Sadly coincidental that memories of Brian Clough in yesterday’s blog should be followed by news of Larry Lloyd’s death today, but chance for Guisborough Town vice-chairman Don Cowan to spin a splendid story, nonetheless.
Though an ever-present part of the Liverpool team which won the league and UEFA Cup double in 1973, Lloyd may best be rememebered as the hard man at the centre of Nottingham Forest’s defence in successive European Cup triumphs, 1979 and 1980.
“I wasn’t that hard, I was just clumsy at times” he once insisted, though his autobiography was called Hard man, hard game.
The Telegraph tells how Clough signed him from Coventry City, adding the promise of a new washing machine as a sweetener. On his first morning at the Forest training ground he was approached by a kitman who told him he’d just cost them their best washing machine.
“The manager sent two blokes down and told them to take it round your house.”
Don adds the account – perhaps with an aura of the apocryphal, he concedes, but why let the facts get in the way of a good story – of the time that Clough had fined Lloyd £100 after the player had totted up yet another ban, not for kicking a forward but for arguing with the ref.
Unimpressed, Lloyd turned up at training the following morning pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with small hessian bags. “There’s your fine, boss” he said. “There’s 100 bags each with 100 one penny pieces.”
Clough asked if he’d got them from the bank. Told that it was the case, he opened his filing cabinet and poured himself a large scotch. “In my experience banks aren’t to be trusted, Larry” he said.
“I’ll sit here and enjoy my drink while you count every penny or you can take the bags back where you got them and write a cheque for £100.”
The cheque was handed over the next morning.
*Enthusing about the “new” Newcastle Blue Star, last Saturday’s blog recalled a 1990s proposal that Maidstone FC, then in the fourth division, should merge with the “old” Blue Star and move to Tyneside.
Former Hartlepool United chairman Garry Gibson, a Football League management committee member in 1992-93, recalls a similar suggestion from Scarborough chairman Geoffrey Richmond that they move to Leeds and be renamed Leeds City.
Garry was in favour. The rest of the management board was not.
*I never met Ronnie Campbell, the long-serving former Blyth Valley MP who died recently, though his son Shaun was a highly efficient and ever-genial secretary of Bedlington Terriers.
An obituary in The Times records Ronnie’s enthusiasm for good causes, though it went awry when he was invited to support National Fetish Day. Asked if he himself ahd any fetishes, he took the word to mean “worries” and replied that he must have a thousand. “Hand on heart, I couldn’t tell which is the most important one, probably the horses.”
Subsequently he wore a purple shirt and tie, the campaign’s colours, to show his support. It was only when he saw the campaigners’ banner proclaiming “Perverts wear purple” that he realised something might be wrong.
*Ian Lavery, fellow former miner and MP for the neighbouring Wansbeck division, was also chairman for a while of Ashington FC.
At Commons question time in December 2015 he talked of the commitment of football supporters and volunteers – ” a shining example of which is Mr Mike Amos, chairman of the Northern League.”
Tracey Crouch, the sports minister, agreed. “I join the Honourable Gentleman in congratulating Mr Amos on all that he has done.”
Immodest, admittedly, but it remains my only claim to parliamentary fame.
*A funeral service today for my old friend David Kelly, retired managing director of the Newsquest newspaper group’s Darlington division. I’m asked to deliver a eulogy.
At the reception, in Teesdale, a lady approaches and asks if she can have a word about her husband. I express slight surprise. “Well, they said you were a urologist” she says….
Grass Routes 