TURNING DOWN FERGIE TO BECOME A BLUEBIRDS LEGEND
WHAT DEREK BRAZIL IS DOING TODAY
IN the next instalment of our series looking at the Bluebirds’ unforgettable class of ‘92/’93 we catch up with Derek Brazil.
AT 23 years of age, Derek Brazil was faced with the most important decision of his life. He could either accept Sir Alex Ferguson’s offer of a two-year contract extension at Manchester United, or he could drop down three divisions to join Eddie May at Cardiff City.
As a kid, he was a relative latecomer to football, starting only when he was 14. A year later, Nottingham Forest wanted to take him, but Brazil’s father, Mick, kept him at home in Dublin to continue his studies.
Just two years later, he headed to England for the first time to go on a month-long trial with West Ham, but ultimately failed to made the grade.
He remembers Paul Ince, a future Manchester United colleague, coming over to him at Upton Park to tell him to keep his chin up, that brighter things lay ahead.
How true those words would be. Brazil went home to play for his local club Rivermount Boys in the December of 1985, but by the March he was spoilt for choice. Tottenham, Chelsea, Manchester United, Manchester City, you name it, they all wanted to sign him.
But, given his dad Mick was a United fan and they had a strong Irish contingent there at the time, linking up with then boss Ron Atkinson was always going to be Brazil’s choice.
“I played in a game at The Cliff against the first team, and Frank Stapleton scored three goals against me and I was like, ‘wow’,” he remembers.
“We went up to the office and Ron was in there and there was a blue light under the door inside his office. I was like, ‘What the hell is that?’ I found out later it was a sunbed that he had in the cupboard of his office!
“Ron said they wanted to sign me on a three-and-a-half-year contract. The only thing I said to Ron was, ‘Are you still going to sign me after Frank Stapleton has scored three goals past me?!’
“Ron said, ‘Listen, son, he could have scored 10! How you stopped him doing that was brilliant’.”
Then came the negotiations. How much was he worth? Well, Brazil’s dad Mick had a novel idea to decide that one.
“My dad grabbed a piece of paper and said to Ron, ‘Look, you write down what you think he’s worth and I’ll write down what I think he’s worth and we’ll swap’,” Brazil remembers.
“So Ron writes his number down, my dad writes his number down and I’m thinking my dad is going to jeopardise this for me!
“They swapped pieces of paper and Ron looked at his and said, ‘It’s a deal, Mick. Derek, if you’re happy to sign, we’ll sign.’
“I was happy to sign, shook hands with Ron, but I needed to see what was written on both pieces of paper.
“I looked at Ron’s and it said £5,000. While they were talking and looking out the window, I had to look at what my dad had written.
“So, I picked it up and all my dad had written was: ‘Double it!’
“My dad was thinking on his feet there, I thought it was hilarious!
“My dad seemed a bit down and I was wondering why. And he said, ‘I should have said f **** ing triple it. But I couldn’t remember how many Ls are in triple!’”
Ferguson came in to replace Atkinson and it was a total shift at Old Trafford, far more professional and the intensity of training went through the roof.
Brazil managed only two senior games for United, but Ferguson made him reserve-team captain, which Brazil rightly thought was an honour in itself.
So, we come back to that huge decision Brazil had to make. Steve Bruce and Gary Pallister were in front of him and were never going to be nudged out.
He remembers watching some of United’s ‘Class of 92’ boys and realising they were soon going to overtake him and his contemporaries.
“I could have easily stayed but, at 23, I didn’t want to,” he says. “You look at the players who have gone past you, at other clubs as well, and you think, no, I need to make a move.
“He was looking for the best club for me and that’s when he told me Cardiff City wanted me to go down to Ninian Park for a month’s loan.
“I got the train down and met Eddie at Ninian Park and he took me out to the centre of the pitch. He was a big man, Eddie, I’d not met many bigger than him to be honest.
“His presence was amazing. He said, ‘I’ve spoken to Alex and he thinks you’ll fit in well’.
There were clubs in Belgium, France and Scotland chasing his signature, but it was just “the right fit”, he says.
What sticks out in his mind is the chemistry of that amazing group of players. A perfect alchemy of players, sewn together by the master man manager May.
“We used to meet in the Beverley first,” he says. “A few in there, we’d end up in town, the Bank, the Wine Press, you name it.
“It was great. You’d have 11, 12 lads who trained together in the morning, then on the Wednesday, because we were off Thursday, we would all go out. You wouldn’t get that now!
“It was such a close bond.”
Any particular nuisances on a night out, then?
“Daley!,” he laughs, referring of course to Carl Dale. “He didn’t tell you everything. He was a little bugger when he had a few sherbets!
“He used to have this little death grip when he used to grip you around the neck and you’d literally pass out!
“Luckily, I’m quite tall and he couldn’t get to me. I’d just swat him away.
“So many characters... Nathan Blake, Jason Perry, Nicky Richardson, (Phil) Stanty, Cohen (Griffith) was the quietest, probably.
“They were good nights out, let me tell you!”
May doesn’t get enough credit for how he pulled that squad together, Brazil says.
He was irascible, of course, but he struck up the perfect balance when it came to working hard and playing hard.
“Eddie was great,” Brazil says. “He would be there and sometimes buy us all a meal.
“He’d say,’ Right you’ve got to get your f***ing steak and chips in you, settle your stomachs!’
“We’d leave him then. He knew. He’d get in touch with one of the boys to see where we were but I don’t think he was allowed out. Or we wouldn’t have wanted him there!”
Brazil is a skilled raconteur and it’s a laugh a minute when we chat over the phone. It is easy to see just why May thought he would be the perfect fit into this eclectic group of supremely skilled players.
In many ways, it was the cobbledtogether nature of this iconic squad which is why fans took to them so much, Brazil says.
“There were a lot of rag-tag players who weren’t wanted by their clubs,” the former centre-back remembers.
“The youngsters he brought through, Jason Perry, Blakey, Damon Searle, Lee Baddeley, he brought through players he thought were good enough to win the league.
“Couple that with myself from United, Daley from Chester, Nicky Richardson from Halifax, Stanty who had been all over the place, Kevin Ratcliffe who people thought his legs were gone.
“Eddie got the best out of us all. “If you think about Eddie, a lot of people thought he was just a manager. He wasn’t.
“He was like a father, a best mate, a confidant, a psychiatrist. He was everything.
“If Eddie was alive today, God bless him, and this was his era, he would be one of the top managers.”
Brazil laughs when he thinks about an occasion when Stant threw his shirt at kitman Harry Parsons when he was substituted in one match.
They were drawing at the time and went on to win, but in the dressing room May and star striker Stant squared up after the manager had gone ballistic.
“I wouldn’t have fancied Stanty’s chances if I’m honest!,” he laughs.
There are many memorable moments which stick out in Brazil’s mind, some special, some not so much.
He loved the Ninian Park crowd and cites the tremendous bond which seemed to unify the players and those paying to come and watch them every Saturday afternoon.
“If we weren’t doing well, you’d hear the odd heckle from the stand,” he says. “But you’d look up and realise you’d met him on the Wednesday night at the Wine Press. So you couldn’t let him down!”
City were on a magical run towards the end of that season and it was the penultimate game against Shrewsbury at home, a game which the Bluebirds needed to win to seal promotion, which evokes more laughter from the effervescent Brazil.
“Before that game, all the boys said we should all have a skinhead, I’ve gone, ‘Yeah, I’m up for that!’,” he recalls.
“I end up getting a skinhead, did anyone else? No. I just end up looking like Vinnie Jones!”
Of course, City won the final game, too, and were promoted as champions. An amazing feat and one which Brazil believes justified his move from Old Trafford down to Ninian Park.
He had more enjoyable years in the Welsh capital and was becoming part of the fabric, but his fortunes changed when Phil Neal and Kenny Hibbitt took charge and injuries began to take their toll.
By 1996, then still just 27, Brazil could feel his time was coming to an end and it’s clearly a time which still evokes strong memories within him.
“It was pretty sad when I left,” he remembers. “I kind of knew. I had missed the last two or three months with a bad hamstring tear.
“I wasn’t a big fan of Phil Neal or Kenny Hibbit. I had my best years under Eddie, so I was kind of biased.
“I went in and knew they were going to release me.
“Phil Neal says, ‘Look, you’ve been a great servant for the club.’
“I said, ‘Can I just stop you there? If you’re going to offer me a two-year contract, I’m refusing it!’
“His face just dropped. They had no intention of offering me anything!
“I said, ‘Look, I’ve been at this club a long time now and I think you two are taking this club the wrong route, you’re taking it down. So I want to leave.’
“Phil Neal was trying to get his words out but I just wouldn’t let him say it!
“I thanked Kenny and told them I had an appointment and had to leave. I was meeting the boys in the Admiral Napier, I had to get a shift on!
“I walked out the door into the small car park and literally had tears in my eyes. Just sadness. In the four years I was there, the club and the fans meant so much to me.
“I was in tears in the walk from Ninian Park to Canton.”
Once again, he had offers to leave for China or to return back home to Ireland, but he had built an affiliation with South Wales and managed a move to Newport, part-time while he did his coaching badges.
It turned out to be an important move. He has his own business now whereby he goes into schools to teach PE and sports lessons.
Brazil had stints as a football development officer for both Newport and Cardiff City and, of course, went into management with the likes of Haverfordwest, Goytre United and Pontypridd Town.
“Thank God for Newport,” he says in hindsight. The opportunity to do those coaching badges there has given him his livelihood for more than 20 years.
He has also dedicated much of his time post-football to helping the homeless. He has close ties with Huggard, a centre which helps rough sleepers in Cardiff.
Brazil, who now lives in Penarth with his girlfriend and his nine-yearold daughter Ava, launched a shoebox campaign last winter and spent Christmas Day handing out supplies to the homeless in the capital.
He works in schools Monday through to Wednesday and does his volunteer work on Thursday and Friday and enjoys it all. He loves giving back, be it through sport or helping the homeless.
Recently he has branched out into after-dinner speaking, too, and after one phone call you get the sense he will do all right for himself in that industry.
He also still works for Cardiff City on matchdays as an ambassador. In fact, it is in this line of work where he encountered the most astonishing tale of them all, with his former boss Sir Alex Ferguson.
“I met him six years ago, when Cardiff first got into the Premier League and Manchester United came down to play,” Brazil recalls.
“Ferguson was in the directors’ lounge and Keith Cooper told me he was in there. I went in there and there he is, suited up, and I hadn’t seen him in about 15 years. Bobby Charlton was on the table, the directors, etc.
“As soon as he saw me, he stood up and said, ‘Baz, sit down!’ He asked me how I was doing and all that and then he started going on about Roy Keane, who had a book out at the time.
“’He’s doing my head in at the moment,’ he said about Keane. So I was just laughing.
“But he said, ‘Anyway, how are Mick and Evelyn getting on?’ My parents! Lucky I was sitting down. And I thought that was a shock in itself, given I’d not seen him for 15 years.
“But then he turned around and said ‘Is your dad still driving a taxi?’
“I already respected him, but when I came away from that... I could understand him remembering Bryan Robson, Norman Whiteside or Peter Schmeichel’s family, but for him to go into that level of detail, to know everything about you and your family.
“I don’t even remember some people I worked with two weeks ago! That just shows why he’s been such a top manager for so long.”
It was Ferguson, remember, who thought Cardiff would be the perfect fit for Brazil, and so it turned out to be. So, standing there in Ferguson’s office 27 years ago, does he think he made the right decision?
“I’ve made a lot of wrong decisions in my life,” he says. “That’s definitely got to be up there with the top ones I got right.
“I love Cardiff. I’ve watched it change. In those 27 years, I’ve seen the stadium change, managers come and go, how they’ve built it all up.
“One thing that has never changed has been the fans. They are always so true, so loyal to the club whichever manager is there. To this day, they are still amazing, there’s no-one like them.
“They are the heartbeat of the club in so many ways, the club wouldn’t survive without them.”