Cloughie put the beating Hart into a doomed outfit
BRIAN CLOUGH is remembered as the greatest manager England never had.
The achievements of Old Big ’Ead with Derby County and Nottingham Forest are well documented – as are his ill-fated 44-day reign at Leeds United and illconceived spell in charge of Brighton.
But the 18-month stint he spent cutting his managerial teeth at Hartlepools United is often just a footnote in the story of the great man’s career.
Yet his time fighting the dead men walking at the bottom of the old Fourth Division was indeed the springboard that catapulted him to the incredible success he was to enjoy working alongside assistant Peter Taylor in the East Midlands.
Clough’s assessment of his first season in charge at Victoria Park was brutal.
He stated: “I’m not joking when I say that if I live to be 90 and stay in football for another 40 years, I will never experience a period so difficult and worrying as the one which finished this week.”
He had just spared Hartlepools – the letter ‘s’ was dropped by the club in 1968 – the ignominy of applying for re-election to the Football League for the sixth successive summer.
These were the days before promotion and relegation to and from the league was automatic.
And no club was forced to beg for votes to remain as one of the elite 92 more often than Pools.
A book about Cloughie’s initial foray into management, ‘Alchemy – Brian Clough and Peter
Taylor at
Hartlepools United, is published this month.
A crippling knee injury cruelly ended Clough’s goal-laden playing career at Middlesbrough and Sunderland prematurely.
Joining Hartlepools in October 1965 gave him a new lease of life – although the club were second bottom of the Fourth Division at the time.
Clough’s first masterstroke was to persuade Taylor (below) to walk out of a three-year contract at non-league Burton Albion and take a pay cut to rejoin him in the North East.
The pair had become friendly when they were team-mates at Boro.
And Taylor quickly proved himself to be a master at spotting unpolished talent.
Hartlepools were one of only two clubs in the Football League without floodlights. Their stadium was so dilapidated that Clough could often be found making running repairs to the place.
He was able to keep Hartlepools out of the relegation zone that first season.
And his first full campaign saw them flirt with promotion before they eventually finished eighth as floodlights were finally installed at the Victoria Ground.
The reputation of Clough and Taylor was on an upward curve and in the summer of 1967, Second Division Derby came calling for their services after the club’s directors drove north to meet them over Sunday lunch.
Over the course of the next decade or so it would be top-flight League championships and European Cups on the menu.