Did I like having a public father? No, I just wanted to be normal
As a new film documents his father’s def ining glories Nigel Clough tells Oliver Holt about an incredible man
‘Dad was certainly no angel, but this film addresses how this team were unparalleled in what they achieved. It is not forgetting the problems he had. I hope it redresses the balance a bit after The
Damned United. It is amazing how many people think the book is based on fact. They say: “Oh, I read the book about your dad, did that really happen?” Well, no, a lot of it didn’t, no.’
NIGEL CLOUGH sits in a corner of the bar at the old Midland Hotel i n Derby where the members of the great titlewinning Derby County side built by his dad often gathered after matches. He sips a soft drink. It is lunchtime and the bar is quiet but he sits with his back to the room anyway.
He talks quietly and thoughtfully, without bravado or boastfulness. He is not like his father in that way. He is adept at leaving things unsaid. The son of Old Big ’Ead is relentlessly self-effacing and modest. He has a reputation as one of the most principled and honourable men in football.
Nigel talks of his 17-year-old son, William, who will not be a footballer, will not be the third generation of Cloughs to play for England. He says that William is hoping to go to university to read French and Spanish. He talks about how proud he is of him. He talks about how proud William’s grandfather would be, too.
Football had a habit of stealing his father away from him when he was a kid and Nigel did not want to visit that upon his own children. He talks of his dad with great affection but sometimes, men see things in their fathers they do not want to replicate, things that they fix upon banishing from their own character.
‘He wasn’t there an awful lot,’ says Nigel. ‘All his success at Nottingham Forest in the late Seventies was a bit of a whirlwind for us as a family as well. I think that’s why my mum kept away from it and said: “This is our family life here and that has to continue as normally as possible for us”. Which it did.’
Nigel chose to prioritise his children in a way that his father did not. He does not criticise his father for that. It is just that he decided to do things differently.
He says: ‘The first question people always ask me now is: “Have you got children?” I tell them I have a son and a daughter. They say: “Oh, does your son play?” I say: “Yeah, he plays but he plays on a Sunday morning with his mates”.
‘I was at a dinner at the City Ground last Saturday night for Forest’s 150th anniversary celebrations and there was a bloke on the table and we started having the conversation. I told him William was hoping to go to university and he said: “His granddad would have been more proud of him doing that than playing football”.
‘And he would have been. My dad was obsessed with education. It was because his playing career ended so suddenly. He would have been more proud of William going to university than anything else. That’s something that he never did. When he stressed the importance of schoolwork all the time when we were growing up, we used to say: “Well, you didn’t do anything at school, you left at 15”. And he’d say: “My medals are my O levels and A levels”.’
Nigel is 49 now. He was sacked by Sheffield United last summer even though he had guided them to the League One play-offs and led them to an FA Cup semi-final and a Capital One Cup semifinal in successive seasons. Sooner rather than later, a club will get lucky and hire him.
His father’s achievements as a manager returned to the spotlight again last week with the release of the documentary film, I Believe in Miracles, that charts the way Brian Clough and Peter Taylor led Nottingham Forest to promotion from the old Division Two and on to the league title and two European Cup triumphs in 1979 and 1980.
In recent years, analyses of Clough’s achievements as a manager have been laced with darkness amid talk of alcoholism and corruption. In 2006, Clough’s legacy was further complicated by the blurring of fiction and reality in David Peace’s acclaimed novel, The
Damned United, about Clough’s turbulent 44-day reign at Leeds. In that sense, at least, I Believe in
Miracles is a departure. The film represents a happy and nostalgic reappraisal not just of Clough’s legacy but also of the way football used to be when English clubs ruled Europe. It is a moving celebration of Clough, Taylor, players like John Robertson, Kenny Burns and Martin O’Neill and the heights they scaled.
Nigel says he loved it. He and his family saw the film for the first time earlier this month and they watched in rapt silence. It was emotional for them, too, because it showed how close Clough and Taylor were and reminded them that they argued later in their lives and died without reconciling.
‘We should have got them together in a room,’ says Nigel. ‘We should have hoodwinked them both, kidnapped them if necessary, so that they would have made up. When Peter died, Dad was absolutely devastated that they had not reconciled and that the chance had gone.’
It was said that Nigel’s late mother, Barbara, and the rest of the family had been upset by The
Damned United. Would that be an exaggeration? ‘ No, it wouldn’t,’ says Nigel. This film, he feels, goes some way to redressing the balance. It has helped to reclaim the memories of his father.
‘There will always be those things around my dad, because he was certainly no angel,’ says Nigel. ‘But the film addresses 1975 to 1980 and how this team and this duo were unparalleled in what they achieved. It is not forgetting all the other problems that he had, and we had, over the years.
‘I hope it redresses the balance a bit after The Damned United. It is amazing the number of people who think the book is based on fact. They say: “Oh, I read the book about your dad, did that really happen?” Well, no, a lot of it didn’t, no.’
Nigel stays in the same seat, his back to the bar. That was the way it was when he was a boy and they went out as a family. If they went into a restaurant, they would head for the corner and his dad would sit with his back to the room. Nigel liked it that way. He did not like the attention that went with being his dad’s son.
In a way, that was why Nigel became a footballer as well. Not so he could stand out. Not because he wanted to chase his dad’s fame. The opposite, actually. So he could blend in. So he could be part of a team. So that he could be part of a group, not an individual.
‘Did I like having a public father? Not especially, no,’ says Nigel. ‘It makes you go the other way. It makes you more introverted. I think as a child, you crave normality, you crave not standing out, you just want to be a normal kid. I just wanted to be part of a team playing football without standing out and just do my job. And for that 90 minutes, you can do what you want and be as extrovert as you want on the pitch and then just be quiet after that.’
Clough could be difficult: demanding, egocentric, bombastic. Nigel saw a different side of him at home. Quieter, more thoughtful, particularly when Forest had lost. ‘You see the doubts,’ says Nigel. ‘After Forest conceded a late equaliser in a 3-3 draw with Cologne in the first leg of the 1979 European Cup semi-finals, in public he was saying anyone who wrote Forest off would be stupid. At home, I heard him muttering “tragedy conceding that third goal”.’
The relationship with his dad became more complicated when Nigel started pressing for a place in the Forest first
team in the 1984-85 season. He experienced what other players experienced. ‘He could make you feel two centimetres tall and he could make you feel 10 feet tall, probably both in the same sentence,’ says Nigel.
With typical eccentricity, his dad insisted Nigel continue to play for AC Hunters, a parks team run by his brother, Simon. They played in a Derby Sunday league, wearing hand-me-down kits from Forest, Derby’s local rivals. It didn’t make them popular. ‘We used to get the **** kicked out of us,’ says Nigel.
His dad had been a prolific goalscorer for Middlesbrough and Sunderland in the late Fifties and early Sixties, scoring 251 goals in 274 games before his career was cut short by a bad knee injury during a match against Bury at Roker Park on Boxing Day 1962. Clough chose Boxing Day 1984 to give Nigel his debut at home to Ipswich Town. It was like an act of reincarnation.
‘There was no coincidence in that,’ says Nigel, although Clough made sure his son was fully aware of who held the upper hand. ‘He always said: “You’ll never be as good as me”,’ says Nigel. ‘It irked him a little bit that I got a few more England caps than him. He said: “You’ll never get as many goals as me”. He was joking about it but there was also a seriousness.
‘I think he once said that I had a lack of ambition by staying at Burton for too long as a manager. I never thought about it too much, but he won two European Cups with Forest and instead of taking the next step, which might have been Barcelona or Real Madrid, he stayed at Nottingham Forest for 18 years.
‘For me, staying at Burton for nine years and achieving what we did and watching the kids grow up, I wouldn’t swap that for anything. And actually, Dad used to come along to Burton and I think he enjoyed going there as much as going to watch anywhere.’ There were times, too, when Nigel and his family struggled with his father’s drinking habits. Rumours swirled about his alcoholism as the Forest boss became erratic. ‘It was difficult for the whole family on the occasions he drank too much,’ says Nigel. ‘Anybody who does that, it’s a problem. It’s a problem for the family and a problem when you’re at work as well. ‘That was the result of everything that went with being in that sort of job for so many years. When you win you have a drink, when you lose you have a drink. I remember the first away game after I had signed for Liverpool, the game was over and Ronnie Moran got a bottle of whisky out of the skip and they all had a little drop of whisky, him and Roy Evans and Graeme Souness.
‘That was what happened in football in those days. That was what Peter and my dad used to do. The team spirit that they had at Forest was built on a social element as well. A lot of it in those days was having a good time and a drink together and that leads to things later on.’ Clough died of stomach cancer in 2004 at the age of 69, 11 years after Forest were relegated from the top flight in his final game as a manager. In those years, Nigel felt he got his dad back again. He reclaimed him from football.
‘We were closer again at the end of his life,’ he says. ‘I think the whole family were. I don’t know if that was because you know he hasn’t got that long left. That was part of it. I think we had reached a stage where we had had all the crap and he had had the football and everything and it was all out of the way.
‘He was retired and the grandchildren were here and I think we all had the feeling that another five years in that situation would have been nice. It wouldn’t have done anybody any harm but it wasn’t to be.’
I Believe in Miracles, a book accompanying the film, will be published on November 12. The film will be released on DVD on Nov 16.
It irked him a little bit that I got a few more England caps than he did