Defender went on the attack at his pub when Roy Keane gave him some ‘lip’
“A TRUE legend” is how staff at The Stage pub in Nottingham described its former boss, Larry Lloyd.
On the pitch Lloyd formed a formidable partnership with Kenny Burns at the heart of the Nottingham Forest defence that, along with goalkeeper Peter Shilton, proved vital to the Reds’ back-to-back European Cups under Brian Clough in 1979 and 1980.
Mr Lloyd, who was part of the Forest side that won the First Division in the 1977-78 season before their remarkable triumph in Europe, settled in the city after he hung up his boots in the mid-1980s.
He had grown “disillusioned” with the Beautiful Game and later turned his attention to running The Stage Door, a popular, old-school city centre pub, located a stone’s throw away from the Royal Concert Hall and Theatre Royal.
Mr Lloyd was also a firm presence behind the bar of the pub – now called The Stage – and legend has it he once turfed out a young Roy Keane who was on a Forest Christmas do.
In a fitting tribute, the current team behind the pub, part of the Grade Ii-listed Westminster Buildings in Wollaton Street, paid tribute to the former owner.
“RIP Larry Lloyd,” staff wrote on social media. “A true legend at Nottingham Forest and The Stage Pub Nottingham.”
Lloyd would later go on to run a pub in Spain.
The story goes that Lloyd once threw Roy Keane out of the pub because the Irishman was allegedly giving him some “lip”. The Stage Door had been hosting Nottingham Forest’s Christmas party and during the bash, Lloyd is said to have butted heads with the young Keane, and asked the future Manchester United skipper to leave due to a spot of unspecified misbehaviour.
“Let’s just say I thought Roy was being a bit naughty,” Lloyd told the Independent back in 2008, reports the Daily Star.
“I asked him to leave. He gave me some lip. I had a word with his captain, Stuart Pearce, and asked him to get Roy to leave. Stuart said: ‘He’s no harm’. So I chucked all of them out.”