​Having survived the traditional, attritional approach to football that is Millwall, Leeds United now move on to a different part of the capital.

We don’t often win in London these days, do we? Queens Park Rangers (QPR if we want to give them less credit) – our opponents on Saturday – are symptomatic of this malaise. We’ve lost our last four consecutive matches there in league or cup.

Formed originally in 1882 as Christchurch Rangers, they merged with St Jude’s Institute from the Queen’s Park area of West London in 1886, emerging from this piece of Victorian football alchemy as QPR.

From 1917 – apart from a couple of brief stints at White City in the early 1930s and early 1960s – QPR have played their home matches at Loftus Road in Shepherd’s Bush. Akin to playing in a cardboard box, it is a particularly unpleasant and claustrophobic destination for LUFC, having lost almost half of the games we have played there to date.

Known at the moment as the MATRADE Loftus Road Stadium - after its sponsor, which seeks inward investment for Malaysian suppliers - its 18,439 capacity is rarely tested, apart from when they import Leeds United fans for the day. And, yes, we’ll be taking more than the transit van load of Millwall fans at Elland Road this week.

As in our previous piece on Portsmouth, QPR joined the Football League in 1920 – the same year as us, but in the new Third Division as opposed to the Second from where we quite rightly looked down upon them, structurally and geographically.
We first came across them in a third-round FA Cup tie in London on 9 January 1932 which we lost 3.1. We faced them next in the late 1940s, losing both of our first two league games against them. In fact, it wasn’t until 3 November 1951 that we beat them anywhere (at the eighth attempt): 3.0 in a Second Division match at Elland Road. QPR were relegated at the end of that season, and we have often been playing in different leagues throughout our respective football histories.

Our first victory at Loftus Road didn’t come until 24 January 1969 in the First Division. Mick Jones scored the only goal of the game as we added that 1.0 win to an amazing unbeaten sequence of league matches. After losing at, er, Burnley on 19 October 1968 we didn’t lose in the league again in that glorious season as we stormed to our first league title.

On 27 April 1974 Jones’s strike partner Allan Clarke scored the winner in a 1.0 victory there to celebrate our second title. We’d already been assured of it after Arsenal’s win at Anfield three days earlier. A Guard of Honour welcomed the Leeds players on to the pitch for their rightful crowning as champions, and there was little blue and white to be seen, only white. The capacity was larger, then, with 35,353 crammed in – at least three of them playing with their hoops.

More recently I remember well the 2.0 away victory in the League Cup on 7 November 1978 when Ray Hankin and John Hawley scored in a 2,0 win as we got all the way to a two-legged semi-final defeat to Southampton. Yes, Southampton: who’d have thought…

The 4.0 aberration down there last season effectively killed our automatic promotion chances almost exactly 50 years to the day after Sniffer’s winning contribution to this particular North-South rivalry.

It’s time to go again; and bring home the points again. On On On.

This post first appeared on ​No Place I'd Radebe

Read more in my book: The Leeds United Story, available on Amazon in print and digital formats, also Kindle Unlimited.

​





​For some reason, I had thought that Portsmouth FC were an older club than they actually are, perhaps along with the likes of Aston Villa and Everton who were among the 12 clubs to form the world’s first Football League in 1888.
In fact, Portsmouth were formed ten years after this, on 5 April 1898. Admittedly this is 21 years earlier than Leeds United’s emergence, and six years before Leeds City were founded. However, Pompey joined that Football League in 1920 – the same year that we did.

While we joined the Second Division, they were founding members (perhaps that’s where I’d got the notion from!) of the new third tier. Known as the Third Division for just the one season, it was then split into Third Division (South) and Third Division (North) as more teams joined, making it more logistically feasible to play games regularly without having to travel such long distances. Remember that on May 3rd when we pop down to Plymouth…

I can’t see that Leeds City ever played Portsmouth in a competitive match so the first Leeds team to play them would have been Leeds United in the first round of the FA Cup on 13 January 1923 – a 0.0 draw at Fratton Park. We won the replay four days later, 3.1, at Elland Road.

Don Revie’s first match in charge of Leeds ended in a 3.1 defeat on 18 March 1961, also at Fratton Park, but after our promotion in 1964 we didn’t play them again for almost 20 years.

It is back in the FA Cup that my personal memories of Portsmouth – other than as a naval base – really begin. On 15 February 1997, the sides met at Elland Road in the fifth round of the competition. Having lost to mighty Darlington in that season’s League Cup we’d managed to get past Crystal Palace after a replay and Arsenal at Highbury (at the first attempt) before drawing second-tier Portsmouth at home. Unfortunately, two Lee Bowyer goals weren’t enough as we lost 3.2.
Two years later – on 23 January 1999, in the fourth round – we repaid the compliment with a comprehensive 5.1 win on the south coast, before deciding to opt out of the competition in the fifth round at Tottenham (after a replay) to concentrate on the league. We finished fourth that year, also destroying Arsenal’s hopes of the title (remember that late Hasselbaink goal at Elland Road?)

However, the match against Portsmouth that stands out above all others for me came in the Premier League, at Fratton Park on 8 November 2003. In the previous match, we’d been destroyed by, er, Arsenal as the ‘Invincibles’ beat us 4.1 at Elland Road. We proved at Portsmouth that we were anything but. The loyal crowd in Leeds had shown tremendous support for manager Peter Reid but, after a long day’s journey into the known, it was washed away with the torrential rain.

In a truly hapless display, we lost 6.1. Alan Smith had quickly equalized their opening goal from two minutes earlier before the rest of the sky simply fell in. Two of Pompey’s goals that day came from Gary O’Neil. I often wonder what happened to him…
 
Seth Johnson and Roque Junior were in our team that day. Johnson surely couldn’t have believed his good fortune at how much he was being paid to play for Leeds United before everyone realised that he couldn’t actually play that well, and we could no longer afford to pay into his retirement fund. Junior never grew up to become the defender Reid had promised he would when making him his pre-season marquee loan signing from Milan. In the seven matches he turned out for us - in which he preferred to play the role of a statue rather than a defender - we conceded 25 goals.

It was a terrible time for our club, wasn’t it? Off the pitch, there could be no defence for the financial mess we had been led into, while pitchside we were all wondering whether our defence was already on the beach.

Reid was sacked two days later (and, thankfully, we never saw Junior again either) as Eddie did his best to save us for a second, consecutive season. As we all know, it didn’t work. We lost four of our final five league games - including Portsmouth completing a league double over us in a 2.1 win.
​
Let’s hope it’s a fine day on Sunday.
​

This post also appeared on ​No Place I'd Radebe 

Read more in my book: The Leeds United Story, available on Amazon in print and digital formats, also Kindle Unlimited.

​It seems a very long while since that 0.0 draw at the Hawthorns back in August, doesn’t it? Obviously, we were in disarray following player transfers, fuelled by a media desperate for us to fail. In ‘normal’ circumstances, a draw there would have been a pretty good away result.

I live fairly close to West Bromwich and two of our neighbours are Baggies fans. So starved of meaningful success, they continue to remind me of the 4.1 aberration in November 2018, while I smile nicely before talking of great Leeds players of recent times such as Pablo Hernández who scored that great goal in the opening minute of our 4.0 win at Elland Road in March 2019, and Patrick Bamford who got two.

While scratching their heads trying to remember ‘great’ players of their own, I further remind them that the biggest margin of victory between our two clubs came as a Christmas treat on 29 December 2020 when they presented us with five goals without reply – 4.0 up at half-time – topped by a Raphinha curler reminiscent of one of Tony Currie’s finest…

That was Leeds United's biggest win against West Bromwich Albion since a 5-0 victory at Elland Road in the fourth round of the FA Cup on 18 February 1967.

Back in the 1920s we lost our first four league games to Albion, but even I am not old enough to remember those. What I do remember, whenever anyone mentions West Bromwich Albion, is the events that took place on 17 April 1971.

I was 11 years old at the time and my sister – a mighty and moody 15 – ‘allowed’ me to join her and a few of her friends on a walk to the ‘hills and holes’ at nearby Barnack. The ups and downs terrain was formed as a result of it being a former quarry, out of which Barnack stone was used to build many of the local buildings in the villages around Stamford, and the cathedrals at nearby Peterborough and Ely.

I was told reluctantly by Bridget the Elder that I could go provided that I ‘kept up.’ That was also the case for those teams at the top of the First Division: Arsenal and Leeds United. Our Dad came to pick us up in the car later that afternoon (no doubt worried about my dodgy hamstrings) and I asked him if Leeds had won. There were no mobile phones in those days and a transistor radio would have required a mule to transport it (there weren’t many of those on the flatlands of the Cambridgeshire/Lincolnshire border at that time).

He shook his head and replied that no, they hadn’t, adding that ‘there’s been a lot of trouble!’

Meeting at Elland Road, Leeds needed a win to stay ahead of Arsenal in a very tight title race, especially as Arsenal had two games in hand. The Baggies were already leading by a single goal, while a 'goal' from Leeds was dubiously disallowed for offside.

A frustrated and increasingly hostile home crowd then saw a Norman Hunter pass rebound off Albion striker Tony Brown and ricochet over the halfway line towards Colin Suggett who was clearly some 15 yards offside as indicated by linesman Bill Troupe raising his flag and the game coming to a stop. Inexplicably referee Ray Tinkler not only failed to blow his whistle but waved play on. Brown squared the ball to Jeff Astle who scored. A late Allan Clarke goal was not enough to prevent Leeds losing the match 2.1 and almost certainly the league title.

On BBC’s Match of the Day TV highlights that evening commentator Barry Davies claimed that: "Leeds will go mad! And they have every justification for going mad." while Richard Ulyatt, writing in the Yorkshire Post declared: "In the 45 years I have reported football I have never seen a worse decision by a referee than the one Mr Ray Tinkler gave at Elland Road on Saturday."

A pitch invasion, including the other linesman being hit by a missile thrown from the Lowfields, and a riot in the city followed. The FA delighted in punishing Leeds by closing Elland Road for the first four games of the following season.

Now in second place for the first time that season we won each of our last three league matches - including a 1.0 home win against Arsenal (thanks to a Jack Charlton goal one minute from time) - without conceding a goal, but it wasn't enough. Arsenal would win the title by just one point.

So, West Brom cost us the title, aided and abetted by a referee whose name is remembered by all Leeds United supporters from that time for all the wrong reasons. A lot of people were jealous of us at that time, as they no doubt are now. Let’s hope we aren’t driven to distraction this Saturday… and don’t leave it too late!

This post was first published on ​No Place I'd Radebe on 27 February 2025.

Read more in my book: The Leeds United Story, available on Amazon in print and digital formats, also Kindle Unlimited.

​So, one of the biggest remaining hurdles to promotion is up next!

​We first faced Sheffield United on 8 November 1924 – a 1.1 draw at Bramall Lane. They won the FA Cup that season – for the fourth time – but haven’t won a major trophy since then. Perhaps they’ll have a centenary celebration of that fact, regardless of what happens on Monday.

One of the founding members of the Football League’s new Second Division in 1892, they were promoted in their first season, finishing second behind Small Heath, and became First Division champions five years later. That’s pretty much it… although they are one of only five sides to have won all four professional divisions of English football. Not sure quite how best to interpret that statistic!

Having lived in Sheffield for a while I did know that Bramall Lane is one of only two grounds (the other being the Oval in London) which has hosted England football internationals, an England Test cricket match, and an FA Cup Final (the 1912 replay, in which Blades fans must have been thrilled to see local rivals Barnsley beat West Bromwich Albion 1–0 in the final minute of extra time).

They weren’t always known as The Blades either. No, I’m not talking about blunt instruments. They were originally known as The Cutlers. Snappy eh! Sheffield Wednesday had enjoyed being called Blades until they got wise to the event and became The Owls in 1907 (actually a reference to their new ground in the Owlerton suburb of Sheffield). The Blades nickname sort of trickled to the south of the city after that…

When researching my book, I found that we were actually responsible for the record attendance at Bramall Lane - 68,287 – which came about on 15 February 1936 during a fifth-round FA Cup tie. We filled their ground then and doubtless will do so again on Monday.

In more recent times we’ve had some tediously close promotion battles with Sheffield United – particularly in 1989-90 when we took four points off them, and almost 30 years later, in 2018-19, when we didn’t. Remember Chris Basham’s goal at Elland Road, and Liam Cooper’s late miss?

The matches in this West v South Yorkshire derby which I remember best occurred over a single weekend in 1974. Again, a championship was at stake but this time the First Division itself. We’d had a bit of a blip after our 29-match unbeaten run came to an end at Stoke (also perceived as the end of the known world). After three consecutive defeats we’d beaten Derby (obviously) but then could only draw 0.0 at Coventry on 13 April, which was also Easter Saturday. Liverpool were scoring very late goals all season (not much really changes there) and hot on our heels.

On the Bank Holiday Monday (15 April) 41,140 of us warmly welcomed Sheffield United to Elland Road, hoping to get back on track against a mid-table team, but, again, the match finished 0.0. The day after that (yes, this was in football’s Dark Ages when three games in four days was considered totally acceptable by the nice blazers with matching silk ties ‘running’ the game) we played the return match at Bramall Lane. My favourite all-time player Peter Lorimer scored twice – one from the penalty spot – as we won 2.0 and didn’t look back (certainly not towards Sheffield). Victories against Ipswich and away at QPR secured a trophy that, for once, officious and self-serving football officials could not take away from us.

So, I kind of always think of Sheffield United in a good way as I recall that balmy Tuesday when, dressed in my all-white kit, I would thrash my football into a make-believe goal at the bottom of the garden, thinking I might one day be as famous as Lash. It wasn’t to be of course although, following Leeds United, the dream never really ends either.

This post was first published on ​No Place I'd Radebe on 20 February 2025.

Read more in my book: The Leeds United Story, available on Amazon in print and digital formats, also Kindle Unlimited.

​I still struggle with it. The expectation of victory in a place far from Leeds. A club that wanted to assure the rest of the world that it really was a slumbering giant about to take the biggest football stages by storm. The outpouring of joy at the final whistle from those who had lived without hope for so long.

I’m not talking about the nonsense that took place at Sunderland back in October. Like most clubs a visit from Leeds United did represent their cup final and their fans celebrated a draw in the same way as Burnley’s celebrate their goalkeeper watching Netflix during their matches.

This was an actual cup final – the FA Cup Final on 5 May 1973. Leeds were again favourites to beat their lower-league opposition. Sunderland won the match 1.0 with a goal by Ian Porterfield, but we were all convinced that Peter Lorimer had equalised in the second half. Referee Ken Burns waived both this and a penalty away after Sunderland defender Dave Watson had appeared to foul Billy Bremner in the area.

I genuinely do find it hard to talk about that match, even though more than 50 years have now passed. I suppose it cemented my contempt for corrupt officials – both referees and their sponsoring authorities – which had simmered since 1967, become toxic in 1971 and was reinforced 11 days later in Cyprus. Two years later in Paris it was even worse…

Ken Burns had also presided over the 1967 FA Cup semi-final against the team we’re all still waiting for father to arm us with his loaded weapon. Burns ruled out Terry Cooper’s second-half goal for offside before, in the final minute of the match, Leeds were awarded a free kick, just outside the penalty area. Johnny Giles tapped the ball sideways to Peter Lorimer who crashed the ball into the net. However, Burns ruled it out as Chelsea’s players had not retreated the regulation 10 yards and he hadn’t blown his whistle for the free kick to be taken.

I was seven and I was appalled. That was the day I became a Leeds United fan.

During that same cup run we had met Sunderland in the fifth round. After a 1.1 draw in the original tie at Roker Park, four days earlier, the replay took place at Elland Road on 15 March 1967.

Because of the short turnaround in the matches, the replay could not be made all-ticket and, despite Elland Road's official capacity at the time being 52,000, the attendance that evening was recorded as 57,892 - still Leeds United's record attendance at Elland Road. Many thousands were locked outside and, with the turnstiles being closed some 23 minutes before kick-off, others tried to scale walls and climb onto the roofs of both the Scratching Shed and the Old Peacock to get a glimpse of the action.

Amid this mayhem, a crush barrier on Lowfields Road collapsed causing over 1,000 fans to spill onto the pitch. The game was halted by the referee for 17 minutes while 32 injured people were picked out of the crush and taken away in ambulances to Leeds General Infirmary. The match itself finished 1.1 again. Leeds won a second replay at Hull City's Boothferry Park, 2.1, five days later.

Whilst we wouldn’t want anyone to be hurt on Monday, it is an absolute certainty that Elland Road will be alive and kicking - something we rarely see at Sunderland’s home ground, apart from when receiving gifts. Not that much changes does it?
I suspect quite a lot of you visited Roker Park. ‘The most comfortable place in the world’ it certainly wasn’t – especially with those ferocious gales blowing in from the North Sea – but, even with the delusion of the Stadium of Light, ‘slumberland’ does seem more a more appropriate label for Sunderland than a ‘superpower’ anytime soon.

Our first ever match in the First Division took place on 30 August 1924 against…Sunderland. It too ended in a draw. Sunderland were one of the top teams in the country at that time. Hopefully, after Monday, they will remember where they are now, and we won’t be playing them again for a very long time.

This post was first published on ​No Place I'd Radebe on 13 February 2025.

Read more in my book: The Leeds United Story, available on Amazon in print and digital formats, also Kindle Unlimited.

​So, the potential Cardiff banana skin turned into a skinful after all! Remembering the previous 7.0 win in 1972 and Barrie Davies’s commentary on Match of the Day, I was taken back to the best attacking team I have ever seen play for Leeds United. Could this line-up go on to match it? Some way to go!
 
However, Wednesday’s trip to Coventry showed that there should be no lifting off the accelerator in the league, even if we weren’t as incisive in terms of goals. (At least we’re scoring goals though, unlike Burnley who are so intent on keeping their back door closed that they’ve forgotten how to unlock the front one, and so are stuck in a remarkably quiet place, unsure of what to do next).
 
And so, we move on to Saturday and Millwall at home in the FA Cup. It seems remarkable somehow that we’ve never met Millwall in the FA Cup before – especially when you consider that the competition began more than 150 years ago, in 1872 (and, yes, I remember the Centenary Cup Final very well indeed!).
 
It isn’t as if either club is new (i.e. less than 100 years old) either. Millwall Rovers were formed in 1885, the current incarnation retaining the name even though they haven’t played in that part of London’s Isle of Dogs since 1910.
 
We’ve never met Millwall in the League Cup either – and that competition is in its 65th season now, although I still somehow think of it as a ‘new’ development. Maybe it’s my age, as the League Cup began in the year I was born.
 
I’m sure that statisticians can prove that the probability of one team meeting any other is actually not that high, but then, equally, the clusters of results that seem to come up against certain of the same teams must be even more unlikely.
 
Either way we’ve only faced Millwall in cup competitions on two occasions. Both were in the Full Members Cup – an additional tournament introduced in 1985 and running until 1992 - for clubs in the top two English divisions after the Heysel disaster, after which English clubs were banned from playing in Europe. Obviously, it was another money-making exercise which was hijacked by corporate sponsors. It was known as the Simod Cup by the time we played Millwall in it at the Old Den on 8 December 1987. We lost 2.0 but, honestly, after Billy Bremner had taken Leeds to within minutes of both promotion and Wembley in the spring of that year, did anyone really care? Just 5,034 turned up for the match…
 
Almost a year later, on 29 November 1988 even fewer – 4,242 – braved the elements to see Leeds lose in the same cup, at the same venue, and by the same score of 2.0.
 
They beat us at The Den again this season of course – we’ve lost nine of the last 12 away games against them in the league – but at least this tie is at Elland Road. I’m not entirely sure why a ‘rivalry’ has built up between us; after all, they are just a small, underperforming club from south-east London… The worst memory for me dates back to 2009 when, having lost the first leg of the League One Play-Off semi-final at The Den, 1.0 (obviously), to a late goal from Neil Harris, the second leg took place on 14 May 2009 at Elland Road. The crowd of 37,036 was the highest attendance outside of the Premier League that season.
 
After Jermaine Beckford had missed a penalty for Leeds, Luciano Becchio put us in front after 53 minutes – making the score in the tie all-square – but Jimmy Abdou equalized for Millwall 19 minutes later. Leeds could not find a way through the packed Millwall defence again and the match finished 1.1 leaving Leeds in League One for a third, consecutive season.
 
Ah! The play-offs…
 
When considering Millwall – and, thankfully, we don’t need to very often – we might often use the word ‘mindless.’ Although Daniel Farke wants to ‘keep the momentum up’ of our team, I hope he rotates the players more than usual, as this cup game is really not in our mind’s eyes, any more than Millwall deserve to be. It might be the FA Cup rather than some Mickey Mouse trophy (Chelsea won the Full Members Cup twice; what more can I say?) but a temporary derailment on Saturday would be far better than us failing again to reach the mainline station at all.

This post was first published on ​No Place I'd Radebe on 8 February 2025.

Read more in my book: The Leeds United Story, available on Amazon in print and digital formats, also Kindle Unlimited.

​I was lucky enough to witness Largie Ramazani’s first goal for Leeds United – a well taken, curling shot to put us ahead at the Cardiff City Stadium. Although they were down to 10 men, we were only really able to breathe after Joel Piroe scored a second, three minutes from time. Some teams have that effect on you, don’t they? It is as if there is an inevitability that bad news is just around the corner. Millwall at The Den are similar (there’s bad news around every corner there, and would be even if Bermondsey was located in a circle!) and I’d argue that Preston and Stoke are in the same, uncompromising mould, making it even more satisfying that we converted last season’s defeats there into a draw and a win this season.

Of course, we play the return match against The Bluebirds this weekend. After the struggles against Burnley on Monday – a small team whose ambition extended to playing for a home draw right from kick-off – many are expecting us to overrun Cardiff. Well, we’ll certainly outrun them, but they are a far better team now than the one we saw in South Wales - unbeaten in their last eight matches (seven of them in the league).

We have history with Cardiff: quite a lot of it, going right back to our origins. Leeds United were first elected to the newly expanded Second Division of the Football League on 31 May 1920 along with… Cardiff City.

Don Revie’s team never lost to them in league or cup competitions, although, naturally, they were in different leagues once we got promoted in 1964. Just before that golden period, though, they certainly had the evil eye over us. On 7 January 1956, we met them at Elland Road in the third round of the FA Cup. 40,000 fans saw Cardiff win 2.1. It ended an unbeaten home run of 32 games at Elland Road. Leeds had wanted to turn on their floodlights, but Cardiff refused, considering it an unfair advantage as they had never played under floodlights before. Incredibly this was the first of three consecutive FA Cup wins for The Bluebirds against Leeds at Elland Road – each in the third round, and each by the same score: 2.1.

The two teams met in Cardiff on 6 January 2002, again in the third round of that year’s FA Cup. Leeds, top of the Premier League at the time, went ahead through Mark Viduka after just 12 minutes. However, there was an ugly, hostile atmosphere at Ninian Park that day - and, yes, we did visit the plaque back in September commemorating the old centre circle of that ground, to make sure it hadn’t come back to life again! Alan Smith - merely acting as peacemaker - was sent off just before half-time and Cardiff came back to win 2.1 (again) with a winner just three minutes from time. I think that defeat represented not just the turning point in our season but also in our history. Doom and gloom quickly followed and blocked out the light in West Yorkshire for far too many football seasons. Between 2004 and 2015, in second tier matches, we failed to win one of the 14 fixtures against them: losing ten of them.

The most gut-wrenching match against Cardiff that I remember from recent times took place at Elland Road on 14 December 2019 in the Championship. We were two-nil up after eight minutes, and three-nil up after 51. We were beginning to wonder why we’d been so apprehensive beforehand. Football history? Bah humbug! Cardiff promptly pulled a goal back on the hour before, in the 82nd minute, Sean Morrison scored another to make it 3.2. The excitement was much too much for him though, as he got sent off four minutes later. Surely, against 10 men and with just four minutes remaining, we would see it out now... Of course not. We are Leeds and this is Cardiff we’re talking about. They scored an equaliser two minutes before the end and that was that.

And they are that: a bogey team that could well come back to bite us again on Saturday. At least we’ll be prepared…

This post was first published on ​No Place I'd Radebe on 29 January 2025.

Read more in my book: The Leeds United Story, available on Amazon in print and digital formats, also Kindle Unlimited.

​As Leeds United prepare to make the trip over the hill to Burnley again, my thoughts turned to previous encounters in this West Yorkshire-East Lancashire rivalry. At Turf Moor – where Burnley have played since 1883 – I remember well the 4.0 Premier League victory in May 2021 when three second-half goals for Leeds sealed the deal on our best away win there for almost 90 years; that record-breaking match took place in the Second Division and ended in a 5.0 victory on 21 November 1931.

In December 2010 – also in the second tier - we scored another three second-half goals there after being 2.0 down at half-time. Our own Jonny Howson scored the winner just five minutes from time, with the travelling Leeds United fans commiserating en masse with their hosts, suggesting they should have gone Christmas shopping instead…

In 1967-68 we were going for the league title and top of the table in April, but successive defeats in our final four matches of the season – against Stoke City, Liverpool, Arsenal and Burnley – saw us finish fourth for a second, successive season, and letting Manchester City to become champions for only the second time (their first coming back in 1937). The Burnley game at Turf Moor ended in a 3.0 defeat. In the following season when we did win our first league title, we had lost at Manchester City but then only lost one more league game that season, 5.1, to a young Burnley side managed by Harry Potts on 19 October 1968.

Curiously, when we were again challenging for the title in 1973-74, we only lost four league matches all season – three of our conquerors being the same as in those successive defeats in 1967-1968: Stoke City, Burnley and Liverpool. The Burnley defeat – 4.1 on 23 March 1974 – was our only home defeat of that season.

The ‘Eddie Gray match’ at Elland Road on 4 April 1970 - the only win in our last six league matches as that season imploded - saw Leeds win 2.1 with both goals scored by Eddie, the second of which has often been described as the finest goal of all time to be scored by a Leeds United player, as he skilfully outwitted at least four players in Burnley's defensive line.

However, when researching my book, it is a story about David ‘Soldier’ Wilson that really captured my imagination. Also, at Elland Road it was in our previous incarnation as Leeds City that we took on Burnley on 27 October 1906 – in just the second league season of the club’s existence.  Manager Gilbert Gillies had recently signed powerful striker David Wilson from Hull City where he had scored 13 goals in 15 appearances. Just 23 years old and a former soldier from the Boer War – hence his ‘soldier’ nickname – his thick moustache gave him every appearance of a player from that Edwardian era.

Wilson was winded in the first half after a challenge with the Burnley defenders and left the field complaining of ‘a heavy pain in his chest’ after 15 minutes of the second half. A heavy smoker he clearly was in evident pain in the dressing room; medical assistance was sought with the thought that he was having a heart attack.

In the meantime, two further Leeds City players had to come off injured, so Wilson offered to go back on the pitch to what was described as a ‘storm of cheers.’ Doctors advised him against it, and he was obviously too ill to carry on, leaving the field again after just three minutes. He lost consciousness in the club bath and died. The official cause was heart failure from over-exertion. The eight men of Leeds City held out until just before the end when Burnley scored to win the match 1.0.
The Leeds Mercury summed up Wilson’s heroism: “His devotion to the game and to the club proved fatal.”

It may be a turf war, but getting home safely is everything.

This post was first published on ​No Place I'd Radebe on 23 January 2025.

Read more in my book: The Leeds United Story, available on Amazon in print and digital formats, also Kindle Unlimited.

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​
For those of us with a love of football history, any match pitching us against a team from Sheffield takes us all the way back to Victorian England and the birthplace of professional association football in this country. Having lived in Leeds and then close to the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, it also ties together my own personal path through life with those of the two cities’ very different football heritages.
 
Weather permitting, this month will see another encounter in the world’s oldest football derby. Hallam FC will take on Sheffield FC in the quarter-final of the the Sheffield & Hallamshire Senior Cup. The match will take place at Hallam’s home - Sandygate - the world’s oldest football ground – where they have played ever since forming in 1860. Sheffield FC – emerging from a local cricket club - are the world’s oldest football club, forming in 1857.
 
The first derby match took place 165 years ago and was played, according to a report from Sheffield FC, "in the presence of a large number of spectators,” and "was conducted with good temper and in a friendly spirit.” Sheffield won 2.0. It is known as ‘The Rules Derby’ after the code of football rules known as ‘The Sheffield Rules’ which were devised in 1858 and spread beyond the Sheffield city boundaries to other clubs and associations in the North and Midlands of England, making them one of the most popular forms of football during the 1860s and 1870s. The Rules were unified with London (Football Association) Rules in April 1877 enabling the FA Cup to be played as a national competition.
 
Indeed, on Boxing Day 1877 representatives from the Sheffield area had travelled to Leeds to try to encourage the locals to take up or follow association football. Led by Fred Sanderson, President of the Sheffield Football Association, two teams from Sheffield played out an exhibition match at Holbeck Recreation Ground. This is considered to be the first association football match ever to be played in Leeds.
 
Sheffield FC currently play in the eighth tier of the English football league system, while Hallam FC play in the ninth. Sheffield currently has two professional clubs in the English Football League of course – both of them in the Championship and thus promotion rivals –while we remain the largest one-city club in England, and arguably the fourth biggest in Europe behind Naples, Marseille and Amsterdam (after FC Amsterdam were disbanded in 1982).
 
Without doubt it is Sheffield United we are more focused on at the moment, as the typically tight second-tier promotion race pitches us against each other, as it did in 2019, 2006 and, perhaps most memorably, 1990.
 
However, Sheffield Wednesday – also formed out of a cricket club, in 1867 – know all about glory. They’ve won the league title four times, compared to our three. They have also experienced the ignominy of falling all the way down to the third tier, as we did, and almost the fourth. Our own, still sadly missed, Jack Charlton took the Owls back to the Second Division in 1980 before handing the reins over to Howard Wilkinson. He promptly took the club back into the top-flight in 1984, after an absence of 14 years. Unfortunately – and disastrously for them with the benefit of hindsight – despite that promotion, a fifth-place finish and an FA Cup semi-final, the club’s unambitious directors were disinclined to invest more money into his team.
 
Howard therefore joined Leeds as manager in October 1988 where he was most certainly backed. Players he had either spotted, bought or coached at Wednesday joined the Wilkinson revolution at Leeds. Among others Carl Shutt, Mel Sterland, David Wetherall and Jon Newsome all have their places in our history, as does Lee Chapman who secured that promotion for us at Bournemouth, leaving the Blades in second place.
 
Perhaps the most spectacular and far-reaching piece of transfer business in this regard was when Howard hijacked a deal that had been agreed to take 32-year-old Scottish midfielder Gordon Strachan from Manchester United to Wednesday. Matching the £200,000 offer, he persuaded Strachan to drop down a division and join Leeds instead, making him not just his midfield fulcrum, but also his captain. We may still have doubts about the way the whole Cantona affair was conducted, but Strachan to Leeds was priceless.
 
Howard’s return trip to Sheffield Wednesday on 12 January 1992 stays long in the memory. Leeds simply annihilated the opposition in a 6.1 win, with Lee Chapman scoring a hat-trick. It was probably Leeds’s best away win in the league since September 1930 when they won at Blackpool 7.3. Howard remains the last Englishmen to win the top-flight title in this country and, despite their fine football heritage, it seems more likely that Leeds United will be league champions again before any team from Sheffield.

This post was first published on ​No Place I'd Radebe on 14 January 2025.

Read more in my book: The Leeds United Story, available on Amazon in print and digital formats, also Kindle Unlimited.

​When researching the history of Leeds United for my new book, some of the FA Cup ties away from home brought back a lot of memories for me, which – against psychologists’ advice to people suffering from depression - I had buried deep in my consciousness.

In fact, I first became a LUFC fan in 1967 after the ‘Great Injustice’ of that FA Cup semi-final against Chelsea. Colchester was heart-breaking, while Histon, Newport County and Crawley just made me very, very angry.

However, it is a cup tie at Elland Road that I was thinking about this week when looking ahead to Saturday’s first-ever competitive visit of Harrogate Town. It’s unlikely that this derby match will ever take on the significance of Huddersfield or those pretenders from South Yorkshire or Teesside. Some are foolishly calling it a ‘home banker’ which anyone with even the slightest knowledge of football history, let alone the history of the FA Cup, will know to be lunacy – even in the mad world of being a Leeds supporter.

I first thought of the Manchester City riot in the third-round in 1978 but quickly moved back four years to 19 February 1974 and a fifth-round replay against Bristol City of the Second Division. Leeds were top of the First Division at that time, nine points clear of Liverpool and unbeaten after 29 matches. In Don Revie’s last season in charge (though, of course, we didn’t know that at the time) we would go on to win the league by five points and most of us already felt the title was ours – even though we didn’t dare to say so publicly. After the debacle of 1972, I had been so hoping for another Double attempt and this year looked to be the most likely.

More than 9,000 Leeds fans had travelled to a sold-out Ashton Gate for the first match in which Billy Bremner scored a 25-yarder to put Leeds ahead just before half-time. Keith Fear equalised in the second half, but – at a time when we are all discussing Leeds goalkeepers again – I remember David Harvey making an absolutely fantastic save from Don Gillies from just four yards out to keep us in the tie.

Three special trains, two dozen coaches and a convoy of cars brought 3,000 Robins fans to Yorkshire for the replay, which attracted the highest crowd of the season so far at Elland Road (despite the unbeaten league run) with an expectant 47,182 fans packed in. The size of the crowd was all the more remarkable given that it took place in a period of industrial action by miners, which affected coal supplies to the power stations, putting electricity in short supply.

Government regulations, aimed at saving energy, demanded that all but ‘essential’ industries switched to a three-day week, while homes were regularly hit by power cuts. The match therefore kicked off at 2.00 in the afternoon rather than under the evening floodlights; an ‘emergency issue’ of the match programme was issued - priced at 7 pence - and containing just 12 pages.

Leeds dominated possession for most of the first half but without making any inroads – sound familiar? Peter Lorimer hit the post on the hour before Mick Jones had the ball in the back of the net five minutes later, however his challenge on the goalkeeper, who had managed to gather a cross from Roy Ellam, was deemed unfair by Wolverhampton referee Jack Taylor (remember him?)

Bristol City – drifting towards relegation in their league – had clearly arrived with a nothing-to-lose attitude, buoyed by the draw against Leeds in the first match. They had several attempts on target before, in the 73rd minute, Gillies ran on to a diagonal pass from Fear in the penalty area and, despite the close attention of Norman Hunter, made no mistake this time, squeezing a left foot shot under David Harvey. The match ended, 1.0.

This was probably the only Bristol City goal ever to make the front pages of the national daily newspapers and made a household name of Don Gillies, a former Scottish Merchant Navy deckhand and papermill worker, who had scored his first FA Cup goal and become an instant West Country hero.
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I remember the match as though it was yesterday, not nearly 51 years ago. I feel the disappointment all over again just by writing this. We’re top of a league again and, apart from the shock, cup loss can cause a blip in league form – just as it did then. However, in our current tight situation, winning might be more problematic, even if it’s easier to cope with!

This post was first published on ​No Place I'd Radebe on 6 January 2025.
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Read more in my book: The Leeds United Story, available on Amazon in print and digital formats, also Kindle Unlimited.