On Boxing Day in 1962, a starry-eyed 13-year-old caught the train from Hartlepool to watch Brian Clough's twinkling feet lead another defence a merry dance.
As the Big Freeze which crippled English football for three months that winter set in, we know Clough was the most underrated striker in the country – because he frequently reminded us. But the ice age came too late to save a prolific goalscorer's career at Sunderland.
Clough suffered a devastating knee injury, and banged his head on the frozen Roker Park pitch, in a collision with Bury goalkeeper Chris Harker which brought his meteoric rise to a crushing full stop. Little did that schoolboy fan, John McGovern, realise that Clough would hand him his first contract in professional football three years later – and sign him as his field marshal at Derby, Leeds and Nottingham Forest.
And we can only marvel at a golden age where trains actually ran on Boxing Day. “I left a few minutes before the end to beat the crush at Seaham station,” said McGovern. “On my way back to catch the train, people were asking me the score and I told them, 'They are losing 1-0 and I think Clough's broken his leg.'
“Players only got carried off on a stretcher if they were badly injured in those days, not because they wanted a rest, so we knew it was serious. Of course, we didn't know that he would hardly play again. The next time I saw him, Hartlepools (as they were known then) were holding trials at their ground and he was telling Peter Taylor, 'Lock the gates and don't let anyone out until we've signed that skinny outside right.'
“I've never met anyone like him before, and I'm 72 now so I doubt if I will meet anyone else like him for the rest of my days. He used to tell me that his grandmother could run faster and head a ball better than me, which doesn't entirely explain why he signed me at four clubs.
“But if I look back on my career and wish there was one opponent I could have played against and never did, it would be Cloughie's grandma. She must have been one hell of a player.”
Clough was one of a kind, and if the monkey hangers were not the making of a legend, Hartlepool's decrepit Victoria Ground was an ideal learning curve. A new book, Alchemy: Brian Clough and Peter Taylor at Hartlepools United, chronicles the foundations laid for greatness by management's greatest double at English football's perennial basement fodder.
Look at the League Two table this morning and you'll find Pools back where they were in 1965, when Clough and Taylor took over the north-east's Cinderella club – tap-dancing on the trapdoor. McGovern went on to win the title and European Cup under Old Big 'Ead's tutelage at Derby and Forest, but their alliance began in an unglamorous setting.
Clough had resented his playing career being cut short by injury and used to hang around the tunnel at Sunderland, telling former team-mates they weren't good enough or fit to lace his boots, until he was recommended for the Pools job.
He always resented providence restricting his international career to just two caps with England, where his singularity stood out immediately. During a squad training camp at Roehampton, when a core of players arranged a shopping trip in the West End, Clough and Bobby Charlton stayed behind to watch birds nesting in woodland behind their hotel.
And, yes, he was always fearlessly abrupt in his dealings with the establishment. When he fell out with Hartlepool's meddling, Rolls Royce-driving chairman Ernie Ord, Clough – who had only just turned 30 - didn't mince his words.
“He was a little b***ard,” sneered the greatest manager England never had. “He sacked me twice. I'm prone on occasion to lapse into Anglo-Saxon language, so I said, 'You can f*** off – you are sacked.' He said, 'I own this club.' I said, 'Do you? I ain't going anywhere – only the police can move me, they can have me for trespassing.' Six weeks later, he sacked me again, so I told him to f*** off again.”
But for all their rookie manager's volcanic moments, skint Hartlepool flourished under Clough's weapons-grade charisma and Taylor's brilliant eye for spotting talent. Next to bottom of the Football League when the great double act rode into town, they missed out narrowly on promotion as the pair's intuitive chemistry brought improved results and restored belief to a dwindling port where the last shipyard had just closed.
“Clough wasn't a manager – he was a psychologist,” said McGovern. “He knew what to say to the right people and at the right time. His knowledge of football was the same as everyone else who had played the game at a certain level, but his gift was to demand as much out of you as you would expect of yourself.
“I didn't start playing football for a junior club until I was 15 – until then, I had captained the school rugby team and cricket team for three years, and I had inklings about being a serious tennis player. But Peter happened to be watching when I was playing a juniors game for Central Park and I got invited to a trial at Hartlepool.
“They were both brilliant in different aspects of the job. It didn't matter which one was good cop or bad cop, or which one was the straight man in Morecambe and Wise, it was a unique partnership.”
Alchemy: Brian Clough and Peter Taylor at Hartlepools United, by Christopher Hull, published on 15 September 2022 by The History Press, £20 hardback.
