Day Posted April 11, 2010 Share Posted April 11, 2010 In Provided You Don’t Kiss Me, his award-winning memoir of 20 years with Brian Clough, Duncan Hamilton tells a story of a grilling he received once over a photograph carried by his newspaper, the Nottingham Evening Post. Clough loved the photograph, an athletic diving header by his son Nigel, and ordered several copies for friends. There were a handful of people in his office when the interrogation began. “What’s so special about this picture?†Clough asked. Hamilton glanced at it and shrugged. “Look at it closely,†Clough barked. “Pick out one thing.†Various reasons were suggested. Nobody gave the right answer. “You’re all thick,†said Clough. “It’s his eyes  they’re wide open. You’d be amazed how many players head the ball with their eyes closed, ’cos they’re scared of it. Our Nige isn’t scared. He’s brave.†Nigel Clough has always been brave. He has also never had much time for journalists. You arrive for the interview with a plethora of stories to loosen his tongue and bolster his legend, and he dismantles them, line by line. The time he sold his big Mercedes as a gesture of solidarity with his part-time players after he took over at Burton Albion? Not true. He was driving a Subaru at the time. The pseudonym he was given when he was a kid breaking through with the Nottingham Forest reserves? It never happened. He was always “our Nigeâ€Â. The notion that he was always closer to his father than his siblings, Simon and Elizabeth? Absurd. “Who writes this stuff?†he asks. But the thing that strikes you most is those eyes. We meet on a Tuesday afternoon in London, six hours before an evening game at Loftus Road, and he simmers with an intensity that makes me shift in my chair. Friends had warned me about this. “He’s a tough subject.†“Don’t expect too much.†“He doesn’t like journalists.†“He’ll embrace you like a firing squad.†But the grimace on his face had nothing to do with me. His team, Derby County, have been battling against relegation for months. He is anxious about the game with QPR. “I’m surprised to find you dressed [in a tracksuit] as a footballer,†I observe. “Ehhh, lapsed.†He smiles. “Wish I was still a footballer.†“Do you really? I was going to ask how the hours before a game compare.†“Completely different,†he explains. “As a footballer, you look forward to the whole day  the preparation, your lunch, the rest in the afternoon . . . especially night matches. But it’s not the same as a manager. There isn’t the same excitement. You go into each game with a feeling of trepidation, and there’s dejection afterwards if things don’t go according to plan.†“And what if tonight doesn’t go to plan?†I ask. “Will you take that dejection home with you? How long does it take to clear your system?†“That’s impossible. It’s absolutely impossible to separate it from the rest of your life. It stays with you 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I don’t think there is any manager who doesn’t carry it with them all the time. It is all-consuming.†I remind him of a response his father gave once when someone asked how he was doing. “Surviving,†Brian Clough replied. “You see, that’s what we all do, isn’t it? We survive first and try to prosper afterwards. I survive day to day, month to month, year to year. No one does any more than survive.†His son agrees. “Yeah, that’s how it feels the majority of the time. I’m sure for Sir Alex [Ferguson] and the top three or four who are winning trophies, it’s different but for everybody else it’s about getting through the next game, the next month, the next season, whatever . . . And for us, being in the position we are in, it’s probably more applicable than ever.†“Your father also stated once that he was ‘certain’ you would not become a football manager.†“He got that wrong,†he says, laughing. “He said you wouldn’t need to, and that ‘by the time he reaches his early thirties, Nigel should be reasonably wealthy’.†“Wrong again.†“So what happened?†THE MONTH is September 1972. Nigel Clough is six years old and about to start a new term at junior school in Derby when his father arrives brandishing a splendid piece of silverware called the Football League championship trophy. The kids are ecstatic. Nigel is bemused. He always had a sense his father was different, but not that different. And suddenly everything has changed. For the first six years of his life he has been Nigel; for the rest of it he’ll be “Clough’s sonâ€Â. This is his blessing. And his curse. He is polite, modest and reserved. It is written many times that he takes after his mother, Barbara, but it’s his father he strives to pursue. In 1984, aged 18 and still an amateur, he makes his league debut as a striker for Nottingham Forest against Terry Butcher, Ipswich’s England centre-half. In six of the following seasons from 1985 to 1991 Clough is the club’s top scorer, but it’s his relationship with his father that most enthrals. They travel in the same car to work every day and share the same home. At training, they address each other as “Boss†and “No 9â€Â; at home, they are “dad†and “sonâ€Â. Nigel wins two League Cups and plays 14 times for England during his father’s reign at Forest, and remains loyal to the club until his father retires in 1993. What if he had joined Liverpool sooner? Might he have had a better career? Did his relationship with his father complicate things? “No, I think I’d have been worse,†he says, “because I would have been playing under an inferior manager. Very few players left Forest and went on to better things. Roy Keane is one of the exceptions, but a lot of the others  Stephen Hodge, Garry Birtles, John Robertson  ended up coming back after not succeeding. For me, it was lots of different things, but I don’t know . . . you certainly lost something when you left him. You weren’t as good a player; you started having doubts: ‘Am I doing the right thing?’ It didn’t feel as natural.†I remind him that his father’s first autobiography was published after Clough Jr signed for Liverpool, and I quote a passage: “I talk to him now about his football, how he is doing, how he is feeling, but I don’t harp on too long about what I think he should do. As a married man, not too far short of 30, he doesn’t have to listen quite as intently or as long as he used to. I know when to shut up these days when he says, ‘Hey, Dad  I’ve had enough’.†Clough nods and smiles. “Did that happen often?†I ask. “Did you have to say that to him often: ‘Hey, Dad  I’ve had enough’?†“No, I don’t think so. I was living in the northwest the majority of the time and he was in Derby, so we weren’t seeing each other that much at the time. But I have to say you have the advantage on me here because I haven’t read any of the books  either the ones he wrote himself or the supposed ones that other people wrote.†“Why not?†“Well, first of all because it upsets you and you can’t do anything about it and a lot of the stuff is plainly untrue. It’s like The Damned United ... the number of people who have said, ‘Oh, I’ve seen that film about your dad, it was great’  as if we’ve contributed or collaborated with the film in some way. “And I say, ‘Well, you do realise it’s all complete fiction. The person who wrote it never met my dad in his life!’ So it’s just these misconceptions.†“But it’s not as if your father was diminished by the film,†I counter. “Does that make no difference?†“No, not really. If it’s not true, it’s not true. And there are very few people who know the truth. My mother knows, and we have often said to her, ‘If there is anybody who should write a book, it’s you, because you’re the only one who was there all the time’. All these people can speculate and pontificate but she’s the only one who has that . . . I was going to say ‘right’ but I don’t know if that’s the word.†“And what about you?†I ask. “Have you never felt a need to explain yourself?†“No. Your work life and home life are different things. I have a wife and two children. We are a very close family and don’t feel the need to share that with anybody else.†“And what about your football life?†“That was there, on the pitch, for everybody to see  we did our job, got on the bus and went home. I remember one of the first trophies we won at Forest  the League Cup. He [my father] pinched the cup, brought it home and we had fish and chips. It kept things in perspective. It’s very easy to get carried away as a footballer and think you are something special but that can lead to problems when you finish and have to lead a normal life.†We have turned full circle. What happened to his normal life? THE MONTH is October 1998. He is 32 years old. Fourteen summers have passed since his debut for Nottingham Forest and he has reached the most terrifying juncture in sport. “What do you do?†he reflects. “You want to stay in football because that’s all you know but you also realise it’s a pretty good life. So you look around, and I think at the time there was two [managerial] jobs available in the whole country. One was Leeds United, which David O’Leary got, and one was Burton Albion, which was 20 minutes down the road from the family.†He joins Burton Albion, a club plying their trade in the Dr Martens Southern League, and the 10 years that follow are the happiest he has known. His father is not impressed, claiming he lacks ambition. But what is ambition, Nigel retorts. To help a team laden with riches such as Manchester United win another Premier League, or to take a side with nothing from the foot of the Dr Martens to the Conference and the Football League? One Sunday afternoon in January 2009, he was at home, planning for the next leg of the journey at Burton, when he received a visit from Adam Pearson, the chairman of Derby County, and was offered a job. Derby, the club where his father built his legend. Derby, the family home for more than 40 years. Derby, his father’s final resting place in September 2004. He didn’t sleep well that night. He hasn’t slept well since. “We are not a top-six side, we have said that all along, but we are not bottom six either,†Clough says. “The injuries will dictate. We went to Ipswich befores and had 16 players unavailable. We have used more players [on loan] than anybody in the Championship this season  I think 14 centre-back pairings  so it hasn’t been straightforward. The bottom line is to stay up but we are desperate to finish 15th, because as Gary Crosby [his assistant] pointed out, if we finish 15th, it will be the third-best finish in the past 10 years that Derby have had in their respective leagues . . . which once again highlights the historical problems we are dealing with. This is a club that’s used to being on the wrong end of things, and that doesn’t get reversed overnight. We want to try and get it right for so many reasons. The majority of us [at the club] are Derby people and we’re all absolutely desperate to give the fans something to hang on to, and to be proud of again. And we will fight and scrap and do everything we can to achieve that.†THE INTERVIEW is drawing to a close. I request the right to a last stupid question about his father: “Do you miss him?†“Immensely,†he replies. “What is your fondest memory of him?†“The last few years with the grandchildren, that’s the bit you miss, not the football stuff  that’s inconsequential in the greater scheme of things. They [the grandchildren] miss him and still talk about him. It’s very hard . . .†His voice cracks with emotion. “We went down and put some flowers on a plaque in the village church where we live [a couple of weeks ago]. It was his birthday. He would have been 75.†http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/paul_kimmage/article7094182.ece Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perky1106 Posted April 11, 2010 Share Posted April 11, 2010 First time I've heard about BHC for a while. We used to hear about him all the time. :rolleyes: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trigger Posted April 12, 2010 Share Posted April 12, 2010 well his son so far is well and truly in the shadows of the late great ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Day Posted April 12, 2010 Author Share Posted April 12, 2010 The way football is today he always will be, it would be impossible not just for Nigel but any manager to take us into Europe and win League titles. So yes Nigel is well and truely in his shaddow and always will be and I'm sure he knows that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
derbydan Posted April 12, 2010 Share Posted April 12, 2010 nice interview Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trigger Posted April 12, 2010 Share Posted April 12, 2010 and an even nicer man they were talking about ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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