Rockabilly
GAFF LAD. "Open your knees and feel the breeze"
These are brilliant please keep ‘em coming.
Nice one Red I was revising for my maths O’level during those times.Here you go Rocka. The local chart (or at least one of them) for the week of the 1978 League Cup Final -
(Long Eaton Advertiser, Thursday, March 09, 1978)
1 We Got The Whole World in Our Hands - Nottingham Forest/ Paper Lace
2 Wuthering Heights - Kate Bush
3 Come Back My Love - Darts
4 Mr. Blue Sky - Electric Light Orchestra
5 Denis- Blondie
6 Stayin’ Alive – Bee Gees
7 Take a Chance on Me – ABBA
8 Wishing on a Star – Rose Royce
9 I can’t Stand the Rain – Eruption
10 All Right Now – Free
List supplied by C. Gilbert Lt., 85-89 High Street, Long Eaton
A levels for me!Nice one Red I was revising for my maths O’level during those times.
LOL. It was a busy time Rocka. From memory I think I took 3 A levels, an O level and a number of multi discipline exams for a diploma course.Sod off!
Nice one Nicola.
Legs & Co (you would never get away with that nowadays) dancing to Eruption, presumably the epic Van Halen track?
Legs and coLegs & Co (you would never get away with that nowadays) dancing to Eruption, presumably the epic Van Halen track?
That must have been a bit bonkers, even for 1978?
Nice one Red I was revising for my maths O’level during those times.
One left school wi O‘levels one wi A’s, this one left school wi heed liceA levels for me!
Great time for football and music - up against some big hits there. I just checked the charts and also out that week you had ‘Is this love’ Bob Marley, ‘Everyone’s a Winner’ Hot Choc, ‘Baker Street’, ‘Wishin on a star’, ‘Just the Way You Are’ Billy Joel and ‘I love the sound of breaking glass’.Here you go Rocka. The local chart (or at least one of them) for the week of the 1978 League Cup Final -
(Long Eaton Advertiser, Thursday, March 09, 1978)
1 We Got The Whole World in Our Hands - Nottingham Forest/ Paper Lace
2 Wuthering Heights - Kate Bush
3 Come Back My Love - Darts
4 Mr. Blue Sky - Electric Light Orchestra
5 Denis- Blondie
6 Stayin’ Alive – Bee Gees
7 Take a Chance on Me – ABBA
8 Wishing on a Star – Rose Royce
9 I can’t Stand the Rain – Eruption
10 All Right Now – Free
List supplied by C. Gilbert Lt., 85-89 High Street, Long Eaton
One left school wi O‘levels one wi A’s, this one left school wi heed lice
Great stuff-the memories of Clough at his peak come flooding back.Just prior to the 1978 League Cup Final the Liverpool Echo did a 'focus piece' on Brian Clough.
(Liverpool Echo, Saturday, March 11, 1978)
LEAGUE CUP FOCUS On the man who has dominated soccer this season
BRIAN CLOUGH
Conform or you’ve no chance – McGovern.
Charles Lambert goes behind the scenes in Nottingham to find about Forest's success
When Brian Clough walked through the main entrance of the City Ground to begin his new job as manager of Nottingham Forest in January 1975, the club's assistant secretary was standing in the hallway with a group of waiting journalists.
Clough was in action at once. "Take these gentlemen into the office, give them a drink, and I'll be with them in ten minutes." he told the official. The man jumped to it and no-one at Nottingham Forest has stopped jumping from that day to this.
Clough is a man who makes things happen, and, he ensures that other people make things happen as well. It could be a recipe for chaos, but as his Forest team have shown this season the net result is success. And the reason for that is the unique Clough discipline.
John McGovern, the man who has followed Clough from Hartlepool to Derby to Leeds to Forest, and is now skipper of Clough's title-chasing team, is in no doubt that discipline is the key to Clough's success. And he should know - he has been working with the man for the last 12 years.
"It's not just discipline on the park, it's discipline in everything," he explains. "Everybody knows their job. They work on their deficiencies. They play to their strengths. No one walks about thinking they own the place.”
"People have said, 'Oh, you lot at Forest all have to have short back and sides.' That's not strictly true, but the manager thinks that if you are representing a club you must not go out unshaven and with your hair down your back."
Peter Taylor, Clough's assistant, as he has been at all his previous clubs with the exception of Leeds, is in complete agreement about the need for discipline. He and Clough together enforce their code of conduct rigidly.
"You either conform to our discipline, or you've got no chance," he states. "That is the hallmark of team spirit. You all conform."
“Punctuality, respect - these are the sort of things we insist upon. You get nothing without respect. To extract the best out of anyone, you've got to have respect.“
"At first, people don't like it. But if they stay long enough, they begin to like it. We run things our way, and we only accept a job on condition that we can do it our way."
Peter Taylor plays a vital role in the movement of players, as in everything else that affects the team, and to understand the way Clough works you have to be aware of the unique relationship he has with his assistant manager.
Where football is concerned, the two of them have identical thoughts. The coaching, the motivating, the criticising - they do it all together. There is no hard-and-fast division of responsibilities.
Their philosophies are the same, but their approaches are different. Where Clough is volatile. instinctive and dogmatic, Taylor as shrewd, quiet and calm.
No one should underestimate Taylor's Influence. People close to the club credit him with the decisions to sign Kenny Burns and Peter Withe, and to dispense with the services of winger Terry Curran who was sold to Derby earlier in the season.
And when Forest made a late team change before the first leg of their League Cup semi-final at Leeds, it was Taylor who convinced Clough the change was worth making. The result - 3-1 to Forest - spoke for itself.
How does The relationship work? "It's hard to define," replies Taylor. "We work as one. We play it off the cuff. We interlock in our ideas.”
"We think that football management is a two-man, job, end we thought the same when we started at Hartlepool. But it's only a two-man job if you have the right two. I know many of my management colleagues who would love to create a partnership, but they are better off without unless they find the right man to work with.”
“We differ in other ways of life, which I think a good thing, but regarding the business we're in we are absolutely in harmony."
Taylor himself had a flirtation with management on a solo basis with Brighton, before linking up with Clough again at Nottingham. "They were good days, and I almost created a championship side," be 'says. "But we are both obsessed by success, and the two of us seem to do it much quicker."
Although it is a partnership, there is no doubt who is the leading partner. "I would rather work for Brian Clough than anyone else," says McGovern. "There is no one with as much knowledge of how to handle people and how to handle situations. His knowledge of the game is incredible. These are his greatest strengths."
For the supporters of Nottingham Forest the coming of Clough has been like a dream come true. One man who certainly subscribes to that view is Geoffrey Macpherson, who observes Clough's progress from the unique double position of the boardroom and the supporters club.
Macpherson, a Mancunian who once played for Manchester Schoolboys, has lived in Nottingham since 1935. A successful businessman, he has built up a thriving export service for the textile industry, which he runs from an office stacked high with papers and files, overlooking the Trent Bridge cricket ground. He has stood for Parliament three times - "The electors are not such fools as you think they are: they didn't elect me" - and has become deeply Involved in the football club's affairs as a member of the committee, Forest's equivalent to a board of directors, and, more recently, as chairman of the Supporters' Club.
He believes the secret of Clough's success is the way be works with his players. "When Clough came, I noticed for the first time in my football experience that every player was having his faults worked on, no matter what those faults were.”
"He and Peter Taylor analyse the, player, and then work to improve his performance and his ability. They bring out the maximum that is possible."
Macpherson puts his finger on another angle of Clough's unique personality. "He gives players such faith," he says. "Faith in themselves, faith in Brian Clough, faith in each other. He is the most positive man I know. His powers of leadership are extraordinary."
On match days, Clough is totally wrapped up in the game. Tension exerts a strong hold on him. and that is why, when Forest play at home, Clough is invariably to be found, an hour before kick-off, playing squash on a court at the county cricket ground, just across the road from the City Ground.
That in turn helps to explain Clough's unusual match-day appearance. While every other manager feels duty bound to appear in a smart suit, Clough turns up in training top, tracksuit trousers and plimsolls.
He drives men hard - but he gives a lot in return. He is prepared to contribute at least as much effort as he asks of others, and he is intensely loyal to the men who work for him. He involves himself in all aspects of the club's life - from the playing side to the supporters dub to the development office. And he makes sure people know he is keeping tabs on them. "He expects perfection," sums up Geoffrey Macpherson.
He has absolute belief in his own ability, and one of the men in. regular contact with him is convinced that Clough in turn is convinced that he will get the England manager's job when it next falls vacant.
According to Macpherson, the new low-profile Clough has something to do with certain conditions written into his contract when he was taken on by Forest.
"I won't disclose what they are, but I believe it is important that people should know how far they can go." he said. "It , was important to have ground rules into which he could fit. They are not onerous - it's purely that we have an understanding.” With an ordinary manager it wouldn't be necessary.
"The interpretation of the conditions has been a matter for Brian and our chairman, Brian Appleby. It has gone extremely well, and I think that immense respect has grown between the two of them."
McGovern and Taylor, men who have been with Clough from the start, say that he has not changed at all over the years, despite the new public image he has had since leaving Leeds.
"He has toned down." says Taylor, "but we all tone down between the ages of 20 and 40. It would have happened to him if he had been working for ICI and not a football club."
Clough is very much a family man, and his two sons, Simon and Nigel, are often to be found around the ground.
Clough has succeeded In creating Nottingham Forest in his own image. His values are traditional values like discipline, loyalty, hard work, and concern for quality. These are also the attributes you find in the club and in the team.
"People .say Forest's approach is simple," says McGovern. "But if it's so simple, why don't they do it?" It is a good question.
Echoed fullyGreat stuff-the memories of Clough at his peak come flooding back.
A great photo.
I have an A2 print of that hung on my wall.
They look like the1959 Cup Final shirts. Not the actual shirts, I suppose, but that style.
I might get me one of those … show my missus how to hang washing correctlyI have an A2 print of that hung on my wall.
A clash of the giants.