Down the tunnel to the dressing room –
You are lifted onto a plinth and a white sheet. There is blood everywhere, through the sheet onto the plinth, down the plinth onto the floor –
The smell of blood. The smell of sweat. The smell of tears. The smell of Algipan. You want to smell these smells for the rest of your life.
‘He needs the hospital,’ says Johnny Watters. ‘Needs it quick and all.’
‘But don’t you take his fucking boots off,’ says the Boss again.
You are lifted off the plinth. Off the bloodstained sheet. Onto another stretcher. Down another tunnel –
Into the ambulance. To the hospital. To the knife.
There is an operation and your leg is set in plaster from your ankle to your groin. Stitches in your head. No visitors. No family or friends –
Just doctors and nurses. Johnny Watters and the Boss –
But no one tells you anything, anything you don’t already know –
That this is bloody bad. This is very fucking bad –
The worst day of your life.
* * *
Off the motorway; the South West Urban Motorway. Round the bends. The corners. To the junction with Lowfields Road. Onto Elland Road. Sharp right and through the gates. Into the ground. The West Stand car park. The kids hopping up and down on the back seat. No place to park. No place reserved. The press. The cameras and the lights. The fans. The autograph books and the pens. I open the door. I do up my cuffs. The rain in our hair. I get my jacket out of the back. I put it on. My eldest and my youngest hiding behind me. The rain in our faces. The hills behind us. The houses and the flats. The ground in front of us. The stands and the lights. Across the car park. The potholes and the puddles. This one big bloke pushing his way through the press. The cameras and the lights. The fans –
The black hair and the white skin. The red eyes and the sharpened teeth …
‘You’re bloody late,’ he shouts. Finger in my face.
I look at the press. The cameras and the lights. The fans. The autograph books and the pens. My boys behind me. The rain in our hair. In all our faces –
Our faces sunned and tanned, their faces pallid and wan …
I look this one big bloke in his eye. I move his finger out of my face and tell him, ‘It’s got nowt to do with you whether I’m bloody late or not.’
They love me for what I’m not. They hate me for what I am.
Up the steps and through the doors. Out of the rain and out of the press. The cameras and the lights. The fans. Their books and their pens. Into the foyer and the club. The receptionists and the secretaries. The photographs on the walls. The trophies in the cabinets. The ghosts of Elland Road. Down the corridor and round the corner. Syd Owen, chief coach here for the last fifteen years, leading out the apprentices –
I put out my hand. I give him a wink. ‘Morning, Syd.’
‘Good afternoon, Mr Clough,’ he replies, without shaking my hand.
I put my hands on the heads of my sons. I ask him, ‘You think you could spare one of your young lads here to watch these two of mine while I make myself known?’
‘You’re already known,’ says Syd Owen. ‘And these apprentices are here to develop their capabilities as professional footballers. Not to entertain your children.’
I take my hands off the heads of my sons. I put them on their shoulders. My youngest flinches, my grip too tight –
‘I won’t keep you any longer then,’ I tell this loyal servant, left behind.
Syd Owen nods. Syd says again, ‘Not here to entertain your children.’
There’s a clock ticking somewhere, laughter from another room. Down the corridor, round the corner. The sound of studs stomping off, marching on together.
My eldest looks up at me. He smiles. He says, ‘Who was that, Dad?’
I ruffle his hair. I smile back. I tell him, ‘Your wicked Uncle Syd.’
Down the corridor. Past the photographs. Round the corner. Past the plaques. Into the dressing room. The home dressing room. Keep on fighting above the door. They have left out an away kit for me; yellow shirt, yellow shorts and yellow socks. The kids watch me change. I pull on my own blue tracksuit top. They follow me down the corridor. Round the corner. Through reception and out into the rain. The car park. The cameras and the lights. The autograph books and the pens. I jog through the potholes and the puddles. Past the huts on stilts. Up the banking. Onto the training ground –
The press shout. The fans cheer. The camera lights flash and my own kids duck.
‘Morning, lads,’ I shout over at them –
Them stood in their groups. In their purple tracksuits. There are stains on their knees, stains on their arses. Dirty Leeds. Their hair long, their names on their backs –
Bastards. Bastards. Bastards …
Hunter. The Gray brothers. Lorimer. Giles. Bates. Clarke. Bremner. McQueen. Jordan. Reaney. Cooper. Madeley. Cherry. Yorath. Harvey and Stewart –
All his sons, his bastard sons. Their daddy dead, their daddy gone …
In their groups and their tracksuits. In their stains with their names on their backs. Their eyes on mine –
Screw them. Bugger them. Fuck the bloody lot of them.
I do the rounds for the press. For the cameras and the lights. For the fans. For the autograph books and the pens. A handshake here and an introduction there. Nothing more. Hold your tongue, Brian. Hold your tongue. Watch and learn. Watch and wait –
Don’t let the bastards grind you down, they whisper.
The rounds done, I stand apart. The sun comes out but the rain stays put. No rainbows today. Not here. Hands on my hips. Rain in my face. Sun on my neck. The clouds move fast round here. I look away. My eldest in the car park. A ball on his foot. His knee. His head. In the potholes and the puddles, the rain and the sun, there he is –
A boy with a ball. A boy with a dream.
* * *
It started that first morning in the hospital, the day after Boxing Day, and it’s never stopped, not for a single day since. You wake up and for those first few seconds, minutes, you forget; forget you are injured; forget you are finished –
Forget you will never smell the dressing room again. Never put on a clean new kit. Tie on those shining boots and hear the roar of the crowd –
The roar when the ball hits the back of the net; the roar when you score –
The applause. The adoration. The love.
You wish you could see your wife. You haven’t seen her in days –
Not since Boxing Day. Not since they brought you here.
No one is telling you anything. Not a bloody thing –
You’d get up and go find her yourself, except you can’t.
Then on the fifth day, the door opens and there’s your wife –
‘I’ve been in bed,’ she says. ‘I’ve had a miscarriage.’
* * *
They take us on a tour, me and my kids and the press. Down more corridors. Round more corners. Past the lounges and the boxes. The suites and the clubs. The treatment rooms and the dressing rooms. Then they take us all out onto the pitch itself –
They stand me out there, out there in the centre circle –
The green blades of grass. The white chalk lines …