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| Richard Williams in The Guardian, Saturday 20th January 2001 |
| 'Young man doing well' |
| The figure on the pitch is unmistakable, although the context is less familiar. In front of 1,266 people on a bright and frosty winter afternoon in Burton on Trent, the stocky No10 is laying off first-time passes with the sort of touch and vision that earned a handful of England caps. In the modest surroundings of Eton Park, Nigel Clough is still pursuing his refreshingly unorthodox path through football. |
| He
is the son of a manager whose triumphs are legendary. But even though his
own playing career touched the heights, perhaps this role, as player-manager
of a non-league club where enthusiasm for the game must overcome slender
resources, is the one for which he was born. In the Autumn of 1998, at the age of 32, a degenerative condition in his heels ended his professional playing career after nine years with Nottingham Forest, three with Liverpool and two with Manchester City. "It came as a bit of a shock," he said this week, "When you're in your 20's, you think that playing is going to last for ever. I had to decide whether I wanted to start coaching with somebody's academy or reserve team, or if I wanted to break out on my own, at whatever level." |
|
| "And I looked at what was available.
Well, at the time there was one football league club, out of the 92, without
a manager, and that was Leeds United, because George Graham had just gone.
Obviously you could rule that one out." Natural modesty perhaps, although his smile suggested that he may have been remembering his father's turbulent 44 days in charge at Elland Road in 1974. Burton Albion, located 20 minutes from the farmhouse near Matlock where he lives with his wife and two small children, provided the solution. There was even a family connection, in that Peter Taylor, his father's long-time sidekick, had once been at Eton Park. But Nigel was only dimly aware of that."I just knew that it was a good non-league club, with a decent reputation." Today, as he and his assistant, Gary Crosby, take Albion on the long trip to Weymouth, they are sitting on top of the Dr Martens Premier League, a point above Margate. What kind of shape was the club in when he and Crosby, a former Forest team-mate, arrived? "Not bad at all. They were probably in worse shape after we'd been here for two or three months, because we couldn't win a match. We lost five home matches on the bounce at the end of the first season. But we managed to get things a little bit sorted out during the summer." Last season they finished second and this year are favourites for promotion with a squad in which old pros such as the former Derby County players Andy Garner, Darren Wassall and Michael Forsyth and the former Coventry, Leeds and Birmingham defender David Rennie mingle with local products and young players still feeling the bruises of failed apprenticeships with league clubs. "We tend to pick up players who are released from clubs at 18 or 19," Clough said, "The trouble is that usually they're so despondent and siappointed with football because of being released that it can take anything from six to nine months to get their appetite for the game back, if they get it back at all." "Quite a few lads come and play a few games and then just drift away from football. We try to get the ones who see it as a step down in order to step back up again." The attitude of veteran ex-pros is vital. "A lot of them come down to this level and think 'I'm too good for this, I shouldn't be here.' But we've been very fortunate to get lads who just want to play football. You can't put a price on their influence around the place." Clough himself bypassed the standard footballer's apprenticeship. "I was, shall we say, encouraged by my father to stay on at school and do my A levels, because that's what my mum wanted. It turned out to be a cracking two years. "At 17 I hadn't had any offers to become a footballer, so I was planning to go to college. I played a few games for Heanor Town and did reasonably well. Then my father said 'Do you fancy coming and having a game for the reserves?' And it went from there." After 402 league appearances and 113 goals, had he missed anything by not doing the standard apprenticeship? "No, all you did in those days was clean the boots, the toilets, the showers and the baths. And I'd travelled around in my younger days with my dad, so when I joined Forest it was quite easy to integrate. I knew what was going on." He also maintained a sense of perspective by continuing to turn out for his Sunday team, made up of mates from school and elsewhere. There was always something remarkably level-headed about Clough junior, a characteristic inherited from his mother - at least according to his volatile father. "There was probably also a conscious effort to veer away from the similarities with my dad," Nigel said, "He was great to hide behind, mind you. A lot of us at Forest didn't want to get involved with talking to the press and TV, so we sheltered behind him and got on with playing football." He is too thoughtful a man to give a formulaic answer when asked, for instance if he fancies being a Premiership manager. "I've no idea," he replied, "That was another reason for having a go at this level, to see if I enjoy it and if I'm any good at it. "Yes, I'm enjoying it. Playing helps. Last Saturday I didn't play. I had a knee injury so I sat in the stand for the first half and I didn't enjoy that. I'm not really looking forward to not playing." The knee problem means that the team are likely to be without his prompting from midfield this afternoon, but he will watch from the bench while Burton play the sort of football - four across the back, two wide men, quick breaks - that his father would recognise. The old man sometimes turns up at games, although not in the last few weeks. "He's not too keen on the cold weather. But he's been surprised at the standard, which may be a little bit better than people give it credit for." |
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