The Damned Utd

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.’

* * *

You have built an ocean liner out of a shipwreck. You have played forty-two games. You have won twenty-six of them. Drawn eleven and lost five. You have scored sixty-five goals in those forty-two games and conceded just thirty-two. Those twenty-six wins and eleven draws have brought you sixty-three points and the Second Division Championship; promotion to the First Division –

You can’t wait for the new season to start –

You can’t, can’t, can’t fucking wait.

Just one little thing spoils this time and this place for you, and that one little thing is Leeds United and Don Revie winning the First Division Championship, and to make this one little thing much, much worse, the press are forever comparing Leeds and Derby: the clean sheets; the Scottish engine rooms of Bremner and Mackay; the Middlesbrough-born managers, Revie and yourself, cut from the same cloth; the list goes on and on –

But you are not Don Revie and you will never be Don Revie. Never –

‘Whatever people say you are, that is what you’re not.’

Derby County are not Leeds and you are not Revie –

You are a dynamite-dealer, waiting to blow the First Division to Kingdom bloody Cum, the whole fucking game, because this is who you are –

Brian Howard Clough, thirty-four, and a First Division manager –

Brian Howard Clough and nobody else –

An ocean liner out of a shipwreck.

* * *

Fifteen minutes into the second half, Kevin Keegan hustles the Irishman from behind and Giles whips round and punches Keegan in the face with his right fist. They will burn the grass. Giles, the player-manager of the Republic of Ireland; John Giles, the would-be assistant manager of Tottenham Hotspur; Johnny Giles, the should-be manager of Leeds United. Turn this grass to ash. The referee gets out his book. Keegan pleads for leniency on behalf of Giles. The Irishman stays on the pitch but goes in the book. Turn this field to dust. Minutes later, Bremner and Keegan collide during a Leeds free-kick. They will salt this earth. There is a sea of fists, kicks to the heels and digs to the ribs. Leave this ground as stone. Keegan flies round and swings out at Bremner. Barren and fallow for ever. Bob Matthewson sends them both off –

Dirty, dirty Leeds, Leeds, Leeds …

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

Bremner and Keegan walk along the touchline. It is a long, lonely walk to a deserted, empty dressing room. Bremner and Keegan strip off their shirts, the white number 4 and the red number 7; shirts they should be proud to wear, these shirts they throw to the ground –

This is what you think I am, says Bremner. This is who you say I am …

Shirts any lad in the land would dream of picking up, of pulling on –

Then this is what I am, shouts Billy. This is who I am.

But not Billy Bremner. Not Kevin Keegan –

His eyes in the stands, behind my back.

No one learns their lesson; Jordan fights with Clemence, and McQueen goes in to sort it out like a fucking express train. Dirty, dirty Leeds, Leeds, Leeds. To add injury to the insults, Allan Clarke is carried off with torn bloody ligaments –

His eyes in that suit, behind my back.

Ten minutes after that, Trevor Cherry heads home an equalizer; first right thing he’s done all afternoon. But no one’s watching. Not now; now minds are racing, events and pens. The game goes to penalties; the first time the Charity Shield has ever gone to penalties, no more Charity, no more sharing of the Shield. The penalties go to 5–5. Harvey and Clemence make a goalkeepers’ pact to each to take the sixth penalty for their side. David Harvey steps up. David Harvey hits the bar. Ray Clemence stays put –

Callaghan steps up. Callaghan converts the sixth penalty –

Liverpool win the 1974 Charity Shield –

But no one notices. Not now –

Now two British players have been dismissed from Wembley –

The first two British players ever to be dismissed at Wembley –

Now they’re going to throw the fucking book at them — at us — for this. The fucking book. Television and the Disciplinary Committee will see to that. You can forget Rattin. There will be those who want Leeds and Liverpool thrown out of the league. Their managers too. Bremner and Keegan banned for life –

Heavy fines and points deducted –

On the panels. In the columns –

In his eyes. In his eyes.

The stadium empties in silence. The tunnel. The corridors and the dressing rooms.

No one is sat next to Bremner on the coach out of Wembley. I sit down next to him. I tell him, ‘You’ll pay your own bloody fine out of your own fucking pocket and, if I had my bloody way, you’d fucking pay Keegan’s fine and all.’

‘You ever play at Wembley did you, Mr Clough?’

‘You can’t do that to me,’ says Bremner. ‘Mr Revie always paid all our fines.’

‘He’s not here now, is he?’ I tell him. ‘So you’ll pay it yourself.’

‘You ever play at Wembley did you, Mr Clough?’

Bremner looks at me now and Bremner makes his vow:

In loss. In hate. In blood. In war –

Saturday 10 August 1974.