And now for something completely different…

…The football season has started! Soccer if you are a ham shank, (Yank, sorry USA, Yank is really a term of endearment).

I have never been a football fan as such but do like a good game, may it be an England international or a Scottish one, I’m there watching on my TV and cheering them on. And yes, I’ve even cheered on the Welsh and Northern Irish team but, funnily enough I’ve never, in my 56 years of age, saw a live game in the raw! But I still love watching them play, even though its through the medium of television.

Being a Glaswegian living abroad in England I have always said when asked “what team do you support? “ That I was a Rangers supporter, well I would say that, being a proddy with an Irish Catholic mother eh.

So it is not a big jump for a football fanatic to see that I will support any team, in theory anyway, depending where I live, and so it is, because I live in Middlesbrough and have supported them, in heart anyway, that I support Middlesbrough and have my opinions on their demise from the Premier League, and I have a kept faith that they will make a comeback into first class football, (even though the bastards who run Riverside Park have banned their faithful from smoking anywhere inside, and outside, from smoking, but I digress.)

One of Middlesbrough’s famous footballing sons is one Brian Clough! Oh yes, he might have ended his life as an alcoholic but he was a powerful alcoholic, an alcoholic who lived his life to the full and was no sop to the NHS, as some other ex-footballers were.

I had just a little knowledge of Brian when I first got married and came to Middlesbrough in 1971, and of Middlesbrough for that matter, but my Mother in Law told me that she new Brian Clough when he was a little boy causing mayhem in the neighbourhood of Valley Road, Middlesbrough. The Mother in Law died in 1981.

Through my M in L, and the all pervading local news, I got to know Brian and his ‘no nonsense’ attitude and it really got to me, a football philistine. He was a true star over and above the game he loved.

So it was with much nostalgia that I came to this interview, between two giants of the football world, Brian Clough and Don Revie, from the mid-seventies…please excuse the haircuts. It is in two parts: BTW, Don Revie had managed Leeds United for many years and Brian Clough took over only to last seven weeks, as this interview clearly shows .

Part 1

Click To Play

The Brian Clough/Don Revie interview, part 2

Click To Play

Ah, those were the days when men were real men, they talked about their differences.

Blogger Tags: Brian Clough, Don Revie, Leeds United, Gentlemen, The good old days, nostalgia, indossa Revie, Leeds unita, signori, i buoni vecchi giorni, il gioco del calcio inglese, Leeds unido, os dias velhos bons, football inglês