We Are the Damned United

by Phil Rostron

  ‘I have to say, I wasn’t really surprised by the outburst. Nothing he came out with was surprising. Everybody had seen and heard Clough in his television and radio interviews, and his tendency to lean towards the controversial and the outrageous was so well documented that you just thought you were never going to get anything sensible or well thought out from him. If you expected the unexpected with Clough, then you were not going to go far wrong.

  ‘Our training pitch in those days was the area right next to the ground behind the West Stand, now known as the Fullerton car park. It was usual for 20 or 30 fans to turn up to watch us being put through our paces, but when Clough arrived there were suddenly 2,000 or 3,000. It was manic. The police had to be drafted in to control the traffic on Elland Road.

  ‘His first training session brought my first direct contact with Clough. I was in what we called the bottom goal, and my first feel of the ball was a short goalkick to Paul Reaney, who, in an instant, had Joe Jordan bearing down on him. Joe took the ball off him and blasted in a shot that went only narrowly wide, and the next I knew, Clough, who was at the other end of the pitch, stopped the game. Dressed in the squash gear that he was often photographed in – the green top, shorts and rolled-down socks – he folded his arms as he walked ever so slowly over the halfway line and headed in my direction. He carried right on until our noses were nearly touching and boomed, “If you ever do anything as stupid as that again, you will never get into a team of mine.”

  ‘In front of the other lads, this was a real humiliation, and I could feel my hackles rising. “Mr Clough,” I said, “if you ever again try to make me look a prat, I’ll squeeze your balls even harder than I’m squeezing them now.” There was the kind of stare between us that you see at the weigh-ins in heavyweight boxing until, probably much quicker than he would have liked, he completely bottled it and walked away, restarting the game as if nothing had happened. I was sure I was going to get reprimanded or fined, but that was the last bit of trouble I had with him.’

  If flexing his muscles was an attempt by Clough to win friends and influence people, it was doomed to spectacular failure. His preconceptions about Revie’s Leeds – the cheating, the fouling, the diving and the gamesmanship – had clouded his tenure before it began.

  4

  DIRTY LEEDS?

  If a player is not interfering with play, then he shouldn’t be on the pitch.

  Brian Clough

  It has been referred to by such great players as Teddy Sheringham and John Terry as ‘the biggest personal award you can get in the game’ and ‘the ultimate accolade to be voted for by your fellow professionals whom you play against week in and week out’. Kevin Keegan, Kenny Dalglish, Gary Lineker and, more recently, Steven Gerrard and Cristiano Ronaldo (twice) have been recipients. The Professional Footballers Association Players’ Player of the Year award is universally regarded by the players themselves as a great honour. Every spring, each member of the association casts two votes for fellow players. The names of the nominees shortlisted for the award are published and the winner is announced at a gala event held in London every April.

  The inaugural Player of the Year award, recognising achievements in the 1973–74 season, went to a defender who had such a reputation for tough, aggressive, uncompromising play that he had acquired the nickname ‘Bites Yer Legs’. It was more an affectionate than a derogatory soubriquet, but still, it was generally accepted that you did not mess with Leeds United’s Norman Hunter. It had been a vintage season for members of a Leeds side awash with recognition, honours, prestige and medals, so to be confronted by accusations of cheating from their new manager must have been difficult to countenance. In 2004, Hunter told the Huddersfield Examiner’s Ed Reed:

  They [opponents] were frightened of us but a lot of the time I never hurt anybody – not really . . . We deserved all the titles we got because we were aggressive. That was in the personality of the majority of the players. They were very, very competitive. That will to win was absolutely extraordinary and it was different in different people but, yes, we also deserved the reputation . . . You think now [looking back on Leeds’ success], “By God, that must have been something special.” At the time you didn’t think anything of it. It was a great team. We should have gone down as one of the best teams this country has ever produced but we didn’t win enough silverware. I was in ten finals and won four. We should have been in ten finals and won seven – and that’s without the League.

  Clough would not have been convinced by that overview. Where Revie saw sheer human spirit, a will to win and a desire for success, Clough saw only cheats and thugs. His opinion was not universally shared. Hugh McIlmoyle was in awe of Don Revie’s team and appreciative of the qualities that made them champions. ‘Leeds were not a well-liked team,’ he says, ‘but setting about quick change was the wrong thing for Clough to do. Leeds had some very strong personalities who were well used to a manager in Don Revie whom they liked and trusted. Don mixed with the players where Cloughie would not. Also, the new man was dealing with some big egos, and rightly so because they were all international players.

  ‘I played against Leeds a few times down the years, going back, even, to when the legendary John Charles made his brief return to the club from Juventus, and through the times when Revie moulded a team from the youngsters he had on board like Peter Lorimer, Eddie Gray and Frank Gray. They were always an aggressive team, very hard to beat. You could tackle from behind among lots of other things you could do in those days that you can’t do now, and Leeds were well practised in these areas. For instance, they were the first team to station a player, usually Jack Charlton, right in front of the goalkeeper when they had a corner, and then later it would be two or three players hindering the keeper.

  ‘The thing was, it was all within the laws of the game, but there was the general feeling that Leeds pushed these laws to their very limit. They were also the first to jump on the referee as a team, baying at him to change his mind over decisions given against them or pleading for a penalty or a free kick, having been instructed by Revie that refs were generally weak and could be cajoled. Their tactics sometimes riled opposing teams and certainly infuriated rival fans, but they had some great, great players. I think if they had been more measured, concentrating more on their playing abilities and less on the snappy, aggressive stuff, they would have won a lot more trophies than they did, although there is the counter-argument that if you had taken the aggression out of them, they would not have been the team they were.

  ‘I never enjoyed any success against them, but then there are a lot of members in that particular club. Not many players can say they had a beanfeast against that Leeds side. To have had a team of such quality – Reaney and Cooper at full-back, Bremner, Charlton and Hunter as half-backs and a forward line of Lorimer, Giles, Jones, Clarke and Gray – gave them a great chance every game they played. In the ’60s and ’70s, that half-back trio alone would virtually guarantee victory, and that wing pairing was devastating for opponents. It was the contrast in them that was so marked. Lorimer was so direct and Gray, when he was running at players, could just ghost by them in the way that George Best was to do later. He was fantastic. Leeds didn’t buy in many players, but the one I thought was an excellent signing was Mick Jones. I could appreciate him as a striker because he was just so in your face, with the right amount of tempered aggression in his play. Giles was a gem of a player and you had the same kind of contrast between him and Bremner in midfield as you did with Lorimer and Gray on the wing. Bremner was all action and pumped up with aggression, whereas Giles, who nonetheless could look after himself, was more the architect and playmaker. Class.’

  One player more than any other epitomised the knife-edge balance between aggression and skill described by McIlmoyle as characteristic of Revie’s Leeds. To witness Billy Bremner in action was to see combat, tenacity, confrontation, pragmatism, determination, dexterity, flair, ability, athleticism and leadership all rolled into a diminutive frame th
at once gave birth to a headline ‘Ten Stone of Barbed Wire’. As a footballer, Bremner was quite simply brilliant.

  Never in the game’s history can a run of matches have conspired to make such demands on the reserves of the human body as the programme undertaken by Leeds in the spring of 1970. They were challenging on three fronts, for the league, the FA Cup and the European Cup, and the fixture pile-up that was created was brutal. There were nine matches in the month of March alone, and when April breezed in there were three games in the first four days of the month and eight in all. This totalled 17 matches in 56 days, with none of them meaningless, all of them counting for something and the stakes high throughout. There was no taking the foot off the pedal even for a moment. In the end, they won nothing, but this was not for want of supreme effort in a squad led throughout by a red-headed firebrand whose name is immortal.

  I first saw Bremner live in action in a game that held the country spellbound during that epic run of matches: the FA Cup semi-final second replay against Manchester United at Bolton Wanderers’ Burnden Park. The first attempt to settle this tie, on 14 March at Hillsborough, saw two impregnable defences hold firm in a goalless draw; the replay, at Villa Park on 23 March, also ended in stalemate, even after extra time. Three days later, these two famous clubs were at each other’s throats again, the prize a Wembley final against Chelsea, who had walloped Watford 5–1 at the first time of asking in the other semi-final at White Hart Lane. This had become personal for Bremner, who emerged into the Lancashire night air a man possessed. There were just nine minutes on the clock when he contrived a net-busting shot and proceeded to give such an authoritative demonstration of the meaning of the expression ‘running the show’ that it has remained clear in my memory to this day. The whole Leeds team performed wonderfully that night, but Bremner, with his non-stop probing, constant bustling and inarguable instruction, was outstanding. Poetry in motion. I had, of course, seen miles of television footage of Bremner and this fabulous Leeds side, but to be there to witness such artistry provided a golden memory.

  More than a quarter of a century later, seeking an informed opinion on a forthcoming Euro 96 clash between England and Scotland, I was privileged to meet the great man. One school of thought maintains that you should never meet your heroes lest you be disappointed. It’s wrong. Or at least it was wrong in this case, because Bremner was entertaining, great fun, warm, friendly and welcoming. Here is what, as sports editor of the Daily Star at the time, I wrote:

  I did not know quite what to expect from Billy Bremner. A kick in the goolies was probably routine from the man who, I always feared when watching him as a young fan, would cripple you first then ask questions later. Along with Liverpool’s Tommy Smith, he was my football hero. What we all had in common was a number 4 shirt. I tried to model myself upon them. Although I was always going to be markedly less successful, my thirst for seeing them in action was unquenchable. Now the unthinkable was happening. Walking through the gates of a pristine cottage in the South Yorkshire hamlet of Clifton, I was about to come face to face with the feisty Scot. He was charming. Completely disarming. He went to make a cup of tea in the neat kitchen and carried out the chore beneath an ornamental sign which confesses: ‘I can’t do anything right until I’ve had a cup of cigarette and smoked a coffee.’ All a far cry from the pocket Hercules who, in his prime, thought man-marking was a set of stud abrasions up and down an opponent’s leg. Staying so close to your opposite number that the game might end with a marriage proposal was something that happened abroad. The British game was freeflow in Billy’s day but the subject of man-to-man arises as we contemplate this afternoon’s titanic Wembley battle.

  The feature of the game promises to be the shadowing job Billy believes will be carried out by Stuart McCall on his Rangers teammate Paul Gascoigne. ‘I can’t imagine that Gazza will be allowed to roam free,’ says Billy, ‘because he is the most potent threat. Keep him quiet. That’s the key. McCall is a great wee competitor. People think he is just a destroyer but he’s there to protect John Collins and Gary McAllister when they go on the break. He does it better than anyone. The players appreciate him, but I’m not sure the fans always do.’

  Billy then recalls how he himself once had to do a man-marking job. On Pelé. He was told to stick tight to the Brazilian legend in a World Cup warm-up at Hampden in 1965. ‘Every time he got the ball he would back into me and there he was – gone! Early in the game he kept looking at me and smiling. The message coming over in those smiles was that the first chance he got he was going to do me. We’d been playing an hour when we both went up for a ball and, in one blinding movement, he got his head to it first and wheeled round with an elbow that caught me full in the eye. It came up like a tennis ball within seconds. My Leeds colleague Willie Bell – he’s a holy man in America now – said after the game how disgusted he was. He told me, “Pelé – I’ll never have any respect for that man after what he did to you.” I’d just kicked seven bells of shit out of Pelé for an hour and he’d got his own back in style and Willie was crying about it! Willie never swore. His wife used to send him with cake and sandwiches she’d made specially if we were playing abroad. And tight? One player took a dab of his aftershave one day and Willie told him, “Hey, that’s not water, you know.” I’m sure the horror of Pelé’s elbow in my eye figures in his sermons to this day.’

  Back to Wembley and today’s Battle of Britain. What result did Billy predict? ‘I can’t see anything other than a draw,’ he insists. ‘England will have the greatest difficulty in breaking down the Scots and I can see us catching them on the break and nicking one. Make no mistake, this is war. Nobody will need any motivation for this one. Can we score? That’s the million-dollar question. McAllister is another key player. He’s not as fiery as I was, but probably it’s better that way. I used to let my heart rule my head when I played for Scotland, particularly in games against England. He’s more composed. But the guys are on a real high. You look at the Dutch and the English, who are not a bad side, and nine times out of ten you’d back the Dutch to win. That’s why the result today is so important. And the fans are so critical a factor. Against the Dutch they were like having an extra man on the park. They were fantastic. They went along to enjoy it, found a good comradeship with the opposing fans and the whole atmosphere was electric. Scottish fans are the best in the world. It must have been so intimidating for any team going up to play in front of 110,000 at Hampden in the old days. Wembley still has a bit of magic, though. The man who led England to the World Cup, Alf Ramsey, didn’t like the Scots. He would simply tell his players to go out and beat the Jocks. But throughout history the players have had a friendly animosity towards each other. Personally, I was always all right as long as they didn’t start throwing punches at me.’

  Punches? At Billy Bremner? Well, there have been a couple of celebrated incidents, but you would have had to have had a death wish to start mixing it with the man who made the number 4 shirt his own in 19 years at Leeds and whose 54 international caps included 9 against England. He might be small, and those fiery red shocks of wavy hair may now be grey and receding, but when his ice-blue eyes fix you with a stare you can sense the discomfort, as you squirm in your chair, that opposing players must have gone through. ‘I’ll tell you why it will be a battlefield out there,’ he resumes. ‘I’ve seen it so many times. Training sessions at Elland Road used to involve five-a-side matches and I don’t know whether it was the governor’s sense of humour or what but he would make it England versus the Scots. At one time there was me, Eddie Gray, Frank Gray, Joe Jordan, Gordon McQueen, Peter Lorimer and David Harvey and it was war against the likes of Allan Clarke and his Sassenach softies. Guerrilla warfare. That Lorimer was something. We were playing Red Star Belgrade one day and we got a free kick 40 yards out. He whispered to me that he fancied shooting and I said, “You’re out of your head.” But he let this thing go and the keeper never moved. Whoosh! Do you know what? He can still do it. There’s an ex-players’ team
in Leeds who turn out most Sundays and Peter’s shot is as lethal today as it was back then.’ Lorimer, it will be remembered, was once scientifically measured as having the hardest shot in British football.

  Bremner has never been screened as a diplomat. ‘England does nothing for its football heroes,’ he says. ‘Three years ago Bobby Moore, Nobby Stiles, Denis Law and I were invited to a dinner in Aberdeen, none of us knowing what it was in aid of. It was only when the cheese was being passed round that we learned it was the 25th anniversary of Scotland being the first team to beat England since they won the World Cup! Moore said “What? We’ve never had a dinner for winning the World Cup!” Scotland would still be having three dinners a year! Mind you, that was some game in 1967. A lot of Scots would be hard put to name the team that day. Jim McCalliog and Bobby Lennox weren’t regulars but they both scored in a match that lives on in my memory. The one I’d like to erase, but never can, is when England won 5–0 at Hampden. It was just shit. It was a night match in February and the pitch was like a road. It should never have been played. They must have done it for the money or something.’

  Bremner, having acquired more than 50 caps, is in the Scottish Football Hall of Fame, a privileged bunch who receive a gold medal, commissioned self-portrait, tickets for international matches and the inevitable annual dinner. ‘I’ve had my time, but I’ll be envying those boys at Wembley. When I was a laddie watching at Hampden I used to wonder what they were doing in the dressing-room. Then the ballboys would run out, the teams would emerge and this most colossal roar filled the air. Ah, the passion. The fervour. I always dreamed that maybe one day it would happen to me and it did. I was a proud man. Now it’s their time and I hope they come out with the right result. My other hope is for a sensible referee. If he’s the type to give out cards willy-nilly we could have a procession. As schoolboys in Scotland you are indoctrinated with how the English came up and pillaged the place and all the other nasty things they did to us throughout history. I wouldn’t even mind the historical tables being turned a bit.’