King of White Hart Lane , livre ebook

Pitch Publishing Ltd - Mike Donovan

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307 pages

English

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The King of White Hart Lane is the authorised life story of Alan Gilzean, the legendary, world-class Tottenham Hotspur, Dundee and Scotland footballer. Exclusive insights provided by his family, closest friends and colleagues add to the author's own experience to reveal Gilzean, the man and the player. A reserved, charming and intelligent individual who shunned the limelight off the field, Gilzean played with a swagger as a maker and taker of goals, especially alongside Jimmy Greaves at Spurs. We discover how the native of the Perthshire town of Coupar Angus became one of the greatest performers in the history of both his clubs. Gilzean emerged a Scottish folk hero having scored the winning goal against England in front of 133,000 at Hampden Park - and was later welcomed back with open arms by the game after ending a self-imposed exile during which the uninformed conjured often defamatory myths. The elegant striker dubbed 'Nureyev in Boots' left us on Sunday, 8 July 2018. There will never be another like him.

Informations

Publié par	Pitch Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	17 octobre 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785316227
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2019
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Mike Donovan, 2019
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 978-1-78531-551-0
eBook ISBN 978-1-78531-622-7
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Ebook Conversion by www.eBookPartnership.com
Contents
Foreword
Prologue
1. Fly High, Grandad
2. Spiritual Home
3. Coupar Angus Remembers
4. The Man Who Turned Down Alan Gilzean and The Beatles
5. Goalscoring Machine
6. Gordon Smith s Red Porsche
7. Ahead of Eus bio
8. A Man for All Seasons
9. Times They Are A-Changin
10. A New Kingdom
11. G-Men
12. Peenie s Picture House Dream Comes True
13. I Predict a Riot
14. We Got On Well, Martin and Me
15. Euro Glory
16. Behind the Scenes
17. Tweet
18. The Saddest Day of My Life
19. That s a Scottish Legend, Son
20. Managing
21. Dad
22. I ve Never Been a Recluse
23. The Last Suppers
24. I Need Your Grace to Remind Me to Find My Own
25. Golden Sunset
26. We Didn t Realise It d Be So Quick
27. Gillie Would Be Outstanding Today
28. The King s Club Historians
29. The King s Scribes
30. The King s People
Appendix: QI (Quite Interesting)
Statistics
Acknowledgements
Quotation Credits
Picture Credits
Bibliography
DEDICATIONS
To Rosemary for her unswerving, selfless, loving support.
To Matthew for being a good person and making me proud.
To Sean and Christine for staying strong.
To Mum, with a smile and personality that will always light up any room.
To Eric Herbert Leaver (5 April 1917- 23 April 2001)
To Charlie, thinking of you.
To all supporters of Alan Gilzean s clubs and international team - and his memory.
Bring back the king to his throne. Sandy Denny
(A pre-eminent singer-songwriter of Scottish descent who was connected to the same Maclean Clan as Alan John Gilzean (1938-2018). Her full name was Alexandra Elene Maclean Denny, 1948-78).
Part of the royalties for this book will go to the Dundee FC in the Community Trust and the Tottenham Tribute Trust.
Foreword
AS A SON I didn t look upon my Dad the way other people did. He was just your dad, not someone s hero to put on a pedestal. He would sit there with us either chatting away or doing his crossword, while having a cup of tea. Or taking the dog out. He was pretty much the same as everyone else s dad, I should imagine. Just because he played football didn t make him any different. He still had to deal with the kids when he got home from work. He wasn t a Superman. He might have been famous for being a footballer - and he played at a bloody good level - but outside of that he was just a normal human being. Alan Gilzean the footballer and father were two separate things.
He didn t really talk about his football career much. I used to ask him a few things. We d chat about football. Nothing much. Talk about games on the telly while we watched them. He d come out with something. Or he d say something about a game he was at with Tottenham when he started doing the hospitality with them, what they were like. He d give me a rundown of how they had played. He wouldn t say anything like, I ll tell you about this game [I was in]. I don t think any normal football person would. Not a lot of players like to bang their own drum. It is up to other people to judge how good they are. You wouldn t go around saying you were brilliant.
When I was growing up, though, I didn t realise how good he was as a player. How good the teams he played in were. You didn t think about it. It was only once you d finished playing yourself you thought, flipping heck, for him to have achieved what he did as a footballer took some doing. What a player he must have been. You are proud but like any family you have arguments and fall out. It didn t matter if he was a top footballer or not. Flaming hell, it is just normal life. Life that happens anywhere.
What has life been like since Dad passed? It goes on, doesn t it? It s what you do. Of course I miss him. You are going to miss anybody in that situation whether it is your parents, grandparents. There s no magic wand. You have to deal with it in different ways. Some days you ll think, Oh, it s a Sunday night. I normally used to speak to my Dad about now. You try not to think about it.
You can t live in the past. Dad always said, You can t do that, you ve got to live for the present and future. It s happening. You ve got to deal with it and move on. Otherwise you re not able to function, are you? You try to remember the good times. The laughs. You ve got to get on with living with the family, things you want to do. Focus on all that.
There might be times where you watch a game and his name gets mentioned. Or when his face comes up on the television screen, like it did in the 2018 BBC Sports Personality of the Year when they were going through sports people we had lost during the year. That didn t choke me, though, because I d watched that programme since I was young and always knew there was a segment like that. Some who came up you say, Didn t even hear about that one .
I ve got to appreciate how it is going to be. I wasn t the only person to lose a father that year. Loads of people did. Look at poor Steve Bruce, he lost both his parents in 2018. It is something that comes to everybody. And we all deal with it in different ways. What happened to Steve Bruce helps put things into perspective.
There was a book out a few years ago which Dad did not want to be involved with, but never, once Dad died, did we think anyone would want to write a book about him. Mike was the first one to come forward. I decided, Let s be involved. It will help get things right. I feel the book reflects the effort to do just that.
Dad came out of Coupar Angus, a small rural town on the east coast of Scotland, to achieve cult status with Dundee and Tottenham Hotspur. Became a folk hero for Scotland, while also experiencing playing in South Africa and managing at Stevenage and moving into the transport industry. He also dealt with my football career which took me to White Hart Lane and Dens Park too.
This is all covered, so are the decades when he was pretty much out of touch with the game, mostly with Spurs, during which ridiculous myths developed, such as one which claimed he had become a down-and-out. Out of sight out of mind, I reckon. And there were the last few precious years he spent back in football working for Spurs in their hospitality lounges with other club legends and collecting hall of fame awards.
The book also gives insights into my Dad s character. How he did not like being the centre of attention but was a sociable, friendly and intelligent person with a big sense of humour when you got to know him. It also tells us how he was as a father and grandfather. Dad s passing came quicker than we thought it would but it was of comfort that his quality of life was good almost to the end. And it is also of comfort to know how much he remains loved in the hearts and minds of so many.
He was a popular figure from his early days as a boy scout right through to working back at Tottenham Hotspur, although it is a shame he did not live long enough for the club to move into their new stadium. Mind you, he did get to see the amazing Spurs training ground where Pat Jennings got him to sign a blackboard. The signature is faded, I m told, so he ll have to go over it again!
Finally, I would like to thank all the people who knew Dad for giving up their time to help paint as accurate and rounded a picture of him as possible; to reveal insights into him as a person as well as what many view as a football legend from first-hand experience.

Ian Gilzean
Carnoustie, Angus, Scotland
July 2019
Prologue
I AM proud to say I met Alan Gilzean, the King of White Hart Lane and Dens Park. True, I was only 14. A Spurs fan standing by the big wrought-iron gates which separated the world from White Hart Lane Stadium. Clutching a club handbook. I d seen a signed printed picture of him alongside the other players in the racks on the first floor of the Supporters Club - there was only one back then - in Warmington House; the organised fans group s attempt at commercialism before the practice took a grip at the Lane on Irving Scholar s arrival in the 1980s. But I wanted to obtain an autograph first-hand.
Gillie appeared from the light of the dressing room into the twilight outside, washed and changed after his latest stellar performance for a team rebuilt by Bill Nicholson out of the ashes of the one which sealed the Double. I coyly asked him to sign over the pen picture printed of him alongside a thumb-sized image of the dark-haired, smiling head and shoulders of a footballer with few equals. I had already got Jimmy Greaves and Cliff Jones to do the same, so when Gilzean willingly obliged with a friendly grin it completed the set. My three favourite players of all time had made their mark in my modestly-sized publication.
I must have seen almost all of Gilzean s Lane appearances in the lilywhite shirt of my favourite team which was, apart from The Beatles, family and a handful of mates, my world. From his debut against Everton in December 1964 to his swansong against Southampton in April 1974 (his testimonial seven months later against Red Star Belgrade was on a school night). His dark, hirsute looks of a matine