It’s gone two in the morning when the bus drops us back at Elland Road and the taxi comes to take me to my modern luxury hotel. The bar is closed, the piano silent. I go up to my room and I pick up the phone to call my wife and kids, to call my brothers, to call John, Billy or Colin or any of my family and my friends not here with me tonight –
My mam and Peter.
I dial room service and I order champagne. Then I get out my pens and I get out my papers. I spread out the Evening Post and I start on the league tables and the fixtures. There’s a knock on the door and the waiter wheels in the trolley –
The bucket and the bottle.
‘Thank you very much,’ I tell him. ‘Now pick up that phone and call your gaffer and tell him you won’t be back down for the next hour because Brian bloody Clough has requested the pleasure of your company and then go get yourself another glass, pull up a pew and raise that glass in a toast with me –
‘To absent friends — fuck them all.’
* * *
No one speaks when you meet in the car park at the Baseball Ground. No one speaks as you get on the team bus. No one speaks on the drive to Old Trafford. No one speaks at all; the players don’t speak; the trainers and the coaches don’t speak; Jimmy and Peter don’t speak; you don’t speak; Longson and Webby don’t speak; Kirkland and the other directors don’t speak. No one speaks at all. No one says a single bloody word –
Things have come to this; month by month, week by week, day by day. Now things can’t get any worse; the month is here, the week is here and the day is coming, the hour and the minute. Tick-tock, tick-tock, go the hands on your watch. Tick-tock –
This is the end, you think. This is the end. This is the end.
You and Peter stay with the team in the dressing room, your wives in the stands on scalped tickets, the ground filling up, the ground opening up –
Tick-tock, go the hands on your watch. Tick-tock.
You go down the tunnel with the team, your team, and out onto the pitch. You walk along the touchline. You look up into the stand for your wife. You see her in the stands. You put two fingers together and salute her with a wave. You take your place in the dug-out, on the bench, with Peter and with Jimmy –
Tick-tock, go the hands on your watch.
Just four minutes in and Forsyth underhits a back pass to Stepney, and Hector nips in and tucks the ball into the corner of the net. Just four minutes in and it’s as good as over, good as over until the seventy-ninth minute when Kidd and Young hit the bar. But the score remains the same until the end –
This is the end, you think. This is the end.
‘I know that Don Revie studies the league table every night,’ you tell the press and the television. ‘And I know he’ll be looking at that table and thinking about Liverpool and Newcastle. But I also know one club will hit him right in the eye, and that club is Derby and this time I reckon we’ll be ready for Don Revie and Leeds United when he brings them to the Baseball Ground on November the twenty-fourth.’
‘You’ll still be there then, will you?’ they ask. ‘Still the manager?’
Peter pulls you away. Peter takes you to one side. Peter says, ‘Winning here doesn’t happen very often. Let’s take the wives upstairs to the boardroom.’
‘I don’t think it’s a good idea,’ you tell him.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Might never happen again.’
Tick-tock, tick-tock, go the hands on your watch. Tick-tock –
‘Go on then,’ you tell him, ‘but I’m not staying more than half an hour.’
So Peter goes off and finds your wives and then the four of you go upstairs to the Manchester United boardroom, the Manchester United boardroom where Longson and Kirkland and all the other Derby brass are having the time of their bloody lives, with their cigars in their hands and their wives on their arms, the time of their lives until you four walk in and the Manchester United boardroom goes quiet, silent –
Tick-tock, go the hands on your watch. Tick-tock.
But then the glasses clink, the coughs come and the conversations start back up.
‘This must be the first time you’ve been in here?’ asks Louis Edwards as he cracks open another bottle of champagne. But Peter is already pulling you away, already taking you to one side and saying, ‘Time we were going back down.’
‘Fuck off,’ you tell him. ‘We’ve only just bloody got up here.’
‘But I don’t like it here,’ he says. ‘Not my kind.’
‘Looks like someone wants a word with you though,’ you tell him, and Peter glances back to see Jack Kirkland crooking his finger, beckoning him over.
‘No one bloody crooks their fucking finger at me,’ hisses Peter.
‘Just go and see what the twat wants and then we’ll get off,’ you tell him –
Tick-tock, go the hands on your watch.
But as Peter is walking across the Manchester United boardroom towards Jack Kirkland, Longson is walking up to you and, in front of your wife and in front of the room, Sam Longson asks, ‘Did you make a V-sign at the Manchester United directors?’
‘Did I do what?’
‘Did you make a V-sign at Sir Matt and the Manchester United directors?’
‘No.’
‘They say you did.’
‘Well, I didn’t.’
‘I want you to apologize.’
‘No.’
‘I’m not asking you to apologize,’ says Longson. ‘I’m telling you to apologize.’
‘Fuck off.’
The chairman of Derby County Football Club stares into your eyes as your wife looks down at the devils in the carpet and you glance at your watch –
It has stopped.
Longson turns and walks away as Peter comes back across the Manchester United carpet. Peter is also red-faced. Peter also has tears in his eyes. Peter takes Lillian by her arm. Peter leads her out of the Manchester United boardroom –
You turn to your wife. You tell her, ‘We’re going.’
No one speaks on the coach back to Derby; the players don’t speak; the trainers and the coaches don’t speak; Jimmy and Peter don’t speak; you don’t speak; your wives don’t speak; no one speaks at all –
No one says a single fucking word –
It is Saturday 13 October 1973, and you know this is the end.
* * *
The sun is shining, the sky is blue, but it’s still another bloody ugly Yorkshire morning at the arse-end of August when I wake up in my modern luxury hotel bed in my modern luxury hotel room, feeling like fucking dogshit, and reach over the pens and the papers, the league tables and the fixtures to switch on the modern luxury radio beside the bed:
‘Yesterday Mr Denis Howell, the Sports Minister, chaired the so-called Soccer Summit to hammer out plans for dealing with hooliganism after the stabbing to death of a fourteen-year-old Blackpool supporter last Saturday. Afterwards Mr Howell said that players would also be required to tighten up their conduct on the pitch:
‘“We have expressed the view that the FA, in dealing with misconduct, must express the seriousness of the situation and the determination we have to get this problem under control and conquer it in the interests of football and the sporting public.”
‘Later this morning, Billy Bremner, of Leeds United and Scotland, and Kevin Keegan, of Liverpool and England, will appear before the FA Disciplinary Committee in London, accused of bringing the game into disrepute by pulling off their shirts after being sent off in the FA Charity Shield at Wembley earlier this month.’
I switch off my modern luxury radio and lie back in my modern luxury hotel bed and thank fucking God that I left Maurice in London to accompany Bremner and Giles –
Thank fucking God, this once.
* * *
The coach drops you all back at the Baseball Ground. You call taxis for your wives and then you and Peter go up the stairs to your office –
‘He wants to know exactly what my job is,’ rails Peter. ‘Can you fucking believe the cunt? He’s only been on the board two fucking minutes and he wants to know what my bloody job is. Wagging his fucking finger at me in front of all them folk. First thing Monday bloody morning, the bastard tells me. Well, I’m not going, Brian. I’m bloody off. No one wags their fucking finger at me.’
You open up your office. You switch on the lights. You go inside –
The security grille has been pulled down over the bar.
You walk over to the grille. You rattle it –
It’s been locked.
* * *
There is no training today and the car park is empty when the taxi drops me at the ground. It’ll fill up soon enough; as soon as the FA Disciplinary Committee announces its verdict. I see John Reynolds up on the practice pitch. I jog up the banking and onto the pitch –
I hold up my wrist and my watch and I tell him, ‘Still going strong, John.’
‘That’s good,’ he says.
I nod and I smile and I ask him, ‘How are you this morning then, John?’
‘I’m working,’ he says and walks away.
* * *
You pace and you pace, up and down your carpet. Back and forth, you pace and you pace. The walls getting closer and closer, the room getting hotter and hotter. It is Sunday lunchtime and you can hear the church bells pealing, smell the Sunday joint cooking. Roasting. Peter is sat on your sofa. Peter is smoking. You pick up the phone. You telephone Longson at his home –
‘Can I have your permission to sack Stuart Webb? He’s locked the bar.’
‘I know,’ Longson tells you. ‘Stuart was acting on my instructions.’
‘He was what? Why? What’s going on?’
‘You just get on with managing the team,’ he tells you and hangs up.
You put down your telephone. Slam it down. Break it –
Peter is sat on your sofa. Peter is crying –
It is Sunday 14 October 1973.
* * *
Under the stands. Through the doors. Round the corners. Down the corridor to the office. I unlock the door and I switch on the lights. The telephone is ringing. I pour a drink and I light a fag and I pick up the phone:
‘You best come up here,’ says Cussins. ‘The verdict’s in.’
I finish my drink. I put out my cigarette. I switch off the lights and I lock the door. Down the corridors and round the corners. Up the stairs and through the doors –
The Yorkshire boardroom, the Yorkshire curtains, the board silent and subdued, grim and stony-faced. The ashtrays filling up –
‘Both Bremner and Keegan have been fined £500 each and suspended from today until September the thirtieth,’ says Manny Cussins.
‘September the thirtieth?’ I repeat. ‘That’s over a bloody month.’
‘The viewing public were shocked and offended by what they saw,’ says Cussins. ‘The FA were let down. Mr Stokes and the Committee felt they had no choice.’
‘What about Giles?’
‘Both John Giles and Tommy Smith were giving a good talking to,’ says Cussins. ‘But no further action was taken against either of them.’
‘How many games will Bremner miss?’ asks Percy Woodward.
‘Eight,’ I tell him. ‘Including the first leg of the European Cup.’
‘Eight?’ repeats Cussins.
‘Not forgetting the three he’s already missed, so that’s eleven in all.’
‘We’ll survive,’ says Woodward. ‘It’s happened before.’
‘A hundred and forty-two days out of the last ten years,’ I tell them.
‘But this is the first trouble Bremner’s had in over four years,’ says Woodward. ‘Mr Revie worked very hard to improve discipline.’
I light a cigarette. I say nothing.
Then Sam Bolton says, ‘You should have been there.’
‘At the FA? Why?’
‘Paisley was there with his players.’
‘So bloody what?’ I tell him. ‘What Bremner did was nothing to do with me and I’ll not be associated with it.’
‘He’s your player,’ says Bolton. ‘Your captain.’
‘It wouldn’t have made any bloody difference whether I was there or not.’
‘Not to fine or suspension,’ says Bolton. ‘But it might have made a bloody difference to player himself and rest of his bloody team.’
‘Bollocks,’ I tell him, tell them all, and I leave the room. Through the doors. Down the stairs. Round the corners. Down the corridors. I unlock the door and I switch on the light. There is a note on the floor under the door to say Bill Nicholson called.
* * *
Peter comes out of his meeting with Jack Kirkland and says, ‘I don’t think there is any place for me here now. It’s Hartlepools all over again, trying to get at you through me.’
‘They think we’re too big for our boots,’ you say and hand Peter the letter –
The letter that arrived this morning. The letter from Longson –
First class. Recorded delivery:
Dear Mr Clough,
Henceforth each and every newspaper article and television appearance must be approved by the board. If you repeat or continue after receipt of this letter any breach of your obligations under your agreement with the club, the board will assuredly take the only course which you will thereby leave open to them. I should add that they will do so with some reluctance but without hesitation.
Yours sincerely, Samuel Longson
‘What are we going to do?’ asks Peter.
‘We’re finishing,’ you tell him. ‘That’s what we’re going to do.’
You pick up the phone. You call Longson –
‘You’ve got what you wanted,’ you tell him. ‘We’re calling a special board meeting tonight and we’re resigning.’
‘There’ll be no board meeting tonight,’ he tells you. ‘I’m not driving all the way into Derby just for you two buggers. Put your resignations in writing and give them to the board tomorrow morning.’
You put down the phone. You look round the office –
At Peter. At the journalists and the mates who’ve gathered here –
‘You’re a bloody journalist so you can type, can’t you?’ you tell the bloke from the Evening Telegraph, and Gerald Mortimer from the Derby Evening Telegraph nods.
‘Good,’ you tell him. ‘Then take this down:
‘Dear Mr Longson,
‘Thank you for your letter, which was delivered to me today. I have studied it carefully and have come to the conclusion that this, coupled with the other events of the past three months, leaves me with no alternative course of action. I wish therefore to inform you and the board of directors that I am tendering my resignation as manager of this club and wish this to come into effect immediately.
‘Yours sincerely, Brian Clough.’
Gerald Mortimer stops typing. The office is silent. The security grille locked –
‘Right, Peter,’ you tell him. ‘You’re next.’
* * *
I drive back down to Derby early. I kiss my wife and I kiss my kids. I lock the door and I take the phone off the hook. I have dinner with my wife and my kids. I wash the dishes and I dry them. I bath my kids and I dry them. I read them stories and I kiss them goodnight. I watch television with my wife and I tell her I’ll be up in a bit. Then I switch off the television and I pour another drink –
I get out my pens and I get out my papers –
The league table and the results. The league table and the fixtures –
But the results never change. Never. The table never changes –
Until it’s almost light outside. Again. Morning here now –
This won’t work. That big black fucking dog again –
‘Clough out!’ he barks. ‘Clough out! Clough out!’