Why Leeds? Fans in India
By Rich B
November 14 2007
No doubt every fan of Leeds United can remember the day the fell in love with Leeds. The vast majority of those moments involve trips with fathers to Elland Road, The first Lorimer goal or Eddie Gray dribble. Maybe it was Wilko - Vinny - Strachan. The late Charles or maybe the O'Leary Babes.
The following feature has been written by S.A. a regular contributor to our message board. SA has a different memory of it all though - growing up in Chennai in India, without a traditional hand-me-down support route and Western Football not even a major sport over there, it is interesting to read another perspective.
Why Leeds ? Why did Gandhi fight for our country’s freedom? Why did Sachin choose the game of Cricket ? Why did Rajnikanth’s Sivaji shake up the nation ? ( and so on and so forth ! ) . Some novel things are meant to happen and such phenomena cannot be explained by mere words. Hold your breath as I’m going to cheekily yet proudly add the question “ Why Leeds United “ to the list above . Forgive my impersonation of the Yorkshire audacity as deep down inside a cauldron of my thoughts , I still look upon the disastrous year of 2002 for Leeds United with a lot of pride !
During the fag end of the Ridsale’s leadership ( or lack of ) , what seemed to be traumatic and laughable for the Leeds fanatics and the Leeds haters ( the rest of the world i.e ) respectively , felt like a bed of Roses to me . I was a modest supporter of the underdogs in any competition ( a hater of the popular bandwagons ! sods law ) and that’s how Leeds United caught my eye in the first place . The 99-00 , 00-01 seasons were supposed to be our first proper glorious phase in the Barcalays Premiership ( which we inagurated as the defending champions by the way ).
Finishing inside the top 4 started becoming a hobby for O Leary’s boys. Nobody expected O Leary to promote youngsters and create one hell of a team from the corpse that George Graham left behind. I was just a “ TV Fan “ during such dizzy seasons of victory and fame . A casual onlooker and an eavesdropper of some sorts .When David O Leary was bravely riding his rookie managerial luck during the 98-99 seasons , I liked the mix of fearlessness , dirt , flair and the young zest about his team. It was all about Manchester United , Arsenal , Real Madrid etc then but everybody still had half an eye on this rising phoenix called Leeds United . The senior football fans were fearing if the World was going to revisit the glory days of Don Revie again .
The days when the words Leeds United sent shiver down the spine of all the leagues. They were a team full of champions who dominated the 70’s of English football with a take-no-prisoner attitude. There was a similar buzz about O Leary’s team which had the cream of the Premiership’s exciting young prodigies playing out of their skins in Kewell , Bakke , Bridges , Keane , Bowyer , Ferdinand , Woodgate etc . The only difference was that Revie’s men was hated to bits for it’s route to success while O Leary’s boys were silently backed by many. Who would not like it when out of the blue , a bunch of modest untried youngsters from England under the stewardship of a fledgling manager vehemently shoved many European and English giants and kept Marching On Togther ! ( Our club’s anthem) . A popular original composition unlike most of the football songs which are created by adding new words to existing tunes ! )
Such a narrative would have been the perfect recipe for any normal football fan to immediately fall in love with that club but to my surprise , I only batted a few eye lids when Leeds fiercely represented England in the semi finals of the UEFA Cup and Champions League in consecutive years. Pitting against the likes of Barcelona , AC Milan , Real Madrid etc and more than matching them on all occasions feels like heaven now , though it felt normal then for me personally ! It was only after O Leary was sacked in June 2002 and Ridsale along with the English Media started washing our dirty linen in public , I started to bond with this club emotionally. Terry Venables stepped in and he showed the crap midas touch of his .
He fell out with top class players and fan favourites like Dacourt and Batty after just one training session .Rio Ferdinand went for an astronomical fee, both Robbies (Keane and Fowler) left because Venables didn't pick them, and Bowyer jumped in the exiting bandwagon as well. Ridsale revealing the frailties of the club’s economy did Terry no good, when Woodgate was sold without the consent of the manager to settle some debts. El Tel left us in a relegation dog fight by the time he was sacked in March 2003 .
Such twists and turns made Leeds look like a time bomb to most but I found it an attractive proposition. The icing on the cake from a dramatic perspective was when Ridsale made a cowardly sneaky exit and economics expert John Mckenzie took over , who appointed Peter Reid as our manager and had to secure our premiership status . Step up Mark Viduka ! A super hat trick in the 1-6 away win at Charlton and then clinching the winning goal during the dying minutes of one of the most scintillating games ever in the history of the premiership , a 2-3 win at Highbury versus Arsenal ( thereby gifting the title to eternal rivals Manchester United and securing our premiership status. It’s such a paradoxical feeling ! ) .
Believe it or not , the drama exhibited in 02-03 season as described above was the force that made me fall in love with this club. That season was like an entrance exam Leeds conducted to test my abilities to be a future Leeds fanatic. I passed it with flying colours while many ex Leeds “ followers “ backed out and moved to greener pastures like Arsenal and Manchester United after that season.
Throughout such sad lows for the club , the way the Leeds fans backed their club home and away by and out-loving and out-singing their opponents was purely inspirational. I could not help but realize that there was something uniquely special about this club which i never really found in any other club after watching the premiership as a germinating neutral for 2 years from 1999. The way we hit gold with O Leary , the way we crumbled in a cruel manner, the way our gold fish loving Chairman Ridsale revealed some of his atrocious financial gambles , the way the fans put up with all of this by selling out every game , the way we continued to produce home bred talents every season , the way so many players stabbed us in the dark after learning about our insecurity and the way the whole footballing world looked on us with sarcasm , delight and envy , all these signs pointed towards an elusive door .
A door that opens rarely but when it does , it provides the admit to the permanent status of a peerless feeling of being and breathing Leeds United. I was lucky to have developed the knack of loving every lows and blows to this club and from that moment onwards , i felt like as if I was blessed to be having such an affair with a football entity ! I knew from the second we secured our premiership status with Peter Reid that we were going down next season come what may. It was like envisioning your worst nightmare even before you are ready to hit the bed and that really set the tone for a rollercoaster of a ride as a Leeds fan. What was left with us in the 03-04 season was a bunch of crocked players on huge and continuously rising pay packets like Viduka , Bakke , Barmby , Seth Johnson , Duberry etc along with some real heroes in Smith , Radebe , Kelly etc and some top young talents in Lennon , Milner and Robinson .
Only during that summer did Peter Reid realize the blunder he did by accepting the job .Hardly did he receive any financial backing as the chairman’s board were busy restructuring our huge debts and selling our valuable assets for cut price deals to scavenger like buyers . All the premiership clubs took advantage of our precarious and pitiable position . Take it or leave it was what they told Ridsale and his successor Trevor Birch ( chief executive and insolvency specialist ) .Something was better than nothing for our board at that time as we were in a lose-lose situation ! Either we keep them and pay the monumental and suffocating wages of theirs or we sell the remaining jewels and still pay a small part of their unaffordable wages! Both ways , administration remained a possibility. Peter Reid must have spent his own penny to find a clown of a scout that got him some laughable loan deals from Ligue 1 in Lamine Sakho , Cyriul Chapius , Zoumana Camara , Salomon Olembe , Didier Domi etc .
Arsene Wenger was his amicable self when sent Pennant on loan on a month by month basis . He turned out to be one of the few bright spots of that season as he stayed till our final game and played his heart out. The team that season never really settled with the loan players having the “ WTF “ looks on their faces , not knowing that they just bought a ticket to hell by signing for us then . The remains of the Venables era were busy in the treatment room taking their own time or in the chairman’s room plotting a quiet exit ! Hardly a handful could come out of that season with their heads held high . Smith , Kelly , Harte , Radebe , Matteo , Pennant , Milner etc were the ones that really gave a damn about the situation .
Even the hero from our championship winning side of 92 , David Batty , turned a villain by not accepting a cut in the players’ wages and staged a revolt of some sorts ! Our financial troubles did not leave any stone untouched and was relentlessly killing us by all means. Peter Reid was the next victim and amidst all the notorious pontificating from ambitious, headstrong board members, a self-obsessed chairman and fly-by-night managers, it was left to a genuine Leeds man in Eddie Gray , to try to stop the club from going to the wall in the final phase of our last season in the premiership. Even a Leeds legend like him fell prey to the claws of our demons . In Football , money kills ruthlessly , simple as that . I
will never forget the game at the Reebok Stadium that season where we had to win to stay alive in the relegation battle . During that time , the set top box system was introduced in only one city in the whole of the country and that was in good old Madras , my hometown ! Hardly anybody took up the Set top box due to it’s ridiculous pricing and the football fanatics had to resort to soccernet’s gamecast to say the least . I sneaked into the house of one of my friends who afforded that setup and watched that game without the knowledge of his parents ! I left home in tears as Viduka got himself foolishly sent off in the first half and the game ended with the famous pictures of Smith and Robbo embracing themselves with tears and a little boy crying in the away stand with the markings of “ We will be back !! “ on his body.
Those scenes were a deafening moment in my time as a Leeds fan as I could hear only the Leeds fans sing their hearts out after the inevitable happened !! Some players had the face to clap them off the park , some did not have the guts to face them while some just didn’t care ! On the contrary , the better part of our relegation from the premiership ( and the championship !! Oh that’s a long story !! Wait for Part 2 of Why Leeds-Post Relegation) was that I really learnt a lot as a fan and matured leaps and bounds . Tuned into games during the most uncomfortable of Indian times with some online radio broadcast beside me to this moment !! It was a totally unusual way of following a club .
I had a radio connection , a message board and the internet to prove my loyalty and strength amidst the frenzy that modern day football was creating with so much exposure in the Television . To this second , my love for Leeds United has not withered one bit and I can proudly say , I ve not failed to turn up for more than 5 odd games in the last 4 years !! Believe me , that’s one hell of a stat considering the rubbish we have produced both on and off the pitch during those times. Relegation from the premiership now seems to be a blessing of some sorts ( more on that in the next edition ) and I sign off for now by recollecting a moving moment in my convalescing Leeds memories.
After we lost at Bolton and got relegated , I was making a sentimental exit through the backdoor at midnight. My friend was sending me off and sarcastically said – “ so then , who is it going to be next season ?? Newcastle would be a good choice for your taste ! or maybe Spurs “ . I stood there baffled by the stupidity in his question but such was the average football fan’s attitude . Little did he realize that this was not an one off thing with Leeds and I was not there for fun or glory . It was not about doing something different and grabbing attention. I don’t want to sound like a Mills & Boon fanatic with what I’m going to say but what I had with Leeds was far more serious than my profession and bigger than my passions ! It was destiny and I gradually realized that after shedding a tear or two for something that was continents away ! So , I told him gently – “ Dude , if it doesn’t kill us , it only makes us stronger !! “ and now , after watching us ( the club , the fans and myself ! ) alive and kicking , I’m sure he got the message .