Leeds United’s Premier League promotion one of the highlights of a half-century of supporting them - Yorkshire Post Letters

It is one of my earliest memories. It was the morning of the FA Cup final replay, Leeds versus Chelsea and, with the certainty of a six-year-old, I knew the game was in the bag.

“Leeds for the cup, Leeds for the cup,” I shouted over the garden fence at my best friend Tim Bunning, who was a Chelsea fan.

Except things didn’t turn out that way. Chelsea beat Leeds 2–1 and I spent the next day having a bitter row with Tim about who was the best goalkeeper, Peter Bonetti or Gary Sprake.

This was the first in what was to prove a lifetime of brutal shocks that come with following Leeds United. It’s hard for younger fans to comprehend but that 1970 replay was watched by 100,000 people at Old Trafford. We were at the top of our game, a one-club city with a massive and loyal fan base.

Two years later Leeds beat Arsenal to win the 1972 FA Cup final at Wembley. We lost to Sunderland in the FA Cup final the following year. Leeds was the biggest club in the country and Sunderland was not even in the First Division.

These were the Don Revie glory days when Leeds was transformed from a Second Division club that had never won a major trophy to being the major force in English football.

My childhood memories are a confusing mixture of profound shocks and utter elation, watching giants of the game like Billy Bremner, Jack Charlton and Peter Lorimer.

Ten years after that ‘72 cup win, I spotted Allan ‘Sniffer’ Clarke, whose header from a Mick Jones’ cross, had secured Leeds’ victory. I was standing in the checkout queue at Safeways in Oakwood with mum and Clarke behind us. I wanted to tell him he was my hero, how I replayed that goal in my head again and again, and how I admired his astonishing skill. “Hello,” was all I managed.

Like male pattern baldness, a football team was something you inherited from your father. I was nine when my dad first took me to see Leeds.I watched the Whites draw with West Ham.

In the days before the internet I’d run home from my sixth form Saturday job at Harrogate Morrisons to try and catch BBC’s Final Score or to badger my dad for the result. To get a full rundown of the game, I’d have to wait for the Sunday papers.

One Christmas I asked for a Leeds scarf. Skilful and thrifty, my grandma decided to crochet one. I can still remember the horror as I unwrapped it. Every day I’d leave the house with it draped round my neck, it was stuffed in my school bag before I’d hit the end of the road. But I still have it to this day.

I’ve tried to enthuse my two daughters with my love of Leeds taking them to Elland Road, showering them with branded merchandise such as pink and silver sequin t-shirts but children are no longer obliged to be carbon copies of their parents’ passions.

Passionate as I was about Leeds, I was of course never party to the football violence that scarred so many games in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

The closest I came to a fight was when a group of Liverpool fans pitched up in the Leeds Kop and started throwing punches at everyone around them. I stood passively by while Andy, my school friend, waded in to defend our club’s honour.

While many younger fans complain modern football is too corporate and costly, the transformation of the game into very much a family affair is to be welcomed. The murder of two Leeds fans, following United’s defeat in the UEFA Cup semi-final against Galatasaray remains one of the darkest moments in our club’s history.

In Europe, under the stewardship of David O’Leary, Leeds impressed a whole new constituency of fans.

Leeds United had a young and talented squad – we had powerhouse Australian forwards Harry Kewell and Mark Viduka, and Michael Bridges whose career was cut short by injury, with Rio Ferdinand and Dominic Matteo at the back and David Batty in midfield.

These young artisans crushed all before them in their 2000/01 Champions League campaign, only to be beaten by Valencia in the semi-final.

With players mired in controversy at home and the club spending heavily, O’Leary was sacked in 2002 and the club’s football and financial fortunes spiralled rapidly downward.

Three managers could not reverse the decline and, crippled by debt, Leeds were relegated from the Premier League, falling to the third tier within three years.

Over the years the shock and shame of relegation gave way to weary resignation but I never lost the love of watching Leeds play and seized every opportunity to do so.

As a BBC programme editor, I was lucky enough on occasion to get an invite into the directors’ box. Once, I was introduced to chairman Ken Bates during a Championship match, he looked me up and down and barked: “You work for the BBC? You must be a communist.”

He then spent the game complaining about BBC Radio Leeds – a great station but one that I have never worked on. On a happier occasion, I met childhood hero Peter Lorimer and gushed about his 70mph free kicks. In the 16 years out of top-flight, living on past glories sustained us.

Many a time I have broken away from the family table on holiday to rush up to a complete stranger wearing a Leeds United shirt, shake his hand and say emphatically: “Great team, great man.” I was determined they would keep the faith.

When I moved from the BBC to become Director of Communications at Number 10, there were precious few opportunities to catch up with my club’s steady return to form.

On a rare evening out in February 2019, me and fellow Leeds United supporter, Labour MP John Mann, watched our beloved team lose to QPR at Loftus Road. I spent the evening being gleefully text trolled by Michael Gove, one of QPR’s most high-profile supporters.

Even when things were at their bleakest over Brexit, I never once doubted it would be delivered but I could never quite share the same optimism where Leeds were concerned.

So even when we needed just one point from the last two games to gain promotion this season, I still wouldn’t allow myself to believe it.

I think most Leeds fans of my age share this sense of dread. Sixteen years, 15 managers and countless heartaches have taught us not to hope too hard.

Younger football fans have simply forgotten how powerful Leeds once was or how far we fell from grace. Maybe now I can believe a new glory era awaits us. Hope lies once more on the horizon. We are back in top-flight football. We are back where we belong.

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James Mitchinson

Editor