Hero's Return

Back in 1992, when I was 10 years old, I played football regularly every week. I was captain of my school’s team and I was the first choice right back for the local kid’s team and I also occasionally filled in on the right wing when Wes Gotting wasn’t playing. (Wes Gotting was an idiot of the highest order, incidentally, and was one of the main reasons I gave up playing football six years later). Anyway, the point is that I was mad about football. When I wasn’t playing at school or with Killinghall Nomads at the weekend, I was playing with Lee Sobot up on Saltergate Drive or Gavin Butcher and Yourgos on Sutton Grange Close in Harrogate. If I wasn’t outside playing football, I was playing subbuteo in my bedroom, reading Match magazine and collecting Pannini stickers and Esso World Cup tokens.

In 1992 my team, Leeds Utd, won the league. It was unbelievable – they won the league! My team! Two seasons ago they had been in the depths of the old second division, and Howard Wilkinson had brought in Gordon Strachan, Vinnie Jones, John Sheridan and changed the fortunes of my club so that within two years they were English Champions! Thinking about that now it’s absolutely unreal – imagine Crystal Palace winning the Premiership in 2010. It’s not going to happen is it? I had been to see Leeds play a couple of times at Elland Road, the first game I ever saw was actually the Leeds Youth team beating Man Utd’s youth team to the FA Youth Cup in 1992. This was the Man Utd youth team which included the Nevilles, Scholes, Butt and all that lot. It was Paul Armitage’s birthday, and we stood on the kop and watched our kids destroy their fierce rivals. It was fantastic.

So it was with great joy that I greeted the news that Dad had bought us season tickets for the next season. Me and Dad, going to see Leeds every week.

“What you doing Saturday Jof?” “I’m off to Leeds with my Dad. BYE”

Fantastic. Off to see my team defend their title. Every home game we’d be there. Absolutely top drawer! That championship winning side – I can still name them now – Lukic, Sterland, Dorigo, Fairclough, Whyte, Strachan, Speed, McAllister, Batty, Chapman, Cantona, had been changed a little, David Wetherall had come in to replace Chris Whyte, and Lee Chapman had been replaced by Brian Deane (good move, Wilko) but essentially I would still be watching my heroes every week, in person.

Of course that season we finished 17th, sold Cantona to Man Utd for £1.2m, discovered that Brian Deane was a donkey (which didn’t stop us from signing him again in 2004 though, as if at the age of 36 he’d be any less shit) and I lost a little bit of enthusiasm for our weekly journeys to South Leeds.

There was one player who I loved above all others though, and that was Gary McAllister. He was so skilful, so aggressive, so aware of everything that was going on around him. Even at the age of 11 I knew that he was the guy that made our team tick. I wanted to play like him (I didn’t see there could be much difference between a full back and a creative midfield playmaker, after all), I started wearing my shirt untucked on the pitch, I carried myself a lot taller and straighter, imagined myself roaming about the pitch like Gary Mac, controlling the game with pin point passes and surges into the box. I couldn’t, of course, do these things, but liked to imagine that I could. I was devastated when he left us to join Coventry in 1996, I couldn’t understand how he could leave me like this…

But now he’s back at Elland Road, looking to steady the ship which seemed to be sailing so well before Christmas, but since then has hit some worrying turbulence. I’ve been excited about Leeds this season but with Dennis Wise leaving us this week I had started to worry about what direction we’d take. With Gary Mac at the helm, I’ve got that 1992 feeling again.