Nigel's Dad

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wardonia_blade

wardonia_blade

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The appointment of Nigel Clough led me to re-read his dad’s auto-biography from 1994. A couple of (para-phrased) extracts you may be interested in:
“I am certain our Nigel will not choose football management. Ex-players become managers because they are not equipped to do any other type of work. By his early 30s he will be reasonably wealthy and already has a shop. I think he will make a clean break from the game, use his qualifications and follow his interest in accountancy”
“Sheffield United scored a goal in each half to condemn us to relegation. I preferred to sit in the dug out during matches but for some reason climbed out and stood. Watching, but mostly thinking about what might have been done to save Forest from the depression about to descend on the ground. Suddenly those lovely people from Yorkshire set up the chant Brian Clough, Brian Clough. The Forest fans joined in. I did not deserve the sincerity, the warmth, the kindness in the air from the United fans”.
So for someone who by his own admission was never wrong, Brian Clough was wrong on both counts. Nigel as a respected manager and if any opponent deserved kindness from the United fans it was Brian Clough.
Seems fitting that we are playing Forest tomorrow.
 

Reading that comment about chanting Cloughs name gets the hairs on the back of my neck standing up again. It was an amazingly spontaneous moment of respect for a real character of the game and a fantastic manager. I'd never witnessed the whole ground chanting the same chant before (except for England games)
 
SwissBlade said:
Reading that comment about chanting Cloughs name gets the hairs on the back of my neck standing up again. It was an amazingly spontaneous moment of respect for a real character of the game and a fantastic manager. I'd never witnessed the whole ground chanting the same chant before (except for England games)
Click to expand...



2:45 is "our bit". The whole film is worth a watch
 
wardonia_blade said:
The appointment of Nigel Clough led me to re-read his dad’s auto-biography from 1994. A couple of (para-phrased) extracts you may be interested in:
“I am certain our Nigel will not choose football management. Ex-players become managers because they are not equipped to do any other type of work. By his early 30s he will be reasonably wealthy and already has a shop. I think he will make a clean break from the game, use his qualifications and follow his interest in accountancy”
“Sheffield United scored a goal in each half to condemn us to relegation. I preferred to sit in the dug out during matches but for some reason climbed out and stood. Watching, but mostly thinking about what might have been done to save Forest from the depression about to descend on the ground. Suddenly those lovely people from Yorkshire set up the chant Brian Clough, Brian Clough. The Forest fans joined in. I did not deserve the sincerity, the warmth, the kindness in the air from the United fans”.
So for someone who by his own admission was never wrong, Brian Clough was wrong on both counts. Nigel as a respected manager and if any opponent deserved kindness from the United fans it was Brian Clough.
Seems fitting that we are playing Forest tomorrow.
Click to expand...
He was also wrong in his book about drunken Liverpool fans being the cause of the Hillsborough disaster.
 
The down to earth qualities that Nigel's father had have obviously been passed onto his son.

Last week, I think it was in the Sheffield Telegraph, I read an account of a recent sports writer's bash at which Nigel had been invited. The guy who announced Nigel as speaker did his bit, and in typically droll Clough fashion, Nigel stood up, mentioning, "It's at least three hours since I last heard a story about my dad".....the guy must know that his dad will always be held in affection by fans everywhere, so to forge a career for himself, on his terms, doing things his way, says so much about his inner strength. I know it might sound a bit whimsical, but I never thought the day would come when we'd have a Clough as our manager.

His dad was the best manager never to manage England, and I have a sneaking feeling that if we let his son get on with the job he was brought in to do, he'll sort things out and take us forward. There may be blips along the way, but I just feel that he and united are a good fit UTB
 
borg elite said:
To be fair a lot of people were wrong about that.
Click to expand...
Where they! I was in the area that day working, and from what I saw from about 400 yards from the ground, they were more than a handful who where had been drinking in more than moderation. What I also thought at the time, that at 2:45 there where many people around and my thoughts how are they all going to get in on time. What Liverpool fan is going to own up to the fact they had been drinking, and arrived late, thought not.
 
CG Blade said:
Where they! I was in the area that day working, and from what I saw from about 400 yards from the ground, they were more than a handful who where had been drinking in more than moderation. What I also thought at the time, that at 2:45 there where many people around and my thoughts how are they all going to get in on time. What Liverpool fan is going to own up to the fact they had been drinking, and arrived late, thought not.
Click to expand...

People are aware that some Liverpool had been drinking however every inquiry /report etc. determined that the cause was not drunken Liverpool fans.
 
It's remarkably easy to be gracious in victory.

If Forest had been beating us we'd probably have been calling him a drunken old twat.
 
My grandad's brother was one of Brian's best mates back in his Middlesbrough days.

Assisted him a fair few goals too!
 
CG Blade said:
Where they! I was in the area that day working, and from what I saw from about 400 yards from the ground, they were more than a handful who where had been drinking in more than moderation. What I also thought at the time, that at 2:45 there where many people around and my thoughts how are they all going to get in on time. What Liverpool fan is going to own up to the fact they had been drinking, and arrived late, thought not.
Click to expand...

I'm no lover of Scousers having lived there for three years at the end of the nineties / turn of the millennium. But you really can't blame them. Also no one "murdered" anyone like the Scousers claimed. There were some massive judgement calls that went wrong including picking a ground without a safety certificate (which other than Patnick's part was the nearest thing to criminality but there was still no malice afforethought) and what appears to be a cover up due to the Police requiring no loss of respect due to the turbulent times regarding Steel and Coal labour disruption. The Police could not afford to be shown to be incompetent or biased with the miners strike only a few years before and the feelings from it still strong and raw as regards the Police. So we cannot pin the Hillsborough disaster on any drunken Scousers.
 

The drunken, scamming Scousers contributed to the disaster. Not saying they were totally to blame, but to hear the way that time appears to leave them blameless makes me want to puke.

Back to Brian Clough and he was a one off, a man of his era. Way too honest, and his shooting from the hip would certainly have added an interest to the modern game which is sadly lacking.
 
Seems a lot of people still choose to ignore the independent panel report and mass cover up. The information is out there.

CG Blade said:
Where they! I was in the area that day working, and from what I saw from about 400 yards from the ground, they were more than a handful who where had been drinking in more than moderation. What I also thought at the time, that at 2:45 there where many people around and my thoughts how are they all going to get in on time. What Liverpool fan is going to own up to the fact they had been drinking, and arrived late, thought not.
Click to expand...
 
“I am certain our Nigel will not choose football management. Ex-players become managers because they are not equipped to do any other type of work."
strange quote , especially from an ex player who became a manager
 
borg elite said:
Seems a lot of people still choose to ignore the independent panel report and mass cover up. The information is out there.
Click to expand...
No doubt there were plenty of different things that happened that day that were wrong, and much of that was down to SYP, the FA, for picking a ground without a safety certificate, and SHeffield City Council, for allowing Hillsborough to operate without one.
But how many tickets were sold to Liverpool fans, and how many were there trying to get in. You can see by the pictures there are far to many in the Leppings Lane end,. Did they sell to many tickets for that end? No . The Liverpool fans without tickets who tried to get in we're to me the first cause of the problem, other things that were wrong followed. A few years before on Boxing Day there were more in the ground with no problems, for a match with a lot of passion, no problems there.
 
wardonia_blade said:
The appointment of Nigel Clough led me to re-read his dad’s auto-biography from 1994. A couple of (para-phrased) extracts you may be interested in:
“I am certain our Nigel will not choose football management. Ex-players become managers because they are not equipped to do any other type of work. By his early 30s he will be reasonably wealthy and already has a shop. I think he will make a clean break from the game, use his qualifications and follow his interest in accountancy”
“Sheffield United scored a goal in each half to condemn us to relegation. I preferred to sit in the dug out during matches but for some reason climbed out and stood. Watching, but mostly thinking about what might have been done to save Forest from the depression about to descend on the ground. Suddenly those lovely people from Yorkshire set up the chant Brian Clough, Brian Clough. The Forest fans joined in. I did not deserve the sincerity, the warmth, the kindness in the air from the United fans”.
So for someone who by his own admission was never wrong, Brian Clough was wrong on both counts. Nigel as a respected manager and if any opponent deserved kindness from the United fans it was Brian Clough.
Seems fitting that we are playing Forest tomorrow.
Click to expand...

I think that was my favorite post I have ever read on this site
 
"But how many tickets were sold to Liverpool fans, and how many were there trying to get in. You can see by the pictures there are far to many in the Leppings Lane end,. Did they sell to many tickets for that end?"

No CG on the terrace as a whole there were not too many people, its just that they were fatally over-concentrated in the inescapable central part of the Leppings Lane Terrace and it was not the LFC fans fault.

This is the crux of the tragedy. There weren't more Liverpool fans in that terrace than properly had tickets. The lateral fences and the fact that on accessing the ground, the obvious way in led to just one 'pen' meant that the central penned in area was gravely over-packed and the sides of the same terrace were under-filled.

The crush happened because the fences running from top to bottom stopped the spectators moving sideways away from the crush zone to safety.

I spent a sad day reading the reports and watching the video that shows the fans entering the ground (on Owlstalk). Drunkeness wasn't a factor.

I'm sure we've all been drunk and in drunken crowds in pubs and we still feel quite safe. The modification of the ground and truthfully of nearly all grounds in the 1980s was about fencing in the crowd and was entirely about controlling hooliganism. Safety was a secondary issue. Hillsborough was particularly bad because the sloping tunnel down into the middle of the Leppings Lane terrace appeared to most of the Liverpool fans as though it were the only way in, therefore thats where they went.
 
vorpal blade said:
"But how many tickets were sold to Liverpool fans, and how many were there trying to get in. You can see by the pictures there are far to many in the Leppings Lane end,. Did they sell to many tickets for that end?"

No CG on the terrace as a whole there were not too many people, its just that they were fatally over-concentrated in the inescapable central part of the Leppings Lane Terrace and it was not the LFC fans fault.

This is the crux of the tragedy. There weren't more Liverpool fans in that terrace than properly had tickets. The lateral fences and the fact that on accessing the ground, the obvious way in led to just one 'pen' meant that the central penned in area was gravely over-packed and the sides of the same terrace were under-filled.

The crush happened because the fences running from top to bottom stopped the spectators moving sideways away from the crush zone to safety.

I spent a sad day reading the reports and watching the video that shows the fans entering the ground (on Owlstalk). Drunkeness wasn't a factor.

I'm sure we've all been drunk and in drunken crowds in pubs and we still feel quite safe. The modification of the ground and truthfully of nearly all grounds in the 1980s was about fencing in the crowd and was entirely about controlling hooliganism. Safety was a secondary issue. Hillsborough was particularly bad because the sloping tunnel down into the middle of the Leppings Lane terrace appeared to most of the Liverpool fans as though it were the only way in, therefore thats where they went.
Click to expand...

Quite simply, this.
 
Of course lots of mistakes were made and there had been crush problems in previous semi finals at the sty but the stadium was better than most at that time but still far from ideal. Does it make some feel better to hear they were in no way to blame for events when hundreds turned out of the S6 boozers at 2.45 putting even more pressure on an already serious situation outside the ground.
I do think it is time to let it drop now, enquiry after enquiry until one says what everyone in Liverpool wants to hear will not bring any of the poor buggers back. Then when the legal eagles get involved we all know who will be blamed in a society which has gone more and more American, "you know where there's a blame there's a claim" the blame will always fall on those most able to pay.
What happened was an awful set of circumstances coming together to make a disaster but after 25yr it is time to let it rest I'm sick of hearing and reading about it.
 
Please read these comments by a fellow Blades fan Paulus who was there:-

"At about 2.35pm in Leppings Lane it was obvious that the number of people still to get through the turnstiles would not do so by kick off time. How do I know: because I was there and I had to battle my way through them to get around to the kop end where I had a ticket with my Forest supporting mate. The police were struggling to control the crowd, the police horses were doing what they always did; they made the crowd hostile and this increased the agitation because they realised they wouldn't get in for kick off. Doubtless there was aggression from some of the Liverpool fans outside the turnstiles towards the police, there always was when police horses came barging in.

In my opinion the fact that the kick off was not delayed was the single biggest mistake that was made and I have to assume that any request for a delay in starting the match should have come from the police officer in charge. Everything else stems from this error. An announcement of a delayed start would have calmed those outside, there would have been no argument about how many "ticketless" fans there were (if any) and the stream of fans gaining entrance could have been directed to the partially full side pens.

I took my place on the kop at about 2.50 and we immediately noticed the uneven distribution of fans on the Leppings Lane end. If we could comment on it that point, why didn't the police notice it? It is also worth noting that the tickets were only for the terrace they did not specify which pen you were meant to go in the number sold was for the whole terrace, so the fact that the ends were 1/2 empty should have set bells ringing that the centre must be dangerously full.

Even after the tragedy developed the police were still hopelessly out of step with the reality of the situation, they spent at least 10 minutes lining up across the pitch believing the problem was a hooligan issue when people were dying on the pitch.

All of this convinces me that as Taylor said the police lost control and I would say the vast majority of the blame lies with them. Of the rest, Wednesday have to take some of the blame for dividing up the terrace into different pens but not adjusting the entrance turnstiles at the same time, some of the turnstiles were not even open. What did the Liverpool fans do wrong? Not a lot from what I saw, yes, they had been drinking, can't blame them for that, some turned up too close to kick off, give over, it is entirely predictable that that would happen, it happens at every game I go to.

Judging by the standards of the time the Liverpool fans behaved as fans behaved, yes it was edgy, it was hostile, it was a big game, big crowd but none of these things should have come as a surprise to SYP.
Paulus, Oct 26, 2011"
 

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