>From The Times March 16, 2009
Time to give a damn about reviled Don Revie Rick Broadbent They are Leeds. Dirty, dirty Leeds and Don Readies. Doyens of the dark arts and reviled by revisionists. Brian Clough went to Elland Road, dismantled the club with his unbridled ego and got a payoff that made him financially secure. Revie was damned, ostracised and forgotten. It is time for Revie to be reclaimed and accepted into the pantheon of managerial greats. He should be up there with Clough and Shankly and Busby and Ferguson, but he has been written out of history as damaged goods. He is the ursine villain of The Damned United, a gruff northerner bereft of Clough's wit and charm. The ending of the film is gratuitous in its light and shade, telling us Clough went on to win the European Cup twice, while Revie failed at England and fled to the Middle East amid allegations of financial impropriety. He also changed the face of football for ever. "The football we played from 1969 to 1974 was unbelievable," Johnny Giles once told me. "Some of the matches we played, particularly at Leeds, well, I've never seen better football before or since." Yet Revie and Leeds remain unloved and unforgiven. They are Leeds. Dirty Leeds. They cheated, maimed and hounded referees. Their manager offered bribes. He ran out on England, albeit that he was about to be pushed. Two and two makes 666. There is some truth in the criticism, but it is a sophistic attack that lacks context. Leeds may have been part-time purveyors of violence, but they were not alone. A seminal moment in the club's history came in 1965. Revie had already performed a sooty black miracle by lifting Leeds from the cusp of the third division and near bankruptcy to second place in the top flight and the FA Cup Final. Then came the Inter-City Fairs Cup match against Torino in Turin. Bobby Collins, heartbeat of the side, was taken out by the right back. He broke his femur. The cynicism of the continental game was laid bare as Collins threw off a hospital blanket and proudly showed off the bolt through his leg. That early foray into Europe left indelible marks on both player and manager. When I met Collins at his home several years ago, he was irritated at the choreographed cheating and endemic play-acting of the Premier League. "I think we were harder but more honest," he said. "It was just a case of having to suss out which players were the ones who were going to kick you into the stands. You've got to win and we played real hard. And no, I can't say I was an angel, but I don't apologise for that." Prejudice gives prominence to certain crimes. The beauty of Leeds' football has been banished by their beastliness, but their critics pass off the systematic hounding of referees by Manchester United or the artful conning of referees by high-profile players as gamesmanship; it is a postscript to greatness not an epitaph. Eddie Gray provided the most graphic context when he told me a story about Willie Bell, the Leeds full back. "He played for Scotland against Brazil and, when nobody was looking, Pelé stuck the nut on him. There was blood all over the place. He'd been headbutted by the great Pelé, but things like that happened." Giles, meanwhile, said that the selective editing was down to the North-South divide and the bias of the London media, but it went further. The hatred of Leeds will be refreshed by the film. They are Dirty Leeds, Don Readies and Billy Bremner, the smoking gun who bullied Kevin Keegan in the 1974 Charity Shield and smoked a post-coital fag afterwards. "You can't put into words what Billy Bremner meant to football," Sir Alex Ferguson said, but nobody would ever know. Ferguson seems to have learnt much from Revie. When you heard of him trawling the streets and hauling Ryan Giggs out of a party at Lee Sharpe's house, it was a throwback to Revie researching the backgrounds of players' girlfriends. The results have also been maligned. Leeds won two championships under Revie, an FA Cup, a League Cup and two Fairs Cups. They were runners-up in the league on five occasions and lost five leading cup finals. They missed out on the big one, the European Cup, but it really was for champions then. But they are Leeds and they are chokers.Giles, the highest-profile critic of The Damned United, once gave me an insight into the qualities of Revie. "He brought a knowledge to the game which I don't think anybody has ever come close to," he said. "I played under Matt Busby who was an old-fashioned type of manager, whose method was to get good players in, believe in them and let them go out and play. But Matt was never on the training ground, whereas Don was out there every day. If we lost a goal on Saturday, he'd be there, working out what happened and who was at fault. And he'd put it right." He never put it right enough. Like many born into poverty Revie was motivated by a fear of returning there.There has been much anecdotal evidence of attempting to bribe opponents, as well as Richard Stott's 315-page dossier delivered to the FA. Some Leeds players have denied it. Lorimer suggested that football was awash with illegal cash incentives. Bremner sued a Sunday paper and won. Gary Sprake blew the whistle and was cast out of the family. Clough has been implicated in scandals himself and the High Court heard how he "likes a bung", but his memory is not irreparably tainted. Three years ago, Mike Newell, then the Luton Town manager, said football was still full of dodgy dealings, but he had little support. Sven-Göran Eriksson told a fake sheikh he fancied quitting England for £5 million a year in the Premier League. He has been rehabilitated. Revie never has. And the manifold talents of his team have rarely been recognised as a result. The Damned United has sparked an entire movement devoted to defending Clough, but nobody has come forward to speak up for Don Revie, the flawed genius. Twenty years after his death, it is time to acknowledge that he has been damned with faint praise for too long. _______________________________________________ the Leeds List is an unmoderated mailing list and the list administrators accept no liability for the personal views and opinions of contributors. Leedslist mailing list [email protected] http://list.zetnet.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/leedslist Sorry Macca - it's the curse of Bates old lad
