Longson is walking up to you and, in front of your wife and in front of the room, Sam Longson asks, ‘Did you make a V-sign at the Manchester United directors?’
‘Did I do what?’
‘Did you make a V-sign at Sir Matt and the Manchester United directors?’
‘No.’
‘They say you did.’
‘Well, I didn’t.’
‘I want you to apologize.’
‘No.’
‘I’m not asking you to apologize,’ says Longson. ‘I’m telling you to apologize.’
‘Fuck off.’
The chairman of Derby County Football Club stares into your eyes as your wife looks down at the devils in the carpet and you glance at your watch –
It has stopped.
Longson turns and walks away as Peter comes back across the Manchester United carpet. Peter is also red-faced. Peter also has tears in his eyes. Peter takes Lillian by her arm. Peter leads her out of the Manchester United boardroom –
You turn to your wife. You tell her, ‘We’re going.’
No one speaks on the coach back to Derby; the players don’t speak; the trainers and the coaches don’t speak; Jimmy and Peter don’t speak; you don’t speak; your wives don’t speak; no one speaks at all –
No one says a single fucking word –
It is Saturday 13 October 1973, and you know this is the end.
* * *
The sun is shining, the sky is blue, but it’s still another bloody ugly Yorkshire morning at the arse-end of August when I wake up in my modern luxury hotel bed in my modern luxury hotel room, feeling like fucking dogshit, and reach over the pens and the papers, the league tables and the fixtures to switch on the modern luxury radio beside the bed:
‘Yesterday Mr Denis Howell, the Sports Minister, chaired the so-called Soccer Summit to hammer out plans for dealing with hooliganism after the stabbing to death of a fourteen-year-old Blackpool supporter last Saturday. Afterwards Mr Howell said that players would also be required to tighten up their conduct on the pitch:
‘“We have expressed the view that the FA, in dealing with misconduct, must express the seriousness of the situation and the determination we have to get this problem under control and conquer it in the interests of football and the sporting public.”
‘Later this morning, Billy Bremner, of Leeds United and Scotland, and Kevin Keegan, of Liverpool and England, will appear before the FA Disciplinary Committee in London, accused of bringing the game into disrepute by pulling off their shirts after being sent off in the FA Charity Shield at Wembley earlier this month.’
I switch off my modern luxury radio and lie back in my modern luxury hotel bed and thank fucking God that I left Maurice in London to accompany Bremner and Giles –
Thank fucking God, this once.
* * *
The coach drops you all back at the Baseball Ground. You call taxis for your wives and then you and Peter go up the stairs to your office –
‘He wants to know exactly what my job is,’ rails Peter. ‘Can you fucking believe the cunt? He’s only been on the board two fucking minutes and he wants to know what my bloody job is. Wagging his fucking finger at me in front of all them folk. First thing Monday bloody morning, the bastard tells me. Well, I’m not going, Brian. I’m bloody off. No one wags their fucking finger at me.’
You open up your office. You switch on the lights. You go inside –
The security grille has been pulled down over the bar.
You walk over to the grille. You rattle it –
It’s been locked.
* * *
There is no training today and the car park is empty when the taxi drops me at the ground. It’ll fill up soon enough; as soon as the FA Disciplina
ry Committee announces its verdict. I see John Reynolds up on the practice pitch. I jog up the banking and onto the pitch –
I hold up my wrist and my watch and I tell him, ‘Still going strong, John.’
‘That’s good,’ he says.
I nod and I smile and I ask him, ‘How are you this morning then, John?’
‘I’m working,’ he says and walks away.
* * *
You pace and you pace, up and down your carpet. Back and forth, you pace and you pace. The walls getting closer and closer, the room getting hotter and hotter. It is Sunday lunchtime and you can hear the church bells pealing, smell the Sunday joint cooking. Roasting. Peter is sat on your sofa. Peter is smoking. You pick up the phone. You telephone Longson at his home –
‘Can I have your permission to sack Stuart Webb? He’s locked the bar.’
‘I know,’ Longson tells you. ‘Stuart was acting on my instructions.’
‘He was what? Why? What’s going on?’
‘You just get on with managing the team,’ he tells you and hangs up.
You put down your telephone. Slam it down. Break it –
Peter is sat on your sofa. Peter is crying –
It is Sunday 14 October 1973.
* * *
Under the stands. Through the doors. Round the corners. Down the corridor to the office. I unlock the door and I switch on the lights. The telephone is ringing. I pour a drink and I light a fag and I pick up the phone:
‘You best come up here,’ says Cussins. ‘The verdict’s in.’
I finish my drink. I put out my cigarette. I switch off the lights and I lock the door. Down the corridors and round the corners. Up the stairs and through the doors –
The Yorkshire boardroom, the Yorkshire curtains, the board silent and subdued, grim and stony-faced. The ashtrays filling up –
‘Both Bremner and Keegan have been fined £500 each and suspended from today until September the thirtieth,’ says Manny Cussins.
‘September the thirtieth?’ I repeat. ‘That’s over a bloody month.’