The Unforgiven: The Story of Don Revie's Leeds United

by Rob Bagchi

  Ironically, the other reason why Giles was itching to leave Old Trafford was his conviction that he was better suited to play as an inside-forward than as a winger. He was not alone in being marginalized out by the touchline – Bobby Charlton was stuck out on the opposite wing for much of the early 1960s. Yet so frustrated was he by Manchester United dressing-room politics and what Eamon Dunphy, a club apprentice at the time, called ‘the anarchic atmosphere’ there, he was willing to drop a division to join Leeds, even if it meant another stint at outside-right. Revie, as ever, did a great selling job.

  Twenty-five years after signing for the club, Giles recalled for John Motson, in an interview for the BBC documentary The Glory Years, his first impressions of Elland Road. ‘I found the first day I went to Leeds an atmosphere I hadn’t known at Manchester United. There was a buzz about the place, a keenness, a will and an attention to detail that wasn’t at Manchester United. Manchester United wasn’t run like that in those days, there it was more off the cuff. [Leeds] were in the Second Division but there was an ambition and drive that I noted straight away.’ In A Strange Kind of Glory he returns to that first day with Eamonn Dunphy: ‘People were consciously thinking about the game, small things like throw-ins, free-kicks and corner-kicks were discussed and planned. People were intent on doing something. It wasn’t all left to chance.’ It’s part of the Manchester United myth that no one ever prospers by leaving Old Trafford. Giles gives the lie to that.

  Most accounts of the 1963/64 season portray Leeds’ promotion campaign as a bit of a cakewalk. Once the trio of Giles, Bremner and Collins was established, it is assumed, United glided inexorably to the top of the division – Revie, the sorcerer, finally having got all the ingredients together to cast his spell. This rather underrates its significance. This was the season that established the prototypical Leeds United characteristics that would become so notorious. The football itself certainly lacked the champagne touch. It was all attritional efficiency and dour hard work. Leeds scored fewer goals than they had the previous year but functionally accumulated points along the way. Yet the season was never boring: it was littered with fouls, gamesmanship and running battles with the opposition.

  The team dutifully obeyed Revie’s new first commandment, ‘Thou shall start well’, losing only once in their first eight games before winning five in succession, a run that took them to the top of the table in mid-October. Crowds, always suckers for success, were also up, edging towards an average of 30,000, and for the first time in five dark years the directors could contemplate the nirvana of profitability. With only 2200 season tickets sold at the beginning of the season, it meant that Albert Morris could normally bank more than 25,000 entrance fees per fortnight. Add in the receipts from away fixtures, and the Board could even make inroads into the overdraft and recoup some of their personal loans to the club. The directors had been dominant figures in the club’s salvation in spite of numerous mistakes, but at this point they effectively recede from the story.

  It was unfortunate that Leeds should lose Jim Storrie to injury after only nine games of the season, since his absence tended to make their game one-dimensional. They became over-reliant on Albert Johanneson, who had his finest ever season, even with all the physical and racial abuse meted out by neanderthal full-backs terrified by his turn of foot. Don Weston deputized for Storrie for most of the first half of the season but, like Johanneson, his game was based on speed. He matched Albert’s strike rate, but these two sprinters, often playing at breakneck pace, at the very edge of their capability, were as liable to make elementary blunders as torment the opposing team. Thirteen goals apiece were perfectly satisfactory for support players but hardly compensated for the loss of Storrie’s productiveness. Similarly, their styles necessitated a higher tempo; they would receive the ball, dribble with it, pass, cross or shoot it in a matter of seconds, whereas Storrie had the strength and canniness to lead the line in the conventional way, playing with his back to goal, holding the ball up and inviting the midfield to influence the shape of the attack. Without him, goals from Bremner and Collins dried to a trickle.

  Like much else, it was Collins who primarily ordained the pace of the game. ‘Bobby would shut up the game and tell us when to break,’ Bremner subsequently recalled. ‘He made us go like bombs for a ten-minute spell. Then he would tell us to tighten up again before making us go again.’ Storrie’s loss made for a pinball-type attack, which in turn precipitated the more frenetic approach and a glut of fouls. By the time he returned, perhaps because they enjoyed it or simply because it worked, physical intimidation had become an ineradicable feature of the team’s approach.

  Did Don Revie actually tell his team to go out on the pitch and kick people? Or was it merely his old pragmatic thinking again? It certainly wasn’t a ploy Leeds had originated. If anything, it had come out of all the friendlies against Italian opposition they had endured as part of the assorted Charles transfer sagas. The ‘kill or be killed’ attitude of some Italian defenders had made a huge impression on the players and they swiftly developed some of that ruthlessness – ‘professionalism’ was the euphemism they preferred themselves. Johnny Giles explained the reasoning behind it: ‘You had to establish a reputation,’ he wrote in Forward with Leeds, ‘that would make people think twice about messing with you … I have certainly done things on the football field then that I am embarrassed about now, but one has to put them into the football climate that existed then.’

  Giles’ book was published in 1970 at the height of the ‘dirty Leeds’ uproar, so his ‘no regrets’ tone is not hard to understand. ‘You had to get respect,’ he went on to add, ‘in the sense that people could not clog you without knowing that they would be clogged back.’ In the early 1960s roughhouse tactics were accepted practice, and there was a thin line between standing up for oneself on the pitch and getting your retaliation in first. What Leeds set out to do was not nihilistic: it was a hyper-aggressive game plan destined to flourish by pushing the very limits of the laws. The suspicion that Revie directed all this is the fundamental impediment when football aesthetes discuss his credentials for ‘greatness’.

  It’s important to recognize that the team was not unaware of their growing infamy – but neither did they glory in it. Indeed, the reputation did some of the hard work, as teams would already be apprehensive about meeting them weeks before a match. Nor was their confidence undermined by the hostility and scorn of opposing players and fans: they were getting results. ‘The game’s about glory, it’s about doing things in style,’ said Danny Blanchflower after his team had won the Double. ‘It’s about doing things in a style, with a flourish. It’s about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.’ His words are often misinterpreted as an avowal that football is more about glory than winning. Well, Revie’s team was ‘beating the other lot’, as per his win-at-all-costs attitude, but the thing about flair would have to wait. Blanchflower’s Corinthian values could never apply to a provincial club weary after forty years of hard tack.

  Not one of Revie’s players will admit that their manager ordered them to use violence to get their way. The strongest hint is Jack Charlton’s memory of Revie ‘murmuring approvingly’ as Jimmy Lumsden, a young apprentice, told how he’d dished out a ‘real beauty’ in a recent match. The truth is that Revie didn’t need to tell them. He encouraged ultra-competitiveness on the training ground, saw that his own players were uncomfortable on the receiving end of hard tackling and let them draw their own conclusions. It was more moral ambivalence than depravity: he didn’t tell them to do it but he didn’t stop them either.

  No doubt some players revelled in the bullyboy swagger, but if the indiscipline ever threatened to harm the team’s prospects, Revie was not negligent. Later that season Bremner became the first Leeds player under Revie to face an official suspension from the Football League. His crime? Persistent dissent. In public Revie defended his player, who had got a three-match ban, but in front of his colleagu
es Bremner was rewarded with such a caustic bollocking he felt humiliated.

  Referees in the early 1960s gave players far more leeway in the tackle than was healthy. On the whole, however, Leeds went as far as legally permissible but rarely further. They weren’t always ‘hard but fair’; they were plain hard. Yet one would think from all that’s been said about them that common assault was a weekly occurrence. Eddie Gray, one of the few players considered untainted by the general villainy, recalls watching the team from the terraces as a young apprentice and being shocked by much of what he saw. In Marching on Together he reveals that even Revie ‘used to wince at our approach’. But Leeds felt they had to fight their way out of the Second Division, relying on organization, set-plays and closing down space, utilizing both their superior fitness and physical strength to batter the opposition into submission. Once they had ‘earned the right to play’, as professionals put it, then they would play.

  For all the emerging talent, Collins remained the star of the show. Fortified by his customary tots of Scotch before a game, he pulverized the opposition with his resourcefulness, vision and low cunning. We have seen how his influence changed the club from the inside, but Eric Stanger’s match reports show how closely he had come to symbolize the team to the opposition. “‘Stop Collins and you stop Leeds,” they say in the Seond Division,’ he noted. ‘But how? He gets in such out-of-the-way places that he must be just about the hardest forward in the game to mark.’ To such a young side he was irreplaceable; the only game Leeds lost in their first twenty was the one match Collins missed all season.

  Despite the setback of that defeat to Manchester City, Leeds recovered to stay unbeaten until Boxing Day, with Ian Lawson, who had been on the verge of joining Scunthorpe, drafted in to supplement the front line. He was a barnstorming Ian Baird-type forward, and responsible for keeping Leeds United’s promotion challenge afloat by scoring eight goals in those first twenty games. The defence had found a new meanness – twelve clean sheets in twenty-two games before Christmas – and Revie pronounced himself relatively happy with the first half of the campaign.

  This was the season when Jack Charlton matured as a footballer. He had been attending courses at Lilleshall for a number of years and now, with his new role as mentor to a juvenile defence – Sprake, Reaney, Bell and Hunter – was allowed by Revie to co-ordinate his own defensive system. The delegation of duty seemed to inspire Big Jack. His method involved a great deal of moaning and shouting, but his ability to explain his zonal design and teach his team-mates the positional awareness to cover each other, not to mention his own impeccable form, ensured Leeds’ best defensive record to date. With Collins and Bremner buzzing about in front as a protective shield and Giles always ready to help out, Sprake’s goal was breached on only thirty-four occasions in the whole season.

  Privately, however, Revie was unnerved by Leeds’ failure to beat their close rivals – Sunderland, Preston, Charlton and Manchester City – and realized that a better class of centre-forward was necessary to push them further ahead. Weston and Lawson, the über-journey-men, had performed heroically, but any team as dependent on its defensive excellence as Leeds would draw too many games to gain promotion with ease. All success is built from the back, maintains Alan Hansen. With the drought up-front, ‘shutting up shop’ after clawing a goal was a plausible gamble that often paid off, though it led to frayed nerves amongst the crowd and in the dugout. For Leeds, the foundations were in place, but after losing the second match in their Christmas double-header with Sunderland by spurning numerous chances, Revie knew fresh impetus was required if they were to avoid being lassooed by the chasing pack.

  Experts are forever banging on about the ‘spine’ of a team being of paramount importance – a tough core of experienced players running through the middle of the team – centre-half, central midfield and centre-forward. Without Storrie, Leeds were suffering from lumbago. The Board was now forecasting a small profit on the season’s trading, so Revie had little difficulty in persuading them to release funds. Unfortunately, his major problem was that other clubs knew Leeds’ predicament. In a seller’s market he wanted a player who could almost guarantee promotion, but he had only a modest amount to spend. His scouts reported on a number of candidates, few of whom were likely to be released in the middle of a season unless the bid exceeded their value. Fortunately, one intriguing target was available, but he came with conspicuous risks attached.

  Alan ‘Peachy’ Peacock had enjoyed a prolific spell at Middlesbrough, initially as Brian Clough’s partner, later as his replacement. He had scored 126 goals in 218 league games and played twice for England in the 1962 World Cup Finals in Chile. His heading ability alone was of the highest class, and in normal circumstances he would have been far beyond Revie’s resources. Memorably described by Brian Glanville as ‘a tall, straight guardsman-like figure even to the short haircut’, he was just over 6ft tall, yet his timing and vertical leap placed him up with Tommy Taylor, John Charles and Nat Lofthouse as the finest exponents of the aerial arts since the maestro Tommy Lawton. His pedigree did not augur well for the club’s bank manager, especially since Peacock was only twenty-six. Eighteen months earlier, Denis Law had signed for Manchester United from Torino for £115,000, and while Peacock, splendid player though he was, was not quite in Law’s class, he should still easily have been above Leeds’ price bracket. Luckily for Leeds, the discount on ‘damaged goods’ also applied in football. Peacock’s persistent knee problems and recent serious cartilage operation, a career-threatening procedure back in 1963, meant that Middlesbrough were resigned to cashing in on the player while they could. They were not so blind to Leeds’ position that they forgot to add on a clause that would provide them with a further £5,000 if Leeds achieved promotion. The initial price of £53,000 equalled the club’s record transfer fee, a sizeable gamble but one that relieved the pressure on United’s beleaguered attack.

  Revie’s happy knack of signing strikers who made an immediate impact continued with Peacock. Like Storrie and Weston before him, the genial Tees-sider scored on his debut in a disappointing 2–2 draw away to Norwich. The result left them clinging to top spot with thirteen games to play, but both Preston and Sunderland had closed the gap during United’s post-Christmas stutter. It took some time for Leeds to adapt to Peacock’s strengths, to get used to crossing more balls into the box instead of looking for the lay-offs or passes over the heads of defenders, the sort of service that suited Johanneson, Weston and Storrie. After four games with him in the side, they had only managed one win, a 1–0 defeat of bottom-placed Scunthorpe, and had contrived to lose 2–0 away to Preston, their third defeat of the season.

  The little wobble was threatening to turn into something more serious. Preston’s win had consigned Leeds to second place. Moreover, they had lost ground to another of their closest rivals and faced the prospect of tough fixtures against Middlesbrough, Newcastle and free scoring Southampton. All three defeats to date had come away from home, but it was Leeds’ home form that was causing most concern. Of the sixteen home games so far, they had won nine and drawn seven, failing to overcome teams like Derby, Cardiff and Northampton, who though not relegation material, were all stuck in the bottom half of the table. Although remaining undefeated at home was still an impressive achievement, something was wrong.

  In his autobiography Billy Bremner tried to put his finger on it in a rather complicated theory. ‘Maybe it’s a feeling of inferiority, so far as those stay-away fans are concerned. We cannot convince ourselves that they should be there to cheer us on. Or maybe we’re frightened that we won’t live up to their expectations.’ The size of home crowds was something Bremner would lament throughout his career, but, whatever the reason for Leeds’ inability to finish teams off at Elland Road, for the first time in five months Leeds appeared vulnerable.

  It proved to be only a temporary crisis, as they haltingly refound their autumn form. Revie’s favourite bit of kidology – if they weren’t up to it, he wo
uld threaten to get his chequebook out – restored the team’s equilibrium. Johanneson and particularly Giles began to get the measure of Peacock, opening up a multitude of new attacking options. Four successive wins, at home to Southampton and Grimsby, away to Newcastle (where George Dalton had his leg broken in a tackle from Johnny Giles) and Middlesbrough (where Peacock scored a dramatic if uncharitable winner in the 87th minute) banished the jitters. On Easter Tuesday, in front of a crowd of 40,105, the highest attendance at Elland Road since 1958, Weston and Johanneson ensured a frantic victory over Newcastle to recapture first place. It left them four games in which to amass the four points that would secure promotion.

  Excitement should have been at an all-time high, but again Leeds were rather ill served by the numbers forking out to watch them on their run-in. With two home games left, one would have anticipated a lock-out at the turnstiles. Sadly, for their penultimate match at Elland Road the curmudgeons stayed away. The attendance of 30,920 was 9000 down on the Newcastle game and, even allowing for the passion that compels Newcastle fans to follow their club in such numbers, it was a remarkable downturn in just four days. In a nervy match Leeds emerged with a 2–1 victory over Leyton Orient thanks to goals from Weston and Giles. With Preston slipping up, United only had to draw their next match at Swansea Town to clinch promotion.