CLIFF BROWN

Great memories Alan, except for me diving into your knee! Many great names and players. I miss those days as I age. I was so fortunate to play with the likes of you, Bobby Moore, Mike England, Harry Redknapp, those you mention, and so many more! But I also will never forget how you personally treated me like royalty when we shut out San Diego with a young Hugo Sanchez with me entering the game at half time. You bought me a wonderful bottle of champagne and drank it with me and others as we lounged in the hot tub in the hotel. You taught me about team and loyalty and I thank you for that. Cheers!

It is Sunday morning and I looked through my emails – after watching Australia batter New Zealand in the Cricket World Cup which began at 4.30am – and came across that message from Cliff, who I trust is coaching in another part of the USA and doing well, if another message I received is anything to go by. The important thing here is that out of all of those youngsters in American styled clothes, and attitude, Cliff might be the last one you’d think to go into coaching young children about our game. I suppose on top of that I dread to think about goalkeepers coaching for many reasons (Ivano, Brand, Shilton only three of them) and I have been fortunate to play with some of the best, with Pat Jennings possibly the best of the lot, and believe me when I tell you that Pat would have absolutely no interest in coaching outfield players let alone his own breed.

I remember the injury young Cliff inflicted on me and it typified his enthusiasm and eagerness to do well, although at that precise moment I said, ‘you ******* idiot’ only because I heard my knee pop and thought immediately of the following days fixture, which was the biggest since my arrival. It was an end of the day 5-a-side, one which was the ‘norm’ at the end of every English training session, something the American would call ‘a scrimmage’ a word I heard first from my son Allen who was not even old enough to spell the word. On this particular day it was like a few others I remembered when ‘time stood still’ like going down that hole at West Bromwich Albion, which cost me an FA Cup and World Cup final place in ‘70. You knew immediately.

Quite the opposite of seeing a beautiful woman across the room when you’re heart jumps into your mouth, you know the moment that can get you into so much trouble?

Anyhow, one of the reasons I was talked into writing this book by Adrian was looking at the likes of Cliff Brown and looking into ‘where they are now?’ and wondering if anything sunk in?

Here’s Eddie in his home just along from Davy Crockett Drive

Well, it certainly did with him and I remember he came to Cleveland as well to play Indoor, something which would not have been very inspiring, because we were like a Third Division team in England around that time, even though we had my great pal Eddie MacCreadie there as Head Coach. The only thing that worked in Cliff’s favour was that he was definitely going to get plenty of shooting practice, but not in training, but matches, because we were clueless.  Had I been a goalkeeper then I think I would have taken the Mike Ivano route and stuck to ‘Social Manager’.  I take this opportunity to wish Cliff well, as I know that he is loving coaching, and I’m certain that he’ll do well, because one/ he took in everything that was going on around him, and two/on top of that he has a deep down love for our sport. Talking of loving the game, when Alan Hinton once said in a team meeting, “I know some of you play because you love the game and then there are the others, who play simply for money, well, whatever and whoever you are, let’s all pull together for the final result”, which I thought was a brilliant pre-match team talk, especially because I knew who his words were aimed at. The other thing was about playing for love or money, and this was the reason I joined Cleveland instead of Pittsburgh with Adrian, Tommy and Buttle. At that time I was introduced to an Agent named Pat Healey (if my memory serves me well) and he did a great deal for me with Pittsburgh, which was a hell of a lot of money at that time. I had agreed to sign but at the very last moment, before putting pen to paper, I heard that Eddie had taken the job at Cleveland and I knew immediately that I had to play for him, and this is where the saying “Life is too short” very much came into play, as Eddie and I were the greatest of friends right up until I left Arsenal for Seattle and he was managing at Chelsea. My only regret was that he did not take me to Chelsea as his player/coach for I think we would have made a wonderful team, as I think the same can be said with both Jimmy Gabriel and Alan Hinton. But with Eddie, I had known him since I was a 13-year-old Kingsley Schoolboy who trained at Chelsea two-nights-a-week, and I adored the man. It’s different when you are a kid, and within three years you are playing together in one of the best teams in Europe with the likes of Osgood, Cooke, Bonetti, Hinton, Dempsey, Baldwin, Hutchinson and poor old ‘Nobby’ Houseman, who was the first one of our team to meet his death so tragically.

However, I was right on the telephone to Healey. Pat told me in no uncertain terms that Cleveland could and would not possibly match the kind of money that I had agreed to sign for in Pittsburgh. It was crystal clear to me although it wasn’t to Pat that there was only one place I was heading, and if you have never been to Cleveland it can only be for the love of another person or money, which in this case was certainly not the latter. My signing for Cleveland caused rumbles within the Seattle camp and I recall on one of our Sunday afternoon parties at Jimmy Gabriel’s home I had to apologize to his lovely wife Pat for having a problem with our coach, Bobby Howe, who would not stop going on about letting my team-mates down. Nothing could have been further to the truth I insisted, but he would not back off and the inevitable happened, and we clashed, to the delight of the rest of the party. Pat (Gabriel) accepted my apology and the music played on and although even Adrian and the boys never knew my reasoning, I felt that there was a time and a place to discuss such matters. As far as I was concerned in Cleveland I was representing the Seattle Sounders and that was because I was proud to be their captain, but somewhere along the way I found an opportunity see to see my old pal, a pal who had not been in great health and I wanted to see him and let him know how much I loved him. Some people, I know, would have taken the money and I could fill this book with the names that I played with, yeah, that made Alan Hinton right, ‘Money can’t buy you love’ but if you have to play for the colour of it, so be it, not me, and that is why I’d always end up at the back of such a queue. The main thing of importance here is that had I not signed for Eddie I would never have forgiven myself and would have had to live with it for the rest of my life.  The second most important thing was that I built up a wonderful friendship with Chris Bennett, but that is another story.