The Damned Utd

Unstoppable. Unstoppable. Un-fucking-stoppable –

Green. Webster. Robson. Durban. McFarland. Mackay. McGovern. Carlin. O’Hare. Hector and Hinton.

Dave Mackay goes up the steps. Mackay picks up the trophy –

The Second Division Championship trophy –

Mackay holds it aloft in his right hand –

The crowd roars. The crowd chants –

‘Derby! Derby! Derby!’

You stand before the chairman, the directors and the board, stand before them with your players and your trophy, the sound of the crowd ringing around the Baseball Ground, ringing around the whole of the bloody town –

This time last year there were 20,000 here to see you lose to Blackpool. The year before 11,000. This time last year Dave Mackay thought he’d played his last game. Today there are 32,000 here. Today you are Champions –

You shake Dave’s hand. Peter pats Dave’s back –

Dave Mackay is one year older than you; umpteen medals, cups and caps heavier than you, he will be named joint Footballer of the Year for this season –

But you are still smiling from ear to bloody ear –

Still smiling from ear to fucking ear –

The chairman too. The board –

The whole fucking town.

* * *

They are not my team. Not mine. Not this team, and they never will be. They are his team. His Leeds. His dirty fucking Leeds, and they always will be. Not my team. Never. Not mine. Never. Not mine. Never. Not this team. Never –

It is gone midnight and I cannot sleep. I’ve drunk too bloody much again and I’ve got a thumping fucking headache. The hotel room is too hot and the pillows are too hard and I miss my wife, I miss my kids and I wish I wasn’t me, Brian Howard Clough. Not for tonight and not for tomorrow. I get out my address book. I pick up the phone. I dial his number and I wake him up:

‘Who is this?’

‘It’s Brian Clough,’ I tell him.

‘What the hell do you want, Brian? It’s past midnight.’

‘I know,’ I tell him. ‘I’m very sorry to wake you up like this.’

‘Are you drunk, man? What’s wrong with you?’

‘This is your team,’ I tell him. ‘I want you to lead them out at Wembley.’

‘Pardon?’

‘You won the league,’ I tell him. ‘You lead them out tomorrow.’

‘You’ve got the job now, Brian,’ says Don Revie. ‘It’s your privilege.’

* * *

The sky is dark but clear, the stands empty but for the rubbish and the echoes. The crowd have all gone home or to the pub, to celebrate the Second Division Championship; the start of the Golden Age. But not you –

You stand in the mouth of the tunnel at the Baseball Ground and you watch Dave Mackay practising with your eldest and your youngest, kicking ball after ball after ball into the wooden shooting box, a little wooden target area beneath the old main stand –

Put it in a box, hide it in a tree, the tallest tree you can see…

Ball after ball after ball, ball after ball after ball –

Because this is the happiest day of your life …

Because this is the first thing you have ever won and, like your first pair of boots, your first kiss and your first car, you’ll never forget the hours of this day –

Saturday 19 April 1969.

Day Eleven

Bill Shankly walks out of the Wembley tunnel alone, out onto the Wembley pitch, out to a massive ovation from the whole of the Wembley stadium, the Leeds fans as well as the Liverpool ones –

You’ll never walk alone.

Then Revie takes his salute from the pitch, from both sets of fans –

Marching on together –

Revie in his lucky blue suit; his match-day suit –

Fingers crossed for his team, his boys.

I turn to Bremner in the tunnel, turn to see if he’s applauding his old boss, but Billy’s looking at his boots. Billy’s been in a fucking rotten mood from the moment we got him up; cursing at breakfast, cursing at lunch. Having a go at the receptionist, the waiter, the coach driver and half the bloody team. Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s London. The occasion. Now he walks out behind me, dragging that League Championship trophy down the tunnel and across the pitch, leading out the glummest faces ever seen at Wembley. I turn to Shanks and his Liverpool side and I applaud him as we walk from the tunnel to the touchline, the team he built behind him, the team Revie built behind me –

Harvey Clemence Reaney Smith Cherry Lindsay Bremner Thompson, P. McQueen Cormack Hunter Hughes Lorimer Keegan Clarke Hall Jordan Heighway Giles Boersma Gray, E. Callaghan

Through the noise of 67,000 people clapping and cheering, I ask Bill, ‘How many times have you done this, sir?’

But Shankly does not reply, his head high, his eyes fixed –

On this one last match. His last ever match …

Fixed on the future. Fixed on regret –

Regret. Regret. Regret.

From the kick-off, Bremner and the Irishman nip and snap at Liverpool’s heels, but it’s Sniffer who gets the first blood; a four-inch gash in Thompson’s shin. Then the Irishman receives a dose of his own medicine from Tommy Smith. This is how it starts –

The 1974 FA Charity Shield; Liverpool vs Leeds –

Dirty, dirty Leeds, Leeds, Leeds …

Every kick and every touch, with every trip and every punch –

This is what you think we are, they say. This is who you say we are …

Then this is what we are, they shout. This is who we are …

Dirty, dirty Leeds, they sing. Dirty, dirty Leeds, Leeds, Leeds …

His eyes in the stands. Behind my back. His eyes in that suit –

Dirty, dirty Leeds, Leeds, Leeds.

This is how it starts and that is how it will finish; Bremner and the Irishman kicking Liverpool up the arse –

Up the arse and in the balls. Particularly Kevin Keegan –

Keegan who dodges behind Hunter and Cherry with ease to lash in a shot that Harvey cannot hold, that lets Boersma knee the ball into the net on twenty minutes. From then on it’s all Liverpool; Heighway and Callaghan running rings around Hunter and Cherry. Thank Christ for Paul Reaney on the right and Eddie Gray on the left because the rest of them are bloody shite –

This is what you think we are. This is who you say we are …

Then this is what we are. This is who we are.

Off the pitch and out of the light, down the tunnel and down the corridor, in the half-light and the full stench of their Wembley dressing room at half-time, I tell them, ‘The first fifteen minutes, you were all over them. Then Bremner and the Irishman here, they decided to give Keegan the freedom of the fucking park and now you’re losing, losing because of Kevin bloody Keegan and these two clowns, these two clowns and their lack of bloody concentration and their lack of fucking responsibility, their complete bloody abdication of any fucking sense of responsibility.’