NORMAN CONQUEST FOOTBALL

Bite yer legs banner may have defined Leeds legend Hunter but success also followed his career

THE banner was a homemade affair, just a strip of canvas strung between a pair of wooden poles. It was unfurled by a couple of Leeds United fans at the FA Cup final in 1972. And it bore the daft little message: ‘Norman Bites Yer Legs.’

Almost half a century has passed since that Wembley afternoon, yet scarcely a day went by without somebody mentioning that slogan to Norman Hunter. Usually, he managed a little smile. Sometimes he tried to explain.

‘It’s light-hearted. It’s not serious, so it’s a good thing. See, when we played, you were never booked for your first tackle, so you went in a little bit harder than you should. That’s all. I’m not saying it was right. Nowadays, you wouldn’t get away with it.’

Indeed you wouldn’t. And a showreel of Hunter’s most celebrated tackles would only underline the point. Leg-lunging, stud-thrusting affairs they were; the kind of assaults which would make a modern referee shudder as he pulled out his red card.

Many old-timers tell us that the game’s gone soft; that modern players couldn’t deal with the intimidation of the likes of Hunter, Tommy Smith and Ron Harris.

Others would insist that football has become more civilised; that the modern game has embraced intelligent creation and rejected the kind of licensed brutality which Don Revie’s Leeds too often embodied.

Hunter never seemed terribly bothered by the fierce divisions which his club provoked. His philosophy was that you played to the whistle. If the referee found no problem with your methods, then that was fine. If he objected, then you modified your tactics.

Simple as that. In any event, he always believed that his football ability had been obscured by the publicity surrounding his tackling. And he had a point.

‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘I could play, largely because of the people I played with. When you’re playing with people like Billy Bremner, Johnny Giles and Bobby Collins, if you don’t improve as a footballer, then there’s got to be something wrong with you.’

And, as his record suggests, he really could play. Between 1962 and 1976, he made 540 appearances for Leeds and won 28 caps for England. With England, he made two World Cup finals squads.

With Leeds, he won two League championships, plus the old Second Division title, the Football League Cup, the Inter Cities Fairs Cup (twice) and the FA Cup. He was also the first winner of the Players’ Player of the Year title, in 1974.

It is a genuinely formidable record, far beyond the dreams of a mere clogger.

Yet Hunter performed at the heart of that Leeds side whose remarkable achievements left them strangely unloved elsewhere. Outsiders saw a team built in the image of its manager, Revie: dour; suspicious; shamelessly cynical and utterly ruthless. ‘They’d kick their Grannies,’ Arsenal’s Frank McLintock once observed. Yet Hunter recalled his years at Elland Road as the best of his life.

‘Every day, I used to wake up and look forward to going to the ground and seeing the lads at training.’ he said. ‘I loved it! I don’t miss the actual playing so much, but I miss the dressing-room and I miss the banter.’

When Brian Clough took over from Revie in that ill-judged experiment in 1974, Hunter was in the dressing-room as the new man arrived. Clough called the players together and announced that they were ‘a bloody disgrace’.

Giles described the scene: ‘Clough looked around at the faces and said:

“Norman Hunter, you’re a dirty bastard. But everybody likes to be liked, and I think you’d like to be liked too, wouldn’t you?” And Norman said, “I couldn’t give a f***”.’

Clough lasted for just seven matches, but Hunter remained at Leeds for another two years. It was during that period that he became involved in the most dramatic collision of his eventful career.

The occasion was a match with Derby at the old Baseball Ground on November 1, 1975, the pitch drenched after days of rain. The Press box was situated perhaps five yards from the touchline and some 15 feet above the ground. We scribblers could hear every collision and every curse and when Hunter and Derby’s Frannie Lee collided, we had a ringside seat.

The fracas arose out of nothing. Then punches flew, insults were screeched and things became serious. Then Hunter swung a right hand at Lee’s face, splitting his lip. Lee, the smaller man, lost his head completely, hurling a windmill of schoolyard blows at Hunter. Players from both teams then joined in, while the referee, Derek Nippard, tried to restore order. Eventually, the fighters were separated. Nippard took them aside, produced a notebook and, inevitably ordered them off. Just as he reached the touchline, Lee touched his lip and saw the blood. Nursing his grievance, he waited for Hunter then flung himself at him once more.

Order was finally restored and Nippard was hard-pressed to play the match to its conclusion.

Now for journalists required to phone post-match copy, there was just one feasible train back to London in those days. Along with a colleague, I had ordered a taxi to the station. As we climbed into the cab, we spotted Nippard and offered him a lift, which he accepted. In the taxi, he declined to talk about the ugly scenes. ‘You’ll have to wait for my official report,’ he said.

Avoiding the Leeds and Derby fans, we boarded the train and invited Nippard – who by now was ‘Derek’ – into our compartment.

Derek’s kind heart melted with gratitude. ‘Well, maybe I could say one or two things for tomorrow’s paper,’ he said. And he provided us with a rare, exclusive story. I always remembered his final words. ‘That Norman Hunter,’ he smiled. ‘He’s a lad, isn’t he?’

Norman was indeed ‘a lad’, but he was also pragmatic. He recognised that a football team is comprised of piano players and piano shifters. He knew that Giles, Bremner and Eddie Gray provided the imagination which delivered the dreams. But he also knew that without graft and, occasionally, intimidation the artists would flounder.

It was Hunter’s task to supply the sweat. His record reveals how well he carried out his role.

For one who had achieved so much, he was admirably realistic about his abilities in one memorable interview on the subject.

‘If I’d played in the modern game, I’m not sure I’d have been quick enough in that central position,’ he said. ‘You’re very exposed and you get a lot of one-against-ones. I think I could have sat in front of the back four, where you just win it and give it to other people.

‘The truth is, I don’t envy the players now. When I hear what they’re earning, I just think, “Good luck to you. I wouldn’t swap anybody’s lifestyle for what I had; the club I played for and the people I played with. I was fortunate. I played all those games for England, went to a couple of World Cups. I wouldn’t swap all that.

‘But I think a lot of players from our era, for what they put into the game, could have done with being a bit more financially sound.’ It was a telling piece of understatement.

Meanwhile, an image of that old canvas banner with its celebrated slogan is now used on coffee mugs, greetings cards, mouse mats. Some might have been offended by the branding, but Norman Hunter seemed rather proud of being remembered in that way.

Yet the tribute he prized most of all arrived inside an ominous buff envelope. ‘Do you know,’ he recalled, ‘I once got an income tax return, and there was a little note inside. It just said: “Norman … keep biting!”’

He threw back his head and chuckled at the memory.

Without sweat, graft and intimidation the artists would flounder. It was Hunter’s task to supply the sweat