‘Tough for United now? Think back to 1974…’
Ex-Addick Pitcher dies Vialli tells of cancer fight
FORMER Charlton midfielder Darren Pitcher has died aged 49.
Pitcher came through the club’s youth ranks after joining them at 13 and went on to make 214 appearances, before joining Crystal Palace in 1994.
The midfielder, below, was part of the Charlton team who returned to the Valley in 1992, playing a part in the only goal in a 1-0 win over Portsmouth.
Pitcher moved across south London to Palace in 1994 and helped them reach the semi-finals of the League Cup and the FA Cup in his first season. But he saw his playing career come to a premature end after a serious knee injury suffered in 1996.
Pitcher had a brief spell with Leyton Orient during 1998 but never played professionally again.
After leaving football, he had worked in the building trade. CHELSEA cult hero Gianluca Vialli has revealed he battled cancer for a almost a year but is now “very well”.
The 54-year-old wrote about his illness in a new book, and told an Italian newspaper he hoped his experience could be useful to others. “I’m fine now, very well indeed,” said Vialli, below, who played for the Blues from 1996-1999 and later managed at Stamford Bridge as well as at Watford.
“It’s been a year and I’m back to having a beastly physique! But I still have no certainty of how this match will end.”
Vialli said he underwent eight months of chemotherapy and six weeks of radiotherapy, and had hidden his condition until now. He said: “I knew it was hard to have to tell others, to tell my family. You would never want to hurt the people who love you.” GENOA has offered to host the postponed Copa Libertadores final between River Plate and Boca Juniors, stressing the role immigrants from the Italian city had in founding the two Buenos Aires clubs.
The second leg of the final was suspended twice after the Boca team bus was attacked by rival fans outside River’s stadium on Saturday, injuring several players.
A revised match will be scheduled at a meeting today. GIVEN the riches now on offer for players with half his talent, it is unsurprising to hear Sammy McIlroy would gladly swap a year of his career for a season in today’s top flight.
“Like a shot,” he says. “If people think things are tough at United right now, in seventh place with the Champions League knockout stages just one win away and with all the money in the game, they should think back.”
McIlroy has been doing just that to help publicise the new BT Sport documentary Too Good To Go Down, about the year 1974 when United famously were not… and relegation was indeed their fate.
Despite his admission he would have loved a crack at the Premier League and a year-long contract 1,000 times better than the £100 a week that players earned back then, if he was swapping a season it would not be that one. McIlroy REPORTS can still feel the pain of relegation at the end of a campaign during which United, whose progress had slowed after the glories of Sir Matt Busby’s reign, slipped into Division Two under Tommy Docherty.
The former Northern Ireland midfielder says United’s players never truly believed they would go until three defeats in their final three games confirmed it.
“It was horrendous,” says McIlroy, 64. “Six years earlier we had won the European Cup. Looking at it now, the one thing I can liken it to is Leicester winning the Premier League in 2016. It was on that sort of wavelength as a shock.”
Yet as bad as that season was, it laid the foundation for the one that followed which remains one of his favourites, and the connections that turbulent period cemented with fans are among his most cherished memories.
“I had joined when Best, Law, Charlton and Kidd were winning everything [he was Busby’s final signing in 1969] and it was just the place to be,” McIlroy says. “But there was a certain element of that team who were coming to the twilight of their career.
“Denis Law had moved on to Manchester City and George Best was in a bad way at the time.
“When Docherty had brought him back [in late 1973] everyone thought it was going to give us a boost. I remember him scoring against Spurs and then Coventry in December but he was just so out of condition.
“We tried to get him back and make him lose a few pounds but he just couldn’t do it. It was a real shame as he had been an idol for me coming from Northern Ireland and particularly for those who had seen him in his prime.”
“With that going on we had gone on a run between October and March with just one win and although we had a few draws, by February the players were starting to think. ‘We need some wins here’.
“We managed an unbeaten run of six games going into April… but were unable to pull away from trouble. Law’s back-heel in the derby didn’t send us down but results elsewhere confirmed it.”
Law’s famously uncelebrated back-heeled goal in their penultimate fixture meant United were beaten 1-0 by neighbours City in a match that was ended by a pitch invasion, and effectively rendered their last-day trip to Stoke as meaningless.
It is amazing looking back that Docherty kept his job – instead Busby had a case of champagne delivered to his office and told him to “get on with it”. But that proved an inspired decision.
With United shedding older deadwood, adopting a 4-2-4 system with flying wingers Gordon Hill and Steve Coppell, and ‘gegenpressing’ before the phrase had even been invented, they took the second tier by storm and won instant promotion back to the First Division.
They were two contrasting seasons which McIlroy would not swap for anything.
“We had seen supporters crying, not kids but those who had seen us as champions, seen us win the European Cup, they were devastated. We let them down but the way we came back up attacking people was unbelievable,” he says.
“Everyone in that team gelled and we were scoring goals home and away and with record attendances home and away. It was arguably the start of their success.”
McIlroy and his team-mates were not paid fortunes but the memories he still carries from a genuinely turbulent period in United’s history remain priceless.
Too Good to Go Down, the next film in the award-winning BT Sport Films series, premieres at 10.30pm on December 5 on BT Sport 1. PLD W D L F A PTS LEEDS 42 24 14 4 66 31 62 LIVERPOOL 42 22 13 7 52 31 57 DERBY 42 17 14 11 52 42 48 IPSWICH 42 18 11 13 67 58 47 STOKE 42 15 16 11 54 42 46 BURNLEY 42 16 14 12 56 53 46 EVERTON 42 16 12 14 50 48 44 QPR 42 13 17 12 56 52 43 LEICESTER 42 13 16 13 51 41 42 ARSENAL 42 14 14 14 49 51 42 TOTTENHAM 42 14 14 14 45 50 42 WOLVES 42 13 15 14 49 49 41 SHEFFIELD 42 14 12 16 44 49 40 MAN CITY 42 14 12 16 39 46 40 NEWCASTLE 42 13 12 17 49 48 38 COVENTRY 42 14 10 18 43 54 38 CHELSEA 42 12 13 17 56 60 37 WEST HAM 42 11 15 16 55 60 37 BIRMINGHAM 42 12 13 17 52 64 37 SOUTHAMPTON 42 11 14 17 47 68 36 MAN UTD 42 10 12 20 38 48 32 NORWICH 42 7 15 20 37 62 29