Why Don Revie deserves to be remembered in the same bracket as Busby, Shankly, Stein and Paisley

By Anthony Clavane in Mirror Football Blog

Published 10:56 13/06/11

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Anthony Clavane’s book ‘Promised Land’, described by the Daily Telegraph as “an instant classic”, won the National Sporting Club’s Football Book Of The Year last month.

Mirror man's Leeds book wins award: Exclusive extract here  

This morning, the Sunday Mirror sportswriter’s acclaimed “love letter to Leeds” was declared Sports Book Of The Year after winning a public vote organised by the British Sports Book Awards.

Clavane will be reading from the double-award-winning book at the Don Revie Tribute Evening at The Peacock, 251 Elland Road, on July 8th.

Here he explains why Revie’s reputation deserves to rehabilitated.

The Damned United film was on the Beeb the other night. Unlike the book, the film caricatures one of the most brilliant characters ever to bestride English football. No, not Brian Clough – Don Revie.

Click here to see amazing classic images of The Don from the Daily Mirror's picture archive  

The caricature should be objectionable not only to Leeds fans, who rightly revere a man who single-handedly transformed their fortunes, but to all fair-minded lovers of football.

His astonishing career ended with a controversial departure from the England job, but Revie’s 13 years at Elland Road included titles in 1969 and 1974, two Fairs Cups, one League Cup and that 1972 FA Cup final settled by Allan Clarke's diving header.

For a decade the Whites were never out of the top four, finishing runners-up five times. Even the one-eyed revisionists who harp on about ‘Dirty Leeds’ recognise that the exceptional Revie team – Sniffer Clarke, Hotshot Lorimer, Speedy Reaney, the elegant Eddie Gray, the inspirational Billy Bremner, the sublime Johnny Giles, the magnificent Madeley – was one of the greatest English club sides of all time.

This year marked the 50th anniversary of The Don's appointment as Leeds manager. Revie had flaws as well as strengths, but so did all the other great managers of the post-war era. Yet Busby, Shankly, Stein and Paisley are regarded as secular saints.

Unbiased commentators are, at last, beginning to reappraise his legacy. In a recent issue of the wonderful new quarterly magazine The Blizzard, the country’s leading historian Dominic Sandbrook – an Aston Villa fan by the way – writes movingly about Revie’s rags-to-riches story. Born into poverty in the north-east, his mother died of cancer when he was 12 and, as Sandbrook points out, he “dedicated himself to hard work and self-improvement”.

What struck me most about Sandbrook’s excellent essay – check it out at www.theblizzard.co.uk – was the reference to the young players he nurtured into world-class superstars as an extended family. One friend is quoted as saying: “The players were his children…and their children his grandchildren.”

Revie forged a powerful esprit de corps. As Norman Hunter once put it: “If the gaffer said 'Just charge that wall and it will give way', I would do it.” Having watched ‘Bites Yer Legs’ Hunter as a kid, I have no doubt the wall would have collapsed.

In contrast to the dour and sinister figure of the film, I always found Revie to be a very warm man. He lived across the road from me, at one time, in a modest semi-detached house in Leeds – and I knocked on his door for an autograph several times. I was never turned away. One of my uncles knew him socially and always called him “a gentleman”.

Revie will always be in Leeds' hearts – and the hearts of all the “children” who played for him. A search has now been undertaken to reunite all the players who represented Leeds United during the golden era of the 1960s and 70s. This is part of a campaign being launched to raise money for a long-overdue, 7ft-tall bronze Revie statue to be erected outside the United stadium.

All of the surviving players of the era have been invited to be special guests at a number of Revie tribute evenings being held throughout Yorkshire in the coming months starting at The Peacock – a pub opposite Ellland Road football ground – on Friday July 8th at 7.30pm. Allan Clarke and Paul Reaney will be the special guests and tickets for this event can be ordered from contact@leedsunitedsupportersclub.co.uk or phone 07850716657.

The players will also be invited to a big tribute Revie dinner on October 20th and to the ‘White Christmas Lunch with the Revie Boys’ at Elland Road on December 2nd.

The likes of Reaney, Hunter, Giles, Big Jack Charlton, Clarke, Gray and Lorimer have been enormously helpful in supporting the campaign and now Jim Cadman, the chairman, wants to broaden the net.

Players he hopes will be able to join them include Alan Peacock, who scored crucial goals in the Division Two title-winning campaign, Chris Galvin, who faced Barcelona in a Fairs Cup play-off clash, centre back John Faulkner, who joined after impressing for Sutton United in an FA Cup clash, keeper Glen Letheran who helped Leeds win a penalty shoot out against Hibernian in his sole European game – and John Hawksby who scored in his first two games but never hit the target again.

“Many big clubs ignore their legends of the past,” said Jim, “but we believe that the players from the Don Revie golden era are the foundations on which Leeds United is built and the Don Revie statue is something in which they can share. We are searching for as many of the 'Revie Boys’ as possible to be our guests at the various functions we are having to raise funds for the statue.”

*Anthony Clavane will read from the award-winning ‘Promised Land: The Reinvention Of Leeds United’ at the Don Revie Tribute Evening at The Peacock, 251 Elland Road, on July 8th.

Website: www.anthonyclavane.com

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