Post by QPR Report on Aug 13, 2009 15:04:56 GMT
Showing he wasn't just a nice guy, who we should obviously mourn. And not just an England-class Defender...He was also tough!
And I remember the reports on this game: That was typical of the QPR Defense in those days of Les Allen Managership
Times & Star
You'll never be as good as me young man - what Clough told McIlmoyle
Last updated 13:49, Thursday, 13 August 2009
Hugh McIlmoyle was in awe of Don Revie’s Leeds United team and appreciative of the qualities that made them champions in 1973/4.
Hughie McIlmoyle turns away to celebrate Les O'Neill's goal in Carlisle United’s 2-0 defeat of Chelsea on the opening day of the 1974/5 season
‘Leeds were not a well-liked team,’ he says, ‘but setting about quick change was the wrong thing for their new manager Brian Clough to do. Leeds had some very strong personalities who were well used to a manager in Don Revie whom they liked and trusted.
‘Don mixed with the players where Cloughie would not. Also, the new man was dealing with some big egos, and rightly so because they were all international players.
‘I played against Leeds a few times down the years, going back, even, to when the legendary John Charles made his brief return to the club from Juventus, and through the times when Revie moulded a team from the youngsters he had on board like Peter Lorimer, Eddie Gray and Frank Gray.
‘They were always an aggressive team, very hard to beat. Their tactics sometimes riled opposing teams and certainly infuriated rival fans, but they had some great, great players.
‘I think if they had been more measured, concentrating more on their playing abilities and less on the snappy, aggressive stuff, they would have won a lot more trophies than they did, although there is the counter-argument that if you had taken the aggression out of them, they would not have been the team they were.
‘I never enjoyed any success against them, but then there are a lot of members in that particular club. Not many players can say they had a beanfeast against that Leeds side’.
McIlmoyle is rated by many as the best header of a football the game has ever seen and scored a career total of 180 goals in some 500 games for Leicester, Rotherham, Carlisle, Wolves, Bristol City, Carlisle again, Middlesbrough, Preston, Morton and Carlisle for a third time in a career spanning 1959–75.
Like Clough, McIlmoyle was a Middlesbrough hero. In the 1970–71 season, he and John Hickton were the scourge of Division Two defences, plundering 38 goals between them for Middlesbrough. For McIlmoyle, scoring goals was second nature, as simple as peeling an orange, and yet there is awe in his voice when he considers the predatory exploits of the man who preceded him as a Boro striker.
At Ayresome Park on 26 September 1970, McIlmoyle produced such an outstanding performance in a 6–2 defeat of Queens Park Rangers, who featured swanky players like Rodney Marsh and Terry Venables, that it has always been known on Teesside as ‘the McIlmoyle Match’.
Boro were two goals down inside five minutes and floundering until McIlmoyle, a Scot, took the game by the scruff of the neck. Scoring two bullet headers and laying on a hat-trick for Hickton, McIlmoyle so wound up the rattled visitors that there were to be personal repercussions. The striker ended the game with a badly broken nose, inflicted by a headbutt from QPR defender Dave Clement.
Boro’s fans had not seen a one-man display like it for a long time; not since, in fact, the glory days at the club of that other prolific striker Brian Clough, who had departed in acrimonious circumstances nine years previously.
‘Brian Clough was so good a manager,’ says McIlmoyle, ‘that his playing career is barely mentioned. But when you consider that he scored 204 goals in 222 games over a 10-year period at Boro – and five of those came in one game, a 9–0 thrashing of Brighton on the opening day of the 1958–59 season – then he has to have been just about the best striker Britain has ever seen. That record almost defies belief.
‘When I joined Middlesbrough, the left-back and captain there, Gordon Jones, had played with Cloughie, and he told me that he was a difficult person if not to like then certainly to get to know. He was something of a loner.
‘He could come across as selfish, aloof and arrogant. He certainly was not well liked in the dressing-room. Where the rest of the boys would get changed together and exchange banter, this isolated figure would be in a cubicle on his own. His one close friend in the club was the goalkeeper, Peter Taylor.
‘When I joined, there also remained a lot of bitterness in the club about the way Clough departed Boro for a new career with local rivals Sunderland. ‘They felt he had let Middlesbrough down. The £55,000 transfer fee was a record at the time, and you do wonder what figure such a devastating finisher would have commanded in today’s inflated market. I think that as far as his personality goes, he was the same as a young player at Middlesbrough as he was when he became a manager: abrasive, self-centred and opinionated. I was told that Clough had created friction within the camp by publicly accusing his defence of deliberately leaking goals. This led to punch-ups and, ultimately, to several members of the team signing a petition to get him demoted as captain.
‘He was never quiet. He was the sort of bloke who had to say something. He couldn’t just walk by. If he saw an old woman crossing the road he’d have to help her along, chatting from pavement to pavement. And if he saw somebody doing something wrong, he’d be just as quick to tell them off. I liked him’.
There were elements of the ridiculous about Clough; his way of operating could seem thoroughly peculiar and was unique to him.
Though McIlmoyle never played under Clough, he witnessed his quirky personality on numerous occasions.
‘When Clough was managing Derby,’ he recalls, ‘I went down there as a Carlisle player in 1967 and we beat them. In the tunnel afterwards, there was no need for him to speak to me, because I didn’t even know him, but he said, “Well played, young man. You gave our centre-half the runaround today, and that’s no mean feat because he’s going to be the England centre-half sooner rather than later.” This was Roy McFarland.
‘Clough must have been disappointed at being beaten at home but still found a kindly word for an opposing player.
‘The next time I met him was at the Scotch Corner Hotel, where the A1 meets the A66. I was a Middlesbrough player by this time, and I’d got off to such a good start there that the local newspapers had begun doing articles comparing Clough and me. The routine was that I would drive to the hotel from home to be picked up by the Middlesbrough team coach. Derby must have been meeting there too, and as I was sitting alone drinking a cup of coffee, Clough presented himself in front of me and said, “I’ve been reading in the papers that you are a better player than I ever was. Let me tell you that you will never be as good a player as I was. And you’ll never score as many goals as I did.” I said, “Well you’re probably right, Mr Clough,” to which he came back, “I know I’m right, young man. On both counts.”
‘Then, as quickly and unexpectedly as he had arrived, he was gone. In the normal course of events, you’d expect someone coming up to you when you’re sitting there minding your own business to introduce themselves, exchange a pleasantry or two and then say what they’ve got to say. Not Cloughie. He was straight in there. That’s the way he was. He’d come out with these one-liners and you’d be so taken aback that you didn’t have chance to respond.
‘I recall training for a couple of weeks at Leicester when I was carrying an injury as a Middlesbrough player. I knew a lot of the backroom staff at Leicester and they were telling me how ‘Clough had come over from Derby to buy David Nish, a very talented left-back, and wanted at the same time to buy Peter Shilton.
'This is where you marvel at Clough’s modus operandi. Apparently, he pulled up in the car park, breezed through reception without a word, climbed the stairs to the boardroom and without so much as a cursory knock at the door simply burst in and demanded: “Right, then, how much do you want for David Nish? I am not leaving this boardroom until you have sold David Nish to me.”
'Then and there they sold him, actually for a then British transfer record of £225,000. ‘Nish was to go on and win England caps, once again typifying Clough’s eye for a player he knew he could mould into something a bit special. But the way he bought him was outrageous. You imagine, from his ability to gatecrash a board meeting like that, that he would have the daring to romp unannounced into a television studio and commandeer the whole network!’
We are the Damned United: The Real Story of Brian Clough at Leeds United by Phil Rostron (£12.99 Hardback) is published by Mainstream
News & Star readers can buy this newly-released title for the special price of £10.99 (including free UK p&p). To order call 01206 255 800 and quote the reference ‘Carlisle News & Star’.
www.timesandstar.co.uk/you_ll_never_be_as_good_as_me_young_man___what_clough_told_mcilmoyle_1_597726?referrerPath=sport/