CLOUGHIE TOLD US TO GIVE KEEGAN A GOOD HIDING!
In what should have been European Cup final week, JOHN McGOVERN recalls Forest’s amazing 1980 win
THE material worlds of John McGovern and Kevin Keegan could scarcely have been further apart when their paths collided in a European Cup final, 40 years ago this week.
As Nottingham Forest faced Hamburg, Keegan, in the German team, was enjoying the £20,000 he’d earned from his foray into the music industry with the song Head Over Heels In Love.
It reached No10 in the German charts, supplementing the cash he’d made from his lucrative Patrick boots deal, which he insisted on keeping, despite Hamburg being tied to adidas.
McGovern’s only musical venture had been in the Forest team’s We’ve Got the Whole World in Our Hands single, recorded with Paper Lace in 1978, which made neither royalties nor Top of the Pops. He and his team-mates had been offered a deal worth £500 apiece to wear their boots in the 1980 final — as long as at least eight players did so and that they actually won the game. ‘There was a £5,000 win bonus for the match,’ says McGovern. ‘There was no appearance money.’
They had Brian Clough in their corner, though, so it didn’t matter that their star striker Trevor Francis was missing or that Peter Shilton, their most crucial player on the night, sustained a calf injury in training a few days beforehand.
‘Brian Clough’s ace was that you went out feeling as good as or better than the opposition,’ reflects 70-year-old McGovern. ‘He gave you that confidence.’
Forest did a job on Keegan that night, as they beat Hamburg to become the first — and still the only — club to have won the European Cup more times than their domestic league title.
‘We were told not to speak to him beforehand,’ says McGovern, relating how Clough had banned his players from even looking at the Englishman in the Bernabeu tunnel, to ensure that Keegan, then 29, was ‘on edge’.
The exceptions to this rule were central defensive enforcers Larry Lloyd and Kenny Burns, told by Clough to intimidate Keegan by any means possible.
Burns, chewing pink gum, flicked his denture at him in the tunnel and made a grotesque chewing gesture. Lloyd, who had played with Keegan at Liverpool, was more direct, informing Keegan that Burns would be ‘giving him a hiding’.
McGovern was just a few yards from Keegan when Burns first made good on Lloyd’s threat, 20 minutes or so into the game, before following it up with a few choice words about the curly perm that the Englishman had left Liverpool with.
Minutes before the first Burns hack at Keegan, John Robertson scored to put Forest ahead. Hamburg spent the next 70 minutes of football throwing the house at the English side — to no avail. Keegan was so frustrated he shoved a linesman three minutes before the end, somehow avoiding dismissal.
Forest’s feat of endurance running left the players on their knees at the end. ‘I could barely lift the cup,’ says McGovern.
He had been frequently underestimated. He was diminutive in stature and, born with a muscle missing from his back, could not run fast. ‘It meant my left shoulder went across my body when I ran and it always was a handicap and something that limited me,’ he says. ‘But I decided that what I lacked in speed I would make up for in stamina. Nobody would run me into the ground, even if I did lack that pace or extra yard. I was never the greatest player but I understood the game.’ That was food and drink to Clough, who did not have time for individualists. He adored McGovern and signed him three times — at Derby, Leeds and Forest. ‘His talents were not as obvious as some,’ said Clough of McGovern, years later. ‘His immense physical and moral courage, his willingness to put in his lot whatever the circumstances, his total trustworthiness and reliability. His ability to play a pass.’ If there was a regret for Clough, it was the terrible experience he exposed McGovern to at Leeds, by taking him there from Derby and then leaving him to it after 44 days.
The resentment felt around Elland Road for Clough, a longtime critic of Leeds under Don Revie, was raw. And McGovern, as one of his representatives, was a target. ‘I was booed when I ran out for my home debut,’ relates McGovern. ‘When Clough told me I was playing, he said, “I don’t think you will get a good reception”. It was a nightmare.
‘The players did not want me there. Some even let the ball run out of play when I passed. I will never forgive them for that.
‘I was at the meeting where Clough walked out, after John Giles had spoken up against him. I couldn’t believe Brian didn’t challenge them. He left and never came back.’
Clough later said Leeds’ players and fans had ‘humiliated’ McGovern but he had the ‘last laugh’ when they reunited at Forest, then still in Division Two.
After promotion to the top flight, Forest became the biggest challengers to Liverpool’s hegemony, though Bob Paisley’s players always wondered why they put up with Clough’s discipline. To them, it looked like rule by fear.
‘There were rules,’ counters McGovern. ‘If you talked to the papers you were fined. You tucked your shirts in. But you can’t go out and perform to the best of your ability if you are scared. He’d tell me, “If Liam Brady or Giles get a kick, then I kick you”.’
The football rules were simple, as McGovern recalls from a training session with Clough at Hartlepools, where they first worked together, in 1965.
‘He told me, “Go and get a ball and bring it back here now”,’ relates McGovern, breaking out into the excellent Clough-speak which peppers this conversation. ‘Then he told me, “Dribble the ball to the corner flag and back”, which I did. I then did the same run, without the ball. Clough asked, “Tell me which was the easiest, with or without the ball?”. I told him, “Without it”. He then said, “So why don’t you try passing it on Saturday?” — I never forgot that.’
These experiences shape McGovern’s opinion about how Clough would view some of today’s players.
‘Manchester City signed John Stones for £50million but he can’t play out for his life,’ he reflects. ‘And he’s not the only one. The number of goals lost from some of these players. Clough would not have had that.’
Clough insisted on unconventional post-match entertainment at their isolated hulk of a hotel up in the Sierra de Guadarrama, 40 miles from Madrid. The wives and families remained in the city.
A few players sneaked out in the car of the hotel manager’s son, though the less recalcitrant group, including McGovern, played Connect 4 for much of the night. Cake was laid on.
When McGovern wrote an autobiography, eight years ago, Keegan provided the foreword and referenced the 1980 match. ‘John was at the heart of their play, keeping things ticking over and making sure the simple things were done well,’ he wrote.
‘He didn’t have the physique you would normally associate with a footballer. But when you saw him play, all of that was pushed to one side. He supplemented the ability he had with sheer hard work. It was an honesty that all of us who played against him respected.’