1971-72 season scrapbook

[Guest]

4 hours ago, PistoldPete said:

Thanks to Brailsford and LeedsCity Ram for this fantastic log of an epic season. One thing I never understood is how people can say it detracted from our Title win that it was other teams failing in their final games. 
 

but actually the other teams had the advantage .. they knew exactly what they had to do. 

The fact was Pete the national press was conservative by nature. By then Liverpool and Leeds were regarded as the big clubs but we were looked upon by many of them as upstarts. Cloughy was a gift to the media because he was always more than willing to tell them how he saw it. Busby and Revie were frequently his targets and he ruffled their feathers frequently. They couldn't bite their lips and often hit back through the press. Cloughy was upsetting the apple cart. While he was putting food on their tables for them, many of the reporters wanted Cloughy to come unstuck at the time and fall flat on his face. Hence the ridiculous innuendos about us winning the League by default.

Once they learned their lesson about Cloughy in later years, they were much more careful in how they dealt with him because he was never short of a putdown for them if he thought they needed it.

They enjoyed his troubles at Leeds but he came back with a vengeance in later years and didn't make himself as available to them if it didn't suit his agenda. He only spoke to them if he chose to. It was just a pity those years weren't spent here. We'd have preferred it and so would he as he was always quick to point out, much to the chagrin of the Nottingham media.

[Foreveram]

47 minutes ago, Brailsford Ram said:

The fact was Pete the national press was conservative by nature. By then Liverpool and Leeds were regarded as the big clubs but we were looked upon by many of them as upstarts. Cloughy was a gift to the media because he was always more than willing to tell them how he saw it. Busby and Revie were frequently his targets and he ruffled their feathers frequently. They couldn't bite their lips and often hit back through the press. Cloughy was upsetting the apple cart. While he was putting food on their tables for them, many of the reporters wanted Cloughy to come unstuck at the time and fall flat on his face. Hence the ridiculous innuendos about us winning the League by default.

Once they learned their lesson about Cloughy in later years, they were much more careful in how they dealt with him because he was never short of a putdown for them if he thought they needed it.

They enjoyed his troubles at Leeds but he came back with a vengeance in later years and didn't make himself as available to them if it didn't suit his agenda. He only spoke to them if he chose to. It was just a pity those years weren't spent here. We'd have preferred it and so would he as he was always quick to point out, much to the chagrin of the Nottingham media.

Can’t remember him doing anything after he left Leeds ??‍♂️

[Guest]

10 hours ago, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

Remember that Match of the 70's show where Dennis Waterman refers to Derby nicking the title.  Yes Dennis, by beating the team that could have won it instead in our last match.  Suppose Arsenal, Blackburn, Man City nicked theres as well with last game title wins in recent years. 

But what did Dennis Waterman know about it? He was a Fulham fan and that season by just one point they escaped being relegated back to the Third Division. In their history they have played in all four Divisions of the Football League and have never won a major trophy, They're on a par with Bristol City and Wycombe and just behind Middlesbrough who have just one League Cup to crow about.

[Crewton]

Curious Dennis Waterman fact - there's no truth in the rumour that Mel Morris wrote "I Could Be So Good For You". 

[LeedsCityRam]

Sunday 14th May 1972 – six days after capturing their first league title, Derby were finally back in the city to lift the trophy

As we all know, Clough had been in the Scilly Isles whilst most of the squad & Peter Taylor had been in Majorca as the dramatic news of the Leeds/Liverpool results broke. Meanwhile Roy McFarland & Colin Todd had been on England duty, preparing for the upcoming Euro Quarter Final against West Germany

That didn’t stop Sam Longson & ground staff having a celebratory drink on the pitch the day after Derby had been confirmed as Champions. Clip also includes a voxpop around Derby & best of all, some salty Leeds fans;

https://www.macearchive.org/films/atv-today-09051972-derby-county-win-football-league-championship

 

Onto the presentation, bizarrely arranged for that Sunday morning (and no buses running apparently). Photos from the day starting with the trophy waiting to be presented;

 

 

 

 

The final 71/72 edition of the Ram was released 3 days later;

 

4 days after the presentation, Derby held an open topped bus tour through the city ending in a civic reception at the Council HQ – footage and photos of fans & players celebrating below;

https://www.macearchive.org/films/atv-today-18051972-derby-county-football-team

 

 

 

And so ends the story of Derby’s remarkable 1971/72 league title win. An achievement 5 years in the making & in so doing, forever changed how the football club & city saw itself;

[Guest]

 

The team and Peter Taylor flew back from Majorca, arriving at East Midlands Airport at breakfast time on Sunday 14th May. They were whisked by coach to the Baseball Ground where Brian Clough met them prior to a 10.00am presentation of the First Division championship trophy by Len Shipman, the Chairman of the Football League.

I attended with my dad where we took our usual seats in the Normanton Upper Stand. There was a crowd of about 16,000 in attendance, which I remember as being a surprising disappointment at the time. But the timing of the event was simply the wrong time of the week. In those days, most families owned either a single car or none. Cars were not essential and there was therefore a much greater reliance on public transport. But on a Sunday, local bus and rail services simply did not get underway until 10.00am, putting the presentation out of reach for many, especially those who lived outside of the town.

Nevertheless, on a bright Sunday morning there was a relaxed carnival atmosphere for us to greet and cheer our heroes.

Three of the players who played key roles in the winning of the title were absent; Roy McFarland and Colin Todd were still travelling back from West Germany where they had been on England duty the day before as the national team played out a 0-0 draw to exit the European Nations Cup following their 3-1 defeat in the first leg at Wembley.

The third absentee was Frank Wignall who had transferred to Mansfield Town in November, having made 10 starts, which just qualified him for a winner’s medal; he had scored five invaluable goals in the process. Frank had just completed a unique seasonal record, which has still not been equalled and maybe never will be; he had won a First Division champion’s medal and played out the season with a team relegated from Division Three to Division Four. Remember that if you ever get the question in a quiz.

Free of any tension that morning, we gloried in hailing our Champions as they greeted the supporters on all four sides of the ground with the trophy, which, in the absence of captain McFarland, had been presented to a very proud Archie Gemmill.

Four days later, thousands packed the streets of Derby as the team made its way on an open-topped team coach for a civic reception at the Council House. It seemed as the whole town and much of the county had turned out to honour the team. Similar scenes followed later in the week as the team toured the county by bus.

 

Leaving the ground, I went with my dad to join up with friends at the Robin Hotel in Mickleover when the doors opened at midday. Colin Boulton used to join us on most Sunday lunchtimes and, although we weren’t expecting him that day, he called in for a couple of pints about 1.30pm, on his way home to meet up with his wife Sandra and their children after his Majorca break. The cheer that went up when ‘Bernie’ walked in almost raised the roof.

In the pub that day we reflected upon what we had experienced in the last few seasons. While Brian Clough had occasionally complained about the numbers attending home games, during this season more than a million spectators had passed through the turnstiles at the Baseball Ground compared with the 1966-67 season when just 300,000 had watched the Rams home games before Clough and Taylor arrived in the summer.

I had started watching Derby in 1961 when Harry Storer was the manager. He retired at the end of that season and Tim Ward took over for the next five seasons. He was given little to spend until he persuaded Sam Longson to pay Bradford Park Avenue £34,000 for Kevin Hector in 1966.

Tim was a gentleman and Derby fans of that era won’t utter a bad word about him. Throughout his time we were just a stable Second Division team, never in danger of relegation or promotion. The board didn’t renew his contract at the end of 1966-67. After the last game of the season at home to Plymouth, I joined many on the pitch chanting ‘Sack the Board, we want Ward.’

Tim Ward’s legacy in the winning of the title in 1972 should never be forgotten. He signed Durban and Hector and brought Webster, Daniel, and Boulton into the first team.

But then came Clough & Taylor and what followed was a phenomenon. In their first season they soon bought O’Hare, McFarland and Hinton. We started brightly but then tailed away to finish a place lower than the previous season. But we still knew there was something special in the air. Derby reached the semi-finals of the League Cup, losing 4-2 on aggregate to Leeds, without the services of McFarland and Hinton who were cup-tied. Towards the end of the season, in completing the double over them, we absolutely outclassed QPR, who were eventually promoted by 4-0 at the Baseball Ground.

In the close season, Dave Mackay and Les Green signed, followed by Willie Carlin and John McGovern early in the season. There were unforgettable wins over Chelsea and Everton in League Cup replays. Derby strolled to promotion, dropping just one point in their final 11 games. Some pundits suggested they were the finest Second Division side ever.

We weren’t quite sure what to expect in the First Division but what we hadn’t realised was that Clough & Taylor hadn’t just built a team to get promoted but one that would succeed in Division One. Tremendous home wins against Everton 2-1, Spurs 5-0, Manchester United 2-0 and Liverpool 4-0 came in the early part of the season, without any addition to the promotion team. Terry Hennessey joined in March and helped us to a strong run-in to the season. Hennessey scored his first goal in a memorable 2-0 win at Anfield when we completed the double over Liverpool. Derby finished fourth but were disqualified from competing in Europe because of administrative offences.

That meant we had to settle for a place in the Watney Cup in the pre-season of 1970-71. Although that ended in a memorable 4-1 victory over Manchester United in the final at the Baseball Ground, it was not the pre-season itinerary that Clough and Taylor would have ideally liked. The Rams had hit their peak too soon and the season ended in a disappointing ninth place in the table. During that season, Archie Gemmill joined in September and Willie Carlin left soon after. Colin Boulton replaced Les Green at the turn of the year. Colin Todd joined in February 1971. Dave Mackay left at the end of the season having played in every League game; the first time he had achieved that in his long career.

No need to say what happened next because we’ve relived it all since last August.

But Derby only used 16 players in winning the title and four of those only made 16 starts between them. Of the other 12, Hennessey was added in 1970 and Gemmill and Todd had replaced Carlin and Mackay. The rest had been with the club when it climbed out of the Second Division. Building that team had not cost a lot of money. Compare it to the expenditure required today to build a team capable of winning the Premier League.

To win it with just 16 players was incredible, although Liverpool had done it with just 14 in 1965-66.

Finally, I go back to Alan Durban’s rallying call after we lost to Arsenal in the FA Cup, when he predicted to his teammates that we would now win the League. I always believed that was right at the time. I think the extra games needed to go to Wembley could have seen us falter in the League. I think Leeds discovered that at Molineux.

So what a sensational five years we had witnessed. What an amazing journey we had travelled. We just didn’t want to get off. Weren’t we lucky?

By now, for what I had seen, this football club would never owe me anything. It never has, despite Mel Morris.

And it wasn’t over yet.

Over the years, when talking to people, especially people who have never been connected to our club, about what I experienced watching Derby through these times, they have been quite dismissive, saying that they are just memories. But to have the memories you have had to witness it, so it is not merely memories, it is a recollection of reality. It is the difference between ‘talking the talk’ and ‘walking the walk.’

We walked the walk so we are entitled to talk the talk.

For me this was such an amazing time in my life. But in the middle of all of this I was sitting my A Level examinations. I was to start at university in the coming September. I would be in receipt of a student grant, to which my parents would be expected to make a contribution by way of means testing, which applied at the time. My dad, bless him, promised to contribute in full, which not all parents at the time felt able to do. However, I still felt the need to find extra income and at the time occasional jobs for students were hard to come by.

Towards the end of May I registered for work at the Labour Exchange on Normanton Road without any realism that an opportunity would be offered. The next day they phoned me to say the Derby Co-operative Society were looking for a student to work six nights a week at their Peak Bakery on Osmaston Road, making up deliveries and loading vans, and invited me to contact the manager for an interview. I did so and got the job, which was to finance me over the next four years following the Rams away in Europe. It seemed that nothing could go wrong for me at the time.

I would love Doctor Who to come along, let me into his Tardis and take me back to let me relive those times again; especially if I could take along with me some Derby fans who missed it.

 

 

Edited May 14, 2022 by Brailsford Ram

[ImARam2]

I began following the Rams in January 1962 - 60 years ago this year, although I'm not sure if Harry Storer was still manager at that time, and I was certainly on the pitch when Tim Ward was sacked, but then in walked Clough & Taylor, and we didn't know what the next five years would bring.

So the experiences of watching Derby County, home and away, throughout that 60 years have been wonderful when we were promoted and winning the league titles; heart breaking with the relegations; sometimes despair and impossible to fathom what the hell was going on with the many off-field shenanigans, yet very proud to have travelled so many miles supporting my home town club.

And, at the age of 70, a few weeks back, I was in the crowd of 4,000 Derby fans at Blackpool, absolutely enjoying every minute - what a day.

Let us hope the love and support we gave the team during last season goes through to next season and we see the good times return again to Derby County Football Club.

COYR's

[Guest]

I have just posted a thread on the Ex-Rams Forum about Alek Ludzik, a goalkeeper who Brian Clough made one of his very early signings when he took over in 1967. I saw him play in the Reserve Team a couple of times but he never played in the first team. I find the article that I have posted quite fascinating and I can't believe what happened to him has escaped me all these years.

I thought it was worth posting a pointer to the thread because I think the regulars on here will be as interested in it as I was.

 

COYR

[Guest]

I've posted on the Peter Phelan thread on the Ex-Rams forum. Peter was an apprentice professional from 1970-1972 and he was released at the end of the championship season. Peter died on May 2 this year. His grandson Scott Mecca started the post asking if anyone remembered Peter and I've been able to help. Scott has now reacted on here to the post about winning the Central League.