by Rob Bagchi
It must have been a pretty hard sell, but Bolton’s skilful and tenacious flattery paid dividends. Albert Morris ran Morris Wallpapers and Manny Cussins managed the John Peters Furnishing Group. Both men lived in the city’s affluent Alwoodley district, were prominent figures in various Jewish charitable organizations, and were fans of the club. Bolton now persuaded them that a successful football club could be a distinct asset not only to their portfolios, but also to the community itself. Within days, Morris and Cussins joined the Board and each immediately made interest-free loans of £10,000 to help loosen the bank’s stranglehold. Bolton’s grand design had been to increase Board membership to a quorum of ten, notionally backing the club to the tune of £100,000, but he soon had to settle for just the two new recruits. Within five years they would be turning away would-be directors by the dozen with the disdain of those who had dared and won.
At an eventful company AGM on 8 December came Bolton’s own resignation as Chairman. ‘I have taken a lot of kicks,’ he said, ‘and I’m afraid I’m getting to the point where I can’t stand up to kicks like I used to.’ It was a tacit acknowledgement that good intentions were no longer enough. He had put the building blocks in place; now the club needed a man who could drive Leeds on to prosperity.
Harry Reynolds’ most important asset was time. As a retired millionaire, the new chairman would be able to devote increasingly large chunks of his day to the club, all the time strengthening his relationship with Revie. During this same AGM he invited Revie to outline his difficulties to the Board. The club’s only way forward, responded Revie, lay in the production of its own players (advice almost certainly given to him by Matt Busby earlier in the year). A lot of his time, Revie went on, was spent ‘sitting on doorsteps in company with other clubs but we will go on searching for the best boy players’. Reynolds told the meeting he had ‘never heard such ideas better put. He will have all the backing the new Board and I can give him.’ Revie finally bought a new centre-forward, his former team-mate Bill McAdams from Bolton, and Leeds managed to beat Champions-elect Liverpool in their pre-Christmas rematch. But then another dismal run accumulated only three points from the next nine fixtures. By the end of February, Leeds had hit the bottom of the division. Some messiah! Some revolution!
In transfer deadline week, as the Third Division beckoned, with all its glamour ties – Halifax, Northampton, Peterborough – Revie suddenly sprang into action with the desperation of a drowning man. Certainly he’d identified many transfer targets in the past, often taking Reynolds with him on the long car journeys to chew over the fat, but the selling clubs tended to stall while they sought replacements. In the early 1960s the only way to convince solvent clubs to part with players who didn’t enjoy freedom of contract was to pay over the odds – anathema to the Yorkshire psyche.
By the beginning of March, however, it was the only option left. Reynolds released £55,000 from the kitty and the only question was how many players Revie could get. He wanted six but ended up with three, one of whom proved to be the most important signing in the club’s history. More than setting the tone for the next thirteen years, he constructed the DNA pattern that has subsequently defined it – the myth of ‘dirty Leeds’. There are so many stories about Bobby Collins that it is surprising no full biography of him has ever been written. For now we have to make do with the countless anecdotes in more famous players’ autobiographies.
The best tribute came from Bremner in You Get Nowt for Coming Second (a Harry Reynolds motto if ever there was one): ‘If one man doesn’t make a team, Bobby Collins came nearer to doing it than anyone else I have ever seen on a football field.’ He was like a force of nature. ‘Bobby was a strange person in some ways,’ writes Eddie Gray. ‘He was very aggressive and confrontational – even to his team-mates or those who professed to be close to him … In recent years I have played a few charity matches with him for Leeds United’s former players team, and even in his sixties, he still had the propensity for getting into fights.’
This geriatric timebomb, still causing mayhem on the field despite pushing seventy, instilled such a formidable appetite for winning through his leadership and outrageous competitiveness that it blew away the indifference that had stunted the club’s development for forty years.
It helped that he felt he had something to prove. Although many Goodison Park regulars were upset, no one was more piqued that Everton had accepted Revie’s offer than Collins himself. As a celebrated Scottish international enjoying a successful spell on Merseyside after hitting so many peaks with Celtic, why on earth would Everton want to farm him out to another club? And not just any club, but one propping up the Second Division? The only inference which could be drawn was that at thirty-one, Harry Catterick, Everton’s avuncular manager, thought him ‘past it’. Collins turned the rancour he felt at this rejection into a one-man crusade to embarrass Everton’s folly.
In paying £25,000 for the 5ft 4in inside-forward (the Yorkshire Post priced him at £390 per inch, more expensive than gold), Revie quickly harnessed Collins’ violent emotions by giving him the responsibility he had craved, making him captain in all but name. Revie was never a control freak when it came to his lieutenants. If it wasn’t carte blanche, it was close to it, as Revie delegated all on-field authority to the diminutive firebrand. Although he had appeared intermittently himself throughout the season, and even the week prior to Collins’ signing, he never played again. In conjunction with United’s two other deadline week captures – Ian Lawson and Cliff Mason – Collins’ Leeds lost only once in March before they faced their last seven fixtures crammed into a twenty-one-day period in April.
Their season hinged on the ludicrously gruelling traditional Easter weekend that encompassed games on Good Friday, Easter Saturday and ‘Easter Tuesday’. All three matches were superficially dull draws, two against Bury, one versus Derby, which contained, according to reports, ‘plenty of bodily impact’ but ‘precious little sustained football’.
At the time, that double-header with Bury was an instantly forgettable fixture. More than fifteen years later, however, it was to become mythicized as one of the most notorious matches of the Revie era. In the Daily Mirror Bob Stokoe, who had been the Bury manager back in 1962, alleged that Revie had offered him £500 to throw one of the games. These rumours, which have been well aired in football circles for many years, have yet to be proven. Innuendo of this nature has stuck to Revie since his death, but significantly it was only widely disseminated after his supposed apostasy in quitting the England manager’s job in 1977.
One will never know, but the weight of evidence the Sunday Times used to undermine the Mirror’s story seems pretty convincing. How was Revie, on £38 a week, able to afford the substantial bung of Stokoe’s claims? Is there any prior history of Revie’s involvement in match fixing? Why did Stokoe wait fifteen years to tell his story and then only when paid £14,000 to do so? Leeds fans might add that if Revie was trying to fix matches, why did he leave it so late? That there are no other witnesses than the profoundly embittered Stokoe argues against Revie’s guilt.
United’s penultimate game, the goalless draw at Elland Road with Bury, still left them on a knife edge, even more so since their main relegation rivals Swansea Town had games in hand owing to postponements caused by the South Wales smallpox epidemic. Although the Collins-inspired run of eight games unbeaten had hauled Leeds out of the bottom two, they had only taken maximum points from two games, leaving them in a precarious position.
Needing a point to ensure survival, Leeds travelled to St James’ Park to face Newcastle with a contingent of 3000 fans – nearly half their total attendance at some home games earlier in the season. Thanks to a mesmerizing display from the recently restored Johanneson, Leeds won 3–0. However, this match was the second of the three games in Revie’s career said to have been fixed (the third was against Wolves in 1972). The Daily Mirror in its ‘Revie File’ quoted an anonymous source who claimed that he had been present when Revie had �
��tapped up’ Newcastle’s captain, Stan Anderson. The informant went on to allege that the Newcastle players were offered £10 each to lie down for Leeds, and such was Anderson’s ire at the suggestion that Revie had to apologize.
Again, the failure of anyone to go ‘on the record’ about this is revealing. There’s never been any independent corroboration of this anonymous witness’s ‘evidence’. One would think that with Revie dead for over a decade and the threat of libel having receded, if anyone had firm evidence it would have come to light. What remains is gossip. How can one overlook the fact that Newcastle only finished three points above Leeds and had already lost seventeen games that season? That Newcastle’s motivation since assuring themselves of safety was in question is fair comment, but pub talk that the match was fixed is way off the mark. What is certain is that by the inspired purchase of Collins, Revie’s holding operation had saved the club from relegation. Now it was time to turn the whole thing around.
FOUR
THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT?
Leeds United seems to suffer more than most clubs from transfer speculation. In straitened times it gives the fans hope that the club remains an enticing prospect for top-drawer talent. In the early 1990s not a summer would pass without the club’s managing director, the bombastic Bill Fotherby, arriving back from some exotic location to announce that although no big name had actually signed for the club, negotiations were continuing. Throughout July and August one would read in the papers how close the two sides were and how ecstatic the star in question was at the thought of ‘putting pen to paper’. Journalists were dispatched to Leeds/Bradford Airport to capture the first interview with the incoming player. Strangely enough, Thomas Skuhravy, Reuben Sosa and Faustino Asprilla all failed to arrive.
Journalists don’t call the summer months ‘the silly season’ for nothing. No matter how unattainable the target might be, some hack will run with it. It’s an arrangement that suits all sides: it excites the fans, keeps the club in the headlines and provides acres of easy copy for the local newspapers.
In 1987, for instance, they suddenly splashed on United’s attempt to buy Diego Maradona from Napoli for £10 million. Why the best player in the world, only a year on from Mexico ‘86, would want to join a club once again firmly stuck in the Second Division was never sensibly debated. How Leeds were in a position to contemplate smashing the domestic transfer record by a firm £8 million wasn’t even investigated. It seemed enough that a club official had tentatively hypothesized on its feasibility. Why, fans began to wonder as Maradona never materialized, were they felt to be so gullible as to believe that a superstar talent at the height of his career would leave Serie A to join a struggling Second Division club? Older fans could tell them why. Because it had happened before.
The punchline of the old joke runs: ‘You call it Yorkshire, we call it paradise.’ One can detect the pride underlying the self-deprecation. All the same, one doubts that living in the Broad Acres, even in today’s yuppified Leeds, beats the Italian Riviera, being well paid, playing for the most famous football club in Italy, regularly winning major honours and the adulation of hundreds of thousands of fans throughout one’s adopted nation. Back in 1962 it seemed preposterous. However, as early as April that year, news began to appear in the papers that John Charles still hadn’t accepted a year’s extension to his Juventus contract. It is true that after winning three scudettos in the past four years, 1961/62 had been a disaster for Juve, who had plummeted to twelfth; but it still seemed inconceivable that they would sell their talisman, a man who had scored 108 goals in five glorious seasons. After all, forty years on he’s still gauged as the best overseas player in Italian football history. But homesickness is an odd thing, and Charles, after five years of luxurious exile, was pining for more familiar haunts. So began the most drawn out and damaging transfer saga Leeds United had ever undertaken, conducted using all the technology of the time: the telegram, the cable message and the pre-booked trans-continental telephone link.
In his last season at Elland Road, Charles had scored 38 goals in just forty appearances, but more significantly for the Board, he had drawn an average attendance of over 32,000 to each home game. Admittedly, this had been in the First Division, but it clearly played a part in the Board’s thinking, as they freely admitted. Short of signing Pelé, Leeds couldn’t have acquired a player more certain to attract a crowd than John Charles. ‘Our aim is to get back into the top flight,’ pronounced Harry Reynolds. ‘If there is going to be a Super League, we want to be in it.’ It was almost thirty years too early to start worrying about the Premiership, but there was a sense that the club was running out of time to establish itself among the elite.
Juventus didn’t hesitate to hint that Arsenal and Tottenham were also interested in Charles. Leeds, who were basing their whole plan for financial recovery on Charles’ return, couldn’t afford to let him move elsewhere. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Reynolds, ‘We’ll get the money somehow if Juventus will let him leave.’ The Yorkshire Evening Post emphasized Charles’ enthusiasm at the prospect of ‘coming home’. In early July, Reynolds, Revie, Albert Morris and Percy Woodward, the Vice Chairman, resplendent in their summer-weight suits, took the BEA jet from Yeadon Airport to Turin to start the tortuous transfer dialogue. What would the hard-nosed Yorkshire businessmen, more Bradley Hardacre than Timothy West, make of the mercurial Umberto Agnelli?
United’s team had asked to conduct the talks at Turin Airport so as to ‘get it done quickly’, but in intense heat they failed to nail down a deal. Agnelli refused to sell Charles before he had signed up replacements, and both his top targets were still resting after Brazil’s June World Cup triumph.
Juventus, meanwhile, had invited Charles to be present for the talks – a telling contrast with the British view of players as, essentially, commodities like cattle. ‘It is not known for that to happen in English football,’ grumbled Reynolds. But in fact it was Juventus’ respect for Charles, in keeping him posted on developments and allowing him to speak with Leeds, which pushed the deal through. While Reynolds and his co-directors took care of the money side, Don Revie outlined his plans for the club to Big John. This casual conversation sealed the day. Impressed by Revie’s formulation of a game plan based largely on his aerial dominance, Charles issued an ultimatum. He wouldn’t sign a new contract; he was going home and that was that.
Instead of conceding, however, Agnelli resigned his post, leaving the Leeds delegation ‘pouring with sweat’ (Woodward), to return to Leeds to claim that the deal was ‘99 per cent certain to go through’. It would be a further month of sleepless nights, frantic telegrams, daily bulletins in the press and constant panic at the rumours of being gazumped before Leeds pulled off what should have been the greatest public relations coup of all time – re-signing the best British footballer of the post-war era. Instead, badly handled from the start, it turned into a fiasco that almost bankrupted the club.
English clubs, in a spirit of co-operation, generally allow transfers to be paid in instalments. Indeed, Leeds still owed money for Collins, Lawson and their other summer signing, Jim Storrie, the payments falling due at regular intervals over the next two years. This was not the Juventus way. When United had sold Charles in 1957, they had demanded and received the £65,000 fee up-front. It made perfect sense, therefore, for Juventus to insist on reciprocal terms. The return fee, haggled down to £53,000, would have to be paid ‘on the nail’.
Having already made hefty down-payments on five players since the previous Christmas, the directors had little choice but to stump up the cash themselves. With their personal liabilities beginning to mount, it was not long before they devised a scheme to recoup their outlay. Leeds fans, delighted by Charles’ return and generous in their praise of the Board’s philanthropy, were in for a shock.
Reynolds emerged from July’s Board meeting to announce a 45 per cent hike in season ticket prices, rising from £7.7s. to 10 guineas. The Board, he rather obtusely explained, were ‘giving the
public a chance to show the firmness of their promises to support the club if the Board embarked on a policy of team-building and bringing personalities to Elland Road…’.
Even Manchester United’s top-price tickets were only £8. 10s. Overnight, Leeds had become the most expensive Football League club to support outside London. ‘The increase in prices,’ wrote one season ticket holder in a letter to the Yorkshire Evening Post, ‘is tantamount to repayment by ticket holders and others of directors’ loans and not an extra paid for the pleasure of seeing John do his part in the recovery of Leeds Utd.’ This mini mutiny didn’t unduly trouble the Board. What were season ticket holders going to do? Switch to another team? Even if a few held out, enough would not be able to resist paying the increased price to make it worthwhile. Now the Board proceeded to dig themselves into a deeper hole. They waited until Charles had actually arrived in the city before divulging the result of their deliberations on standing prices. This time the boost was a prodigious 150 per cent, from 3s to 7/6. One wag noted that ‘King John’s shilling has turned into 4/6!’ As a declaration of war on their own fans, the Board’s parsimonious initiative could scarcely be bettered. They should have known better than anyone that it’s always unwise to muck about with a Yorkshireman when it comes to brass. The city went mad.
No blame was attached to Charles as he disported himself around the city’s social circuit. Garlanded wherever he went, he was welcomed like a conquering hero, opening nightclubs, even doling out the trophies at the Elland Road dog track. The fans’ ire was directed solely at the Board. A fulminatory petition signed by more than seventy Corporation Depot workers ran as follows: ‘Dear Mr Revie and Reynolds, You have again hit the jackpot. You have put the first nail in the coffin of Leeds United. We are afraid that you will get a very poor turn out for the funeral of Leeds United this season.’ Others sent wreaths and sarcastic letters thanking the club for bringing Charles back but arguing that it was ‘A pity we can’t afford to watch him.’