Tomorrow’s match at the Emirates is, obviously, the most important sporting event of the weekend but I will also be making time for another game in London.
Chelsea versus Leeds United evokes memories of the 1970 FA Cup final and particularly the replay. Any resemblance between that encounter and what happens on Sunday afternoon will, however, be fleeting at most.
The FA Cup final was a massive television event 56 years ago. It was the only club game normally broadcast live by both BBC1 and ITV. The combined British audience was more than 28 million, roughly half the population. In the commentary box, Kenneth Wolstenholme vs Brian Moore.
At Wembley on April 11 (earlier than usual because of the impending World Cup) Leeds and Chelsea fought out a 2-2 draw. It was their fifth meeting that season and familiarity was breeding hostility rather than contempt.
The replay at Old Trafford on April 29 has become known as the most brutal match played in England. It was almost certainly the most brutal FA Cup final. Watch it on video if you have a strong stomach.
What you cannot assess, because there is almost no comparative television evidence from that era, is whether other games came close.
Only one player was booked in the replay but don’t let that mislead you. The FA, in its infinite wisdom, habitually appointed a referee on the eve of retirement as a reward for long service. He was unlikely to court controversy with a sending off. Not until 1985 was anyone dismissed in an FA Cup final.
When Michael Oliver, often named the best English referee, watched the 1970 replay through the eyes of today’s officials, he said no fewer than 11 of the combatants should have been red-carded.
My memories of the late Sixties and early Seventies suggest nearly every team had at least one hatchet man. Different times, a different game. Without multiple cameras to catch the culprits, sneaky fouls and off-the-ball assaults were often missed.
One team in particular had a vicious streak. Their manager was Don Revie and they were known as Dirty Leeds for good reason. Among the worst offenders were Bobby Collins, Allan Clarke and Johnny Giles, although teammate Norman Hunter had a reputation as the hard man of Elland Road.
Alongside him was Jack Charlton (playing for England above, against Johan Cruyff and Holland), a no-nonsense centre-half who found himself in hot water a few months after that Chelsea vs Leeds replay. Not for what he did on the pitch but for what he said off it in a searingly honest interview in October 1970.
He was at the Tyne Tees Television studios in Newcastle for what was intended to be the pilot of a new football show.
Charlton was a high-profile guest, a 1966 World Cup hero and a one-club stalwart whose 762 appearances between 1952 and 1973 set a record unlikely to be broken.
His comments exposed the widespread hypocrisy that pervaded football in those days, by revealing its unsavoury aspect.
The authorities wanted to promote it as good clean fun, played in a Corinthian spirit; hence the charge of ungentlemanly conduct for those accused of sharp practice.
Anyone found guilty of “bringing the game into disrepute” was likely to be fined, suspended or both.
The maximum wage had not been abolished until 1961, nearly halfway through Charlton’s career, and some people still had misgivings.
The studio atmosphere was convivial, the audience enjoying the interview, as Fred Dineage asked:
As wages and incentives have got higher, has the game got more violent?
A relaxed Charlton leaned back in his studio chair and replied:
You do what is necessary in the circumstances. That is one of Alf Ramsey’s great sayings. If I was playing in an international and saw someone getting away with the ball and I could not catch him, I would flatten him.
My job is to stop a man scoring. I would not break anyone’s leg or anything like that, but I would maybe grab him by the scruff of the neck and stop him running. I think every defender in the Football League would do it.
Dineage then asked:
You have had your fair share of cuts and bruises. What is the worst thing that has happened to you, what is the worst foul?
Charlton didn’t hold back, much to the amusement of the audience.
I cannot mention names but I have a little book with two names in it and if I get the chance to do them I will. I do not do what I consider to be the bad fouls in the game such as going over the top.
That is about the worst foul in the game, but I will tackle as hard as I can to win the ball, but I will not do the dirty things, the really nasty things. When people do it to me I do it back to them. Because I am not noted for doing so, people don’t do it to me, but there are two or three people who have done it to me and I will make them suffer before I pack this game up.
Note, he didn’t say “little black book”; that was a bit of media embellishment, which probably worked in his favour.
He declined to confirm exactly who was on his hit list but added ominously: “They know who they are.”
Even without names, this was dynamite. A World Cup winner, still playing at the highest level, had revealed revenge and retribution were part of the beautiful game. The would-be pilot was broadcast in full in the North-East, then aired nationally on ITV’s Saturday afternoon show World Of Sport.
Much of Fleet Street, having been sent juicy extracts before the broadcast, pretended to be outraged by Big Jack’s honesty. The sports editor of the Daily Express demanded Leeds sack him, while the Daily Mirror asked: “Have these petulant, primping, overpaid, under-principled gladiators no responsibility?”
Others in the Fourth Estate held a different view. Ian Wooldridge in the Daily Mail praised Big Jack for breaking “a conspiracy of silence” over vendettas in professional sport. “Vendettas did not start with Jack Charlton. They are as old as Dixie Dean.”
Nonetheless, the Football Association felt obliged to act. He was charged with making comments likely to bring the game into disrepute and barred from representing England while the FA ran an inquiry. That suspension was a sop to the easily affronted, because Charlton had already told Ramsey after the 1970 World Cup his international career was over.
The inquiry took weeks. Charlton was summoned to London to explain himself. He arrived, with Revie and the club’s solicitor, and found a pile of newspaper cuttings were being presented as evidence.
The defendant insisted those sitting in judgment must watch the interview in full, rather than relying on Fleet Street’s finest. Until that case, the FA had refused to accept TV footage in disciplinary matters. It reluctantly agreed to his request. Bizarrely, the hearing was held at the London offices of Tyne Tees Television.
Charlton argued the press had misquoted him and taken his remarks out of context. There was no book, though he did concede there was a short list in his head of players who had made nasty tackles on him. He intended to put in a hard but fair challenge on those players if he got the opportunity.
The FA in essence accepted he had done little wrong. There was no suspension or fine. He was simply required to apologise for his remarks. The wording was telling: “I apologise that, through me, the press were given an opportunity to knock football.”
Although Charlton hadn’t named any culprits on television, many years later he said John Morrissey, a little Everton winger, was on the list. He had injured Big Jack in the Battle of Goodison Park in November 1964, a match that many people believe spawned the Dirty Leeds label.
Football has changed fundamentally since Charlton’s day, though I could mention at least two current Arsenal players who would be a perfect fit for Revie’s team. Let’s hope they get their comeuppance tomorrow.