Even someone
like me who isn’t under the spell of football knew who Peter Taylor was. He’d
been a footballer but I remember him as a manager. He and Brian Clough formed
one of the most legendary partnerships in football history. For years top division football in the
seventies was dominated by the usual few teams and Nottingham Forest were stuck
way down in the nether regions. The club frothed out of the murky lower levels
to the very top in a short space of time under Brian Clough and Peter Taylor’s
management. There’s even a statue of the famous duo.
Peter
came full circle as he’d started with Nottingham Forest as a lad. He was one of
eight
children raised in Nottingham. It was his future wife the 14-year-old Lily that
persuaded her boyfriend to play for her father's football team and he was soon
spotted and signed up by Nottingham Forest. There was no job for him: as the
Second World War raged he made his first team debut aged just 16 and started
his football career.
I won’t summarise his career but by 34 his
football days were over due to injury and he went into management. All the time
he’d been playing he was learning from Coventry manager Harry Storer while getting to know Middlesbrough striker Brian
Clough who was six years younger. In 1962 he was managing Burton Albion and
three years later Brian appointed him as his assistant at Hartlepool United.
They built an effective squad and famous partnership started. They were a
well-matched pair and went as one entity to Derby County in May 1967. Within
five years the club fizzed up to the top division. In 1973 both resigned as they
didn’t rub along well with the board of directors and moved to Brighton &
Hove Albion
By 1976 both were managing Nottingham Forest. As
they had done at Derby they lifted the team up to top-flight in 1976–77 and
even won the league title in 1977–78. Nowadays they be paid in millions. They
went on a spending sprees buying terrific players and Peter authorised the
English game's first £1 million transfer (buying Trevor Francis from Birmingham
City - I can remember him in my football sticker book.) They seemed to know
which play
Peter
retired in May 1982 aged 54 (Brian Clough stayed on for another eleven
seasons but the teams were never as effective with Peter.) Brian didn’t mind
giving credit where it was due and said, "I'm not equipped to manage
successfully without Peter Taylor. I am the shop window and he is the goods in
the back." Brian Clough was the forceful motivating power but Peter had
the essence of picking talented players. Brian Clough was the famous one and
Peter didn’t mind; they got on and often finished each other's sentences.
Oddly he came out of retirement to manage Derby.
At the time the two old chums got on. There was a wobble in the autumn of 1980
when Peter published a book called With Clough and hadn’t told his chum he’d
written it. Things turned permanently sour over a dispute over the transfer of
John Robertson from Nottingham Forest to Derby. Brian Clough saw his chum as a"a snake-in-the-grass" for not letting him know
summarising it in his usual direct way, “We pass each other on the A52 going to
work on most days of the week. But if his car broke down and I saw him thumbing
a lift, I wouldn't pick him up, I'd run him over". They never spoke to one
another again.
In October 1990 the 62-year-old Peter Taylor was
on holiday in Majorca when he died suddenly of pulmonary fibrosis (a build-up
of scar tissue in the lungs.) When his old chum Brian Clough was told of the
news he wept heavily. He attended the funeral and dedicated his autobiography
to Peter, his story headed up with the well-meant words: "To Peter. Still
miss you badly. You once said: 'When you get shot of me there won't be as much
laughter in your life'. You were right".
I found the church in an affluent area and I
thought the Sat-Nav was drunk again as I seemed to be
heading toward a nature reserve. I drove slowly along a quiet tree-lined track
not sure if cars were allowed. There was not one person around to tell me
otherwise. I was about to turn around when – above tall evergreens - I spotted
a taller church spire. This was it. I found the church doors to be locked.
Often I go inside the churches I visit, rant at an imaginary meat-eating flock,
say a prayer for my mum (often on knees) or do a loud cheek-pop to break the
silence but I couldn’t get in.
I strolled around the back to a few graves. Not
many people are buried here bearing in mind the hulking size of the church. I
found Peter quite quickly. He left behind a wife, a couple of kids and a groove
in football’s history books.
Looking…
Looking looking…
There’s even commemorating the
famous duo (note the cheesy grin)…