Interview With Duncan Hamilton
The author of Provided You Don't Kiss Me – 20 Years
with Brian Clough talks to Sean O'Conor
What are the first things that spring to mind when you think
of Clough?
I mostly remember him laughing. He had a very loud laugh and would
laugh at little things he found in newspapers as much as anything
else. He used to absolutely rock back. I remember us sitting in
the directors' rooms at Forest laughing at jokes. I remember
him stealing the car in Luton. A driver had nipped out of his car
and left it blocking the team bus so Clough got out the coach, into
the car and drove it around the corner out of the way. He got back
into the coach and said to Ron (Fenton, his assistant), ‘Do
you know what I have just done? I've just stolen a car. I've
got to go and get it back.' Then the whole process was reversed.
It was Stuart Pearce's first match and I swear I saw his eyes
revolve like lemons in a fruit machine.
We had some really good times pre-season in Zeist in Holland.
Another journalist and I played Archie Gemmill and Nigel Clough
at tennis with Brian in the umpire's chair. He wouldn't
give us a call as I remember.
Was it hard to write this book as you hadn't covered sport
for so long?.
After covering sport for about 20 years I decided to divorce myself
entirely from it in the early 1990s as I had interests in many other
things and about 10,000 books on various subjects in my home.
Having left the Nottingham Evening Post to join the Yorkshire
Post in Leeds, I actually found I could write about that period
better by looking back at it. History never feels like history when
you are living it. It was very automatic for me every day. I would
go down to the ground, he would turn up. We would go into his office;
we would sit and have a drink and a chat. I would go on the coach
on Saturdays and it was just a normal existence.
When I went back to watch the second run of the Stephen Lowe play
about Clough, ‘The Spirit of the Man', I was amazed
to see the theatre absolutely packed out. I still thought no-one
would be interested in what I had to say but I decided to see if
I could write a book about it. Luckily I had not thrown out my old
reports and diaries from when I used to write about football.
Cloughie must have been a joy for journalists
There was an occasion in the mid ‘80s when the phone rang
about 7.30 at night and the voice said "Somebody's putting
it around that I am barmy." I started to laugh, which was
the right answer as he had been phoning around the Forest players
as a test. He was always a keen reader of newspapers and would make
some reference to politics or another subject that surprised you.
He did think briefly about becoming a journalist after his knee
injury. He was very good at finding angles and giving you what you
wanted to hear although he was not so good at writing it himself.
You travelled on the Forest team coach. You were basically
part of the club.
I was told when I became a journalist, "make contacts, not
friends" but it was very difficult to divorce yourself from
the fortunes of a team I was following week in, week out. I would
never say I was Clough's friend but I felt it when he died.
He was like your father because of the advice he would pass on.
When I bought my first house he said, ‘You're not as
stupid as you look'.
Did he steal that phrase from Muhammad Ali's 'you ain't
as dumb as you look'?
Quite probably yes, as there was a picture of the two of them at
the City Ground. I think he met Frank Sinatra once after a concert
at the Albert Hall and was awed by him. You would always know if
he was in a good mood or not because the door to his office was
often open and if he was happy he would be playing Sinatra records
at full blast.
Clough didn't tell the full truth in his autobiographies,
have you?
I think it is very difficult. I have left some things out which
could hurt people, on taste grounds. There is still some reticence
when you come to put your diaries into a book. I don't know
if I would have been as honest writing about say Cloughie's
last season at the time as I am now though.
For me, Clough is a totem of English football's lost identity
I watched ‘Life on Mars' and thought that was the world
I was writing about. There is such a difference between football
in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s compared to corporate
football nowadays that it is a completely different world. One of
the first games I remember being enthralled by was the 1970 Leeds
v Chelsea FA Cup Final. That would have ended up today with about
three players on each side.
I was able to phone everybody at home then and did not have to
go through an agent. Forest was a small club in that I just had
to hang around the car park and everyone would show up sooner or
later. With Clough you could get enough copy on a Monday to last
you the entire week. Five or ten minutes of him in full flow were
all you needed.
He was the most extraordinary character and I just can't
see how he would have fitted into the corporate and sanitized football
we have today.
Clough installed himself as boss of the club, not just the
team. Was that just 'Ole Big Head' or did it come from somewhere
else?
When he was at Hartlepool, Ernest Orde, who was the chairman of
the club and ran it from top to bottom, jaundiced him against any
kind of authority figure. He would call his office at 5pm to check
he was still working, that kind of thing. He vowed to never again
let anyone like Orde take him on. Whenever Clough talked about how
the past had influenced his thinking, it was always Orde that he
mentioned first.
Trying to explain Clough's pugnacious character, you throw
in a couple of clues - he failed his 11-plus and was coached at
Sunderland by Alan Brown, a man who scared him to death.
I think the fact he grew up in a big family is another key. He had
to make his mark. He was a very, very bright man, very sharp. If
he had gone to university he would have been able to have translated
that into something academic. He was always being touted as a Labour
parliamentary candidate but I could never see him coping with the
caseload, surgeries, early-day motions and committees, all the fluff
and flummery of working in the House of Commons. He could have been
a success at anything he attempted provided he could set the boundaries
to it. If you are looking for other clues, I think the 44 days at
Leeds were absolutely crucial. What Leeds did was give him financial
security for the first time. He felt he had some breathing space
and Leeds' loss became Forest's gain.
The stop at Leeds was disastrous but did not seem to change
his bullish attitudes. Was it just that the Leeds players had egos
which Clough challenged head-on while Forest were languishing in
the bottom half of the Second Division?
I think he was affected when he began at Forest because he had been
so used to success at Derby and then had failed miserably at both
Leeds and Brighton. He couldn't afford a third failure and
admitted to me he was quieter and more low-key for a while until
he found his feet. At Forest he proved he was better at finding
and moulding talent than buying it or having to justify himself
with already great players.
People ask me about the similarities between him and Jose Mourinho
but Clough was all about starting at the bottom and bringing people
through with him. He was not good at spending money, which brings
with it a different kind of pressure.
Those 44 days at Leeds have gone down in football history.
More significant than even the injury that ended his career; courtesy
of the board who handed him a Mercedes and nearly £100,000,
he didn't have to worry about the sack, but he was concerned
about failing and admitted he was quieter, "just a wee bit",
than he was at any other club. He took on the challenge because
he literally hated Don Revie. He thought Revie was crooked from
his big toe to the top of his head and nothing would convince him
otherwise. He told the story of watching a Leeds game and afterwards
he was standing by the door of the manager's office. The referee
popped his head around the door and said ‘Was that OK for
you, Mr. Revie?', who was embarrassed and ushered him out
of the room very quickly.
Clough was convinced Revie had bought matches. When Clough famously
told Revie on TV that he "wanted to do it better" than
him, Revie clearly could not understand what he was implying. Nothing
ever gave Clough as much pleasure as going to Leeds in his first
season at Forest and giving them a good hiding.
Could Clough have played it any different at Leeds? Wasn't
that just a marriage made in Hell?
He needed Peter Taylor with him. He would have pulled him aside
and said ‘look, you can't do this etc'. He would
have been a steadying influence and someone to talk to. Clough was
lonely there, staying by himself in a city centre hotel. He was
too impatient for Leeds. He wanted to do A, B and C in his first
season as well as get rid of a lot of players who had been there
a long time. He didn't help himself when he did not turn up
to pre-season training because he was on a family break. From that
point of view, the Leeds board were probably right to sack him but
what on earth were they doing in the first place giving to the job
to a man who had relentlessly slagged them off for the previous
five years?
Was he the same character as a player?
Middlesbrough players signed a petition against him when he was
appointed captain. Another time he had scored four but the team
had still lost and he thought that on occasion they were not playing
with a straight deck. He felt the only person he could trust in
football was himself, and Peter Taylor.
Why did Clough gravitate to Taylor?
He was one of the few players at Middlesbrough who supported him.
He looked up to Taylor who was older, had his own house and a young
family. He used to use Taylor's house as a refuge as he was
unmarried and still living at home.
The shadow of Peter Taylor follows much of his career. How
important to Clough did you think he was?
Taylor was vital to him and it annoys me that he has not had the
recognition he deserves. It is probably because of the circumstances
in which he left Forest. He was feeling incredible pressure, even
more than Clough, and yet his contribution was immense. I once went
with him to a reserve game and he went through the entire team to
me, describing each player in amazing detail.
He also had a dry sense of humour and was very funny. The last
time I had a conversation with him was in the foyer of the Great
Western Hotel in Derby the day he signed John Robertson from Forest
(the incident which caused Clough and Taylor to fall out forever).
I had come down on the train with Cloughie and the two of them sat
in opposite corners of the room from each other without speaking.
It was so sad they fell out after so much shared experience.
Cloughie regretted that later, dedicating his autobiography to him
with the words øPeter - still miss you terribly. You were right-
I never laughed as much.Ó
It was sad and Clough realised it right at the end. I remember hearing
that Taylor had died and I had to rush off an obituary quickly and
felt I had not done really him justice because I didn't have
much time. The next time I saw Cloughie, who was a bit hyper-sensitive
then anyway, he ranted, ‘Your obit was crap. You didn't
do him justice, you know how funny he was etc'. It was perfectly
true. I don't think anyone really did him justice but it was
also Brian thinking to himself ‘we should have just made up;
one of us should have picked up the phone or just gone over.'
When there was communication it was mostly from Taylor in the tabloid
press. It was useful advice but it did make matters worse for Clough.
The other rock in his life was his wife Barbara
Yes, she is a lovely woman. She always came across to me as a decent
person, full of working class values, a strong person who brought
up three children and had to put up with him, which at times cannot
have been easy. He started to hit the bottle after he was injured
as a player. He was already drinking quite a bit when he started
at Forest. You must have needed the patience of a saint.
It must have been impossible for him not to have taken his
work home with him
It really was his life. I can't imagine him doing anything
else. Being a football manager it is difficult if you lose on a
Saturday and have to wait a week before you can get revenge. He
said imagine being an England manager and having to wait three or
four months before you get another chance. That was another reason
he would have failed at that.
Clough as England manager is one of the great 'what-ifs'
of football. He always claimed he would have been øa bloody good
oneÓ but not everyone's convinced
He told me that he would have moved the FA to Barnsley! He would
not have had any problems on the pitch and while the squad, with
a number of names we would not have expected, would have been excellently
prepared, off the pitch he would have got very bored. He was always
involved with something every day at Forest. Also, I can't
see how he would have got on with the FA Councillors. He had enough
problems with the Forest board but the England job is far more mind
your Ps and Qs and wear your England blazer and he was not anywhere
near that. At a Forest press conference he once compared two of
his defenders to traffic cones, because they just stood there while
others sped past them. An England manager can't describe his
own players that way, especially as you only see them every few
months and you are dealing with men established at the top of their
game. But he would have created a very good side with a much better
chance of winning the World Cup, had he only been able to get on
with the FA.
His country ignored him twice, as both a player and a manager.
You said the reason for the former was because he had criticized
skipper Billy Wright in the Wembley dressing room.
Yes, he used to hate the fact he had only won two caps and didn't
go to the World Cup, as he should have done. Walter Winterbottom
didn't want him and there was an England selector on the Middlesbrough
board who didn't support him either and although he had scored
enough goals, they preferred Derek Kevan, who according to my former
colleague and England striker Tommy Lawton, had nothing of Clough's
skill and was just a battering ram.
You said his interview for the England manager's job was
window-dressing, because the FA had already rejected him.
I think all 92 English club coaches and all Europe's major
coaches would have to have died suddenly for the FA to have given
Clough a call back. He just would have been too hot to handle for
them.
When it was clear by 1990 that alcohol had got the better
of him and that he should quit, was it true that nobody could bring
themselves to tell him?
I think that is perfectly true. I can't imagine someone would
have taken him to one side. You would have to ask Ronnie Fenton,
maybe he did. We certainly did not write about it and maybe we should
have done.
It would have been very difficult for me to have written a piece
about his drinking when I was sitting down with him for a Scotch
at 9.30 in the morning, a glass of white wine over lunch or a Scotch
later in the afternoon.
Couldn't the directors have said something, or were they
also cowed by the legend?
It was partly due to the way Forest was run constitutionally, with
210 shareholders and no money-man in charge. No one person was able
to come in and say ‘I think you should…' They
were the only club run along those lines, until it was changed in
the 1990s after Clough left. Derek Pavis was not afraid to tell
Clough if he had overstepped the mark. That did cause some friction
between the two but they made up after he did leave.
That final season of Clough's at Forest when they were relegated
was another sad end to an age of greatness.
He should have left in 1991 after the Cup Final and would have gone
had Forest beaten Tottenham. He really wanted to win that although
he never admitted quite how much. I will never forget going into
his office after they had beaten Leeds heavily and he looked as
if they had lost that game as well as the FA Cup Final, because
they seemed to have peaked too soon.
His team selection, substitutions and staying on the bench
at full time that day seemed odd, though.
He was a wee bit wary of the cameras and he knew the moment he left
his seat the cameras would follow him and observe him doing something
in public he normally did in private and he didn't want that.
He told me afterwards that at half time he thought they were going
to lose (Forest were 1-0 up at the time and eventually lost 2-1).
If they could have held out for a replay I think they would have
won that at a canter as they didn't play particularly well
that day. I was talking to David Pleat in the press box before and
he was amazed Clough had not picked Nigel Jemson.
After he left Forest, he did express interest in managing
Wolves.
I don't think he was physically fit enough and the game had
moved on by that time, too. There was always that temptation to
carry on and he was mindful of Bill Shankly wishing he had never
quit so soon. He just looked miserable in later years at Liverpool
games because he knew he could still have been out there.
Clough won plaudits for Forest's passing style in the 1980s
but was it ever thus? They were described somewhere as 'boring their
way to two European Cups' I remember.
I kept all the videos, which my mother taped for me while I was
away. Watching the two European Cup Finals again, the first one
seemed to last about three weeks and the second one about six and
a half weeks.
They were favourites against Malmo in 1979 but I think they realised
it was going to be a rearguard action against Hamburg a year later.
But they did play some great football on their way to those finals.
Their 3-3 draw against Cologne in the 1979 semi-final first leg
was an absolute cracker. The game was a lot slower and the pitches
were far worse too, especially as the season went on. Against Cologne,
John Robertson tried to go around someone and the ball stuck in
the mud.
His preparations for big games were insane by today's standards
e.g. getting the team drunk the night before the 1979 League Cup
Final
He did not see it as unprofessional. Compared to today when everything
is regimented, we were still in the era of steak as a pre-match
meal. I remember them once tucking into an enormous plate of fish
and chips before a match.
They were a bit backward in terms of getting players super-fit
but Cloughie was more concerned with rest. He often used to throw
players in a reserve game rather than train for three days. Sometimes
a week would consist of training on a Monday, have a game on a Wednesday,
light training on Friday and then a game on Saturday.
I think he did a lot more than he let on. When I went to his house
he had a lot of tapes of football lying around and in those days
there were many fewer games on TV. You had to send lots of scouts
to matches because of that and he had reports on his opponents'
strengths and weaknesses but he was much more concerned about getting
his own men mentally prepared as well as physically.
Clough is remembered mostly for Forest but he is equally
loved by local rivals Derby
Derby taught him the most important thing of all which is not to
resign. He must have said this phrase a million times. If you are
thinking of resigning, go to bed and wake up the next morning and
see if you feel any differently. If you still feel like resigning,
do the same thing again but whatever you do, do not resign. He walked
away from a team he thought was going to be better than Liverpool
in the 1970s. He never got over the fact that he walked out of the
nation's best club in a fit of pique. He had a thing of never
wanting to back, but I remember in March of 1977 there was a period
when it seemed he and Taylor might. Later when Taylor took over
at Derby he met Clough and asked him to come back there. He was
never going to, as Forest's constitution allowed him to do
whatever he wanted and Derby were in Division Two with no greater
spending power than Forest, but he was always concerned with what
was going on at his old club.
The paper that Clough had at home was the Derby Evening Telegraph
and he lived there, not Nottingham. You had that crazy situation
in 1984 when Clough was commuting from Derby to Nottingham and Taylor
in the other direction. There is no doubt that they would have passed
each other on the A52, which is now named Brian Clough Way. With
the exception of Mackay's Championship side in 1975 which
he claimed was his anyway, Derby have never had any success since
so despite the rivalry with Nottingham, Clough is still held in
enormous affection by the people there. He supported the striking
motor workers from the city and continued to live there. He constantly
talked about Derby.
People remember his eccentricity, like kissing people publicly
in his final years.
I saw him do it a bit earlier than that but it did increase. He
also had a habit of grabbing people by the balls. He got Maradona
once at a pre-season tournament in Barcelona. Maradona had just
scored one of the best goals I had ever seen and as they exited
the field, Cloughie, in his own words, "just grabbed him by
the nuts." Maradona looked at him like some madman had just
descended into the tunnel.
You were lucky to hear his private thoughts as well as his
public utterances. Did you realise you were privy to a legend?
Yes, I think I did. I must have watched over a thousand, or 1200
Forest games and I wrote down all our conversations. The first time
I wrote about him, my boss Matthew Engel said of my piece "too
much Clough, not enough Hamilton."
When you look at some of the managers out there, in terms of his
sharpness and his colour, you knew Clough was somebody who was going
to be talked about for a long time. Stephen Lowe's play and David
Peace's book ‘The Damned Utd' have now reignited an interest
in him which might otherwise have not happened for another ten years
or so. Clough was never going to disappear so easily.
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