Authors: Paul Harrison
As a footballer, he was tough and resilient, never failing to give anything but 100 percent he would run through brick walls for the sake of Leeds United and Scotland. Loyal and genuine, he was admired as both a man and as a sportsman. Very few people in life deserve to be called a legend, Billy Bremner is the exception to the rule. To this very day, the mere mention of his name commands immediate respect.
Billy may be gone, but he will never be forgotten, and this book is a fine tribute to him, immortalising his spirit and fine character as only a true fan and supporter could.
John Charles
Summer 2003
Billy Bremner was someone I hugely admired and one of my first childhood heroes. Along with Batman, he provided me with a huge amount of positive childhood memories and happiness. Unlike the caped crusader, Billy was tangible. Week in, week out, he thrilled football audiences with his passion and desire to win. He was the perfect role model for a young aspiring footballer – strong, resilient and determined, he could score goals too. In fact, on a football pitch it seemed to me that he could achieve anything.
I wasn't alone in my adulation; he was revered by all football supporters and, even if they weren't Leeds fans, privately Billy Bremner was the player they would all have loved to have had in their team. Even the late Brian Clough found it in himself to tell me in a private interview:
‘Billy Bremner was the greatest ever footballer and man to play for Leeds United. When he spoke everyone listened, including me, and it takes someone very special to get me to shut up and listen. Billy Bremner had that quality. I didn't always agree with his aggressive playing style but he was the most influential footballer of his era and the mainstay of the Leeds side through-out two decades.’
The football fraternity in general has been more than keen to provide glowing testimonials to a very special person and to one of the most gifted footballers of his generation; a player who many still refer to as the ‘wee man’. The impact he had on people was immense and some of those interviewed for this book openly wept whilst discussing their own personal memories
of him as a footballer and man. Billy Bremner was not simply a footballer or a football manager, he was a genuine human being, a devoutly loyal husband, father and a man who cared for and put his family first and foremost. He was a friend to many and a figurehead to entire communities in what was essentially viewed as a working-class game. We shall never truly know how many youngsters and adults Billy Bremner inspired but the great respect in which he is still held is rarely so consistently sustained in the memory of football fans. Billy is a qualified member of a most elite football body, ‘the greatest ever’, an accolade afforded to less than a dozen British football icons since the game first began.
Despite the popular image of him being a ‘hard’ and ‘angry’ footballer, emotions that are possibly better described as passionate, Billy was in fact a thoughtful schemer, with a tactical awareness that instilled fear into the most disciplined of opposition. Chris Balderstone, the ex-Huddersfield Town and Carlisle United player (and professional cricketer) described Billy as:
‘The most difficult player to mark in football. You couldn't stick with him throughout an entire game, he was like “Will o the Wisp”, one minute he would be right in front of you shouting for the ball, the next he was gone, ghosting past players and running into gaps that he had created. He had incredible stamina and vision, an awareness of what was happening on the pitch around him. The complete package really.’
Whether it was for Leeds United, Hull City, Doncaster Rovers and not forgetting his beloved Scotland, Billy was fiercely competitive. He wanted to win, to succeed. It is no coincidence that the title of his 1969 autobiography is
You Get Nowt for Being Second
.
Off the field he continued to display his leadership qualities. Management and motivational skills are not something that you simply buy off the shelf, read about in a book or are trained in. It takes a variety of skills and experiences to be able to consistently lead and inspire, not the least of which is respect. No one could
ever suggest that Billy didn't command respect. He naturally motivated everyone through his enthusiasm be it team mates in training, the women who washed the playing kit or the staff of the Elland Road café where playing staff congregated before and after training sessions. He knew full well that a kind and supportive word here and there made a difference, and one of the things he truly enjoyed was making people happy.
Of course he was no angel on the pitch. He could and did mix it with the best of them, yet to a man, each and every player I have spoken with who played against him in a competitive game or during a training session reiterated the same thing – that he generally gave as good as he got. If someone kicked him during a game, rarely would you see him rolling about on the floor feigning injury. He would simply make a mental note of who it was and would get up and play on, all the while biding his time and awaiting the opportune moment to return the kick. And he would often retaliate twice as hard so that the offending party would think twice about doing it again! Reasoned justice, one could say.
There can be no doubting the fact that he was very often targeted by opposition managers, players, fans and even match officials before a ball was kicked. With his fiery red hair, vocal opinions and exuberant character, he had the ability to wind up opponents in pre-match warm-ups, as he confidently strutted around the pitch displaying his ‘Keep Fighting’ attitude; motivating colleagues with the odd snippet of personal detail about opposition players. He was a warrior going into battle and few teams could boast such players in their ranks. Without doing anything untoward or wrong, Billy Bremner could intimidate any opposition in their own stadium.
Managers and experienced players would openly say in prematch talks that they were going out onto the pitch with the intention of stopping Bremner from playing his natural game. If successful, and his threat was eliminated, the chances were that this would temporarily stall the finely tuned cogs of the Leeds United football machine and prevent it from operating efficiently. Not that Leeds was a one-man team, but the Billy
Bremner influence was so great that his mere presence on the pitch would often raise the standard of his colleagues’ game.
The late Don Revie once told me that Billy Bremner's presence in the dressing room and on the pitch would produce a charged atmosphere throughout the Leeds team (never mind their opponents), making them an even tougher, motivated and focused proposition to encounter:
‘Billy liked to generate passion in his team mates; he could lift their spirits or dampen them with a solitary glance. If we didn't play well then some of them would be more concerned as to how he would react afterwards in the dressing room than they were of me as manager. In the build-up to every game he was driven and focused, inspirational. He knew the strengths and weakness of other teams and the individual players; his own game would revolve around exploiting those weaknesses. He was a visionary and I never managed a footballer or a man like him. An exceptional person.’
Once on the field, it was time for battle. Afterwards, irrespective of what had occurred previously or during the ninety minutes, Billy would very often be the first to greet and shake hands with his adversaries. The infamous encounters with Dave Mackay at White Hart Lane, in August 1966, and with Liverpool's Kevin Keegan at Wembley in August 1974, are now part of football folklore. Yet neither incident created serious disharmony between any of those involved. The Wembley incident with Keegan was part of an ongoing spat that had been present from kick-off, and whilst many supporters of Leeds and Liverpool believe it to have been a nonsensical refereeing decision, it wasn't quite as innocent as it appeared. Keegan had given out, and taken, a few whacks (often retaliatory) throughout the game. He had earlier tangled with and felt the full force of Johnny Giles’ wrath as the two clashed, resulting in Giles lashing out at the striker whose response was to react as though he had been struck at close quarters by a charging hippopotamus. This reaction certainly riled some of the Leeds players, whilst their Liverpool counterparts pleaded complete innocence.
Later in the game, Keegan attempted to outmuscle Bremner on the edge of the Leeds penalty area and once again he came out second best – not only losing the ball but taking a retaliatory smack to his upper body, Bremner's response to the attempt to force him off the ball. He took his frustration out on the Leeds captain and puffing his chest out like a turkey cock he elected to confront him. Both men exchanged expletives in a face-to-face encounter. Then, without warning and in full glare of the match officials, Keegan threw a right-fisted punch that landed on the left side of Bremner's face. For a split second time stood still and Wembley stadium fell silent, only to erupt moments later as a scuffle between the two players ensued. Leeds players Norman Hunter, Gordon McQueen and David Harvey moved swiftly to break up the spat and hold back both men. The rest, as they say, is history. Match referee Bob Matthewson intervened, calmly pulled both players to one side and gave them a stern dressing down before sending the pair of them off. It was Keegan's second sending off in four days.
In emotionally petulant displays both players pulled off their club shirts and threw them to the ground in blatant disgust, before walking disconsolately from the pitch. From Bremner's point of view the shirt removal was symbolic – he had let down his manager and the club. He was genuinely ashamed of the incident, the shirt removal was one of respect that he wasn't fit to wear it after his actions.
‘I don't have any regrets in football. I loved every moment of my career though perhaps I could have done things a little differently. The sending off at Wembley is not something I am proud of. There had been a lot of name calling and comments made in the tunnel before we walked onto the pitch. We were reminded of comments our new manager [Brian Clough] had previously made about us and certain Liverpool players were also going on about Don Revie abandoning us. It was nothing unusual, just the general winding up of the other team. I made a couple of comments about them being nothing special now they were losing Bill Shankly and it seemed to set the tone for the rest
of the game. There was a few late tackles and fouls going on that the referee missed, and I think we all sensed and reacted to the intense atmosphere of the occasion.
‘Kevin [Keegan] was a good player and we always seemed to have a tussle during a game, it was nothing unusual. I was genuinely shocked when he reacted the way he did and tried to put me on the floor. I could tell by his eyes that he had lost it; I tried to calm him down. I actually apologised to him on the pitch, for what it was worth I could have been proposing to him. He wasn't about to listen to someone he had tried to flatten. Bob Matthewson the referee didn't really have an option, we both had to walk. I tried to call Kevin back to apologise but he was already gone. I felt really bad for the Leeds fans, I had let them all down.
‘The manager wasn't too happy with me either, he told me I deserved to be sent off and refused to listen to me; he said that we had no reason to cheat our way through games and we could win them fair and square without resorting to other tactics. He used the phrase “cheat” and I didn't like that at all and told him so. I apologised to him later but I don't think he really forgave or forgot it. I made a point of looking out Kevin and apologising to him afterwards. It was made all the more difficult for me by the fact that we lost the game [on penalties] to our old rivals as well. I really wanted us to take revenge for the 1965 FA Cup final defeat they inflicted on us.’
Keegan was clearly unhappy and frustrated about the treatment he received and even threatened to quit football altogether.
At the subsequent Football Association disciplinary committee hearing, both players were punished for the Wembley outrage and both received hefty eleven-game suspensions and £500 fines. Shocked by the severity of the punishment, Bremner, in a most characteristic emotional outburst, swore at the members of the adjudicating panel that included the chairman of Nottingham Forest, Harold Alcock. Bremner recalled:
‘It was a ridiculous punishment, we had publicly apologised to supporters and to the Football Association, what else could we
do? There was a feeling that some of the discipline committee had personal agendas and by punishing the league champions [Leeds United] in such a drastic manner, it gave the clubs they were involved with an advantage. These types of committee hearings are necessary but back then they tended not to be objective but extremely subjective in their decision making. They were archaic and institutionalised with an “Old Boys Club” mentality. Any player or manager going before a discipline panel was fighting a losing battle. I told them I thought they were a bunch of wankers and the judgment was shit. The look on their faces was one of horror, like they had never had anyone swear at them before.’
As for the incident with Dave Mackay, it was nothing more than over-enthusiasm; both players were winners and battlers, both were influential and inspirational and as usual in midfield emotions were running high. It says a great deal for both men that later they played down the incident as a brief flirtation with confrontation borne out of a desire to win. Much to the chagrin of the media, who thrive on such on-the-field rivalry and attempt to regurgitate it at every opportunity, both maintained a friendship long after the event. Both were patriotic Scots with much more in common than most footballers and there was mutual respect.
Bremner, when pressed to talk about it, said:
‘Naturally I was shocked, Dave was angry, very angry, but he was an honest player. I had been a bit of a pain in the arse to him during the game, just winding him up a bit. A bit of chit chat and the odd knock and push is all part of the game. I knocked an injury he had on his leg. I had no idea he was going to react like he did and I got one hell of a fright when he grabbed me.