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98 pages

English

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What is the best-known quote in the history of Norwich City? Decades of drama have produced millions of words of wit, wisdom, fury and folly from a range of great characters including players, managers, directors, supporters, journalists, commentators and celebrities. Now Canaries fans can relive the days of triumph and tragedy, celebration and controversy, fame and near financial ruin through the words of those who made it happen. From Geoffrey Watling's witty 'If you fail the medical we'll sack the doctor' to Robert Chase's notorious 'If Chris Sutton is not here at the start of next season, neither will I be' and Delia's legendary 'Come on, let's be 'avin you', it's all here in glorious black and white. Find out who were labelled 'The Milk Tray Man' and 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee', and whose head was shaped 'like an old threepenny bit'. It's the story of Norwich City in 1,000 quotes!

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History of sport

Norfolk

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Publié par	Pitch Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	15 août 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785310980
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0374€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2015
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
David Cuffley, 2015
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: 978-1-78531-035-5
eBook ISBN: 978-1-78531-098-0
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Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Keith Skipper
Introduction
Some Things are Better Left Unsaid
The Way We Were
Goals Galore
Money, Money, Money
FA Cup
Refs, Rants And Rows
Ron Manager
Fans For All Seasons
Game for a Laugh
The Young Ones
League Cup By Any Other Name
Nice To Meet You, Mr Bond
It s All About The Players
Boardroom Battles
A Kick Up The Eighties
It s A Man s Game
Have They Got News For You
Into The Limelight
On The Outside Looking In
The Wilderness Years
The Miracle Workers
Time To Say Goodbye
Photographs
Acknowledgments
I WOULD like to thank my former employer, Archant Norfolk, publisher of the Eastern Daily Press and Norwich Evening News , for permission to quote from its publications.
I am especially grateful to Rosemary Dixon, librarian at Archant, for her assistance in trawling the newspaper archives for Norwich City material.
To Keith Skipper, who has followed the Canaries as a lifelong fan and distinguished football writer, a heartfelt thank you for writing a marvellous foreword.
I am indebted to Roger Harris, Keith Whitmore and Kasper Wikestad for kindly providing the photographs that appear in these pages.
Special thanks go to George Nobbs for permission to use extracts from Keelan: The Story of a Goalkeeper ; to Bryan Gunn for use of quotes from his autobiography, In Where It Hurts ; and to Bruce Robinson for extracts from his book, Passing Seasons .
Credit is due to soccer historians Dick Middleton and Mike Davage for years of meticulous research tracking down ex-Canaries, many of whom became the subject of interviews that provided extracts included here.
Finally, a tribute to the Norwich City footballers, managers, directors, supporters and reporters over more than a century who provided the inspiration for this volume, either with their stirring deeds on the field or their words of wisdom, folly, joy, despair, passion and humour off the pitch.
David Cuffley
Foreword by Keith Skipper
THE BEST quote I was ever offered in my seasons as a Canary scribe was a couple of quid for helping a player fill in a highly complicated form in respect of an insurance claim.
With no other takers at the back of the team bus - and the manager snoozing near the front - I accepted that little windfall with relish and thanks for a useful grammar school education.
Let me emphasise immediately that the life of a football reporter was rarely as straightforward or lucrative as that. When I started with the arrival of Ron Saunders at Carrow Road in 1969, I eschewed a growing habit of overloading match reports and reflective articles with fatuous quotes from managers or players.
Same with tittle-tattle in the national press an occasional grain of wholesome wheat in mountains of speculative chaff. Remember, too, how Norwich s geographical position and country cousins tag left them untroubled by Fleet Street newshounds for long periods at a time before they started rubbing shoulders with the big boys on a more regular basis.
Running reports in the Pink Un on Saturday afternoons and in-depth analysis in the Eastern Daily Press and Evening News on the Monday dominated coverage. There was no local radio, no website and no social media to spread facts, opinions and rumours, while television interest was largely confined to Anglia s Match of the Week highlights after Sunday lunch.
One of the biggest challenges of my Carrow Road tenure was acclimatising to a dramatic change in managerial personality and style about halfway through. Ron Saunders, dour and dogmatic, gave way to John Bond, all colour and controversy.
While one threw a protective shield around his players, and confined himself to startling comments along we gave 110 per cent lines, the other courted the media shamelessly and encouraged everyone within reach to wear bleeding hearts on sleeves.
They had nothing in common other than being born within a few weeks of each other in 1932 and both joining Manchester City to further their careers and leave Norwich with the sort of stepping stone complex Paul Lambert reinforced in more recent years.
Saunders would not accept the hardman label although he did confess to being a bit of a swine . Perhaps the distinction had to rest somewhere in that old proverb about making silk purses out of sows ears. He produced a promotion team out of material few people considered suitable for a history-making journey.
His style was bound to hurt in some cases. I recall winger Steve Grapes exclaiming after a gruelling stint on the training beat, He makes bloody Hitler look like Edith Cavell!
It is also claimed the no-nonsense manager made one player feel so inadequate that the poor creature dug a hole in which to hide - and then did extra training because he took too long to dig it.
While his successor settled for a far more entertaining and open regime, he often needed protection from a non-stop passion to oblige. Cynical operators chasing juicy headlines for national tabloids made him a regular target - but the Bondwagon kept on rolling. I devised a weekend format designed to restore a measure of calm and balance to a scene dominated by regular doses of Saturday teatime fever. With the dust settled and the main agitators returned to the capital, I then asked Mr Bond for his more considered opinions on a quiet Sunday afternoon.
I m sure several of my successors on the Canary beat, David Cuffley among them, have shared the challenge to temper a fiercely parochial spirit with a drop or two of chilling honesty so as to stay true to themselves and thousands of Norwich City followers with reason to trust what they read in the local papers.
This excellent compilation of telling quotes from Canary history, passionate, witty, brutally frank, playfully obtuse, conjure up so many pictures of memorable characters and unforgettable fixtures.
For old codgers like me, the stirring FA Cup run of 1958/59 still provides inspiration, consolation - and determination not to join so many others in the dug-out of despair when it comes to the future of this grand old game.
That run to within sight of Wembley s gates came just two years after an appeal had been launched to keep Norwich City alive. The dream of becoming the first Third Division side to reach a final ended with Billy Bingham s goal in a tense semi-final replay against Luton at St Andrew s in Birmingham.
The journey home had every right to be soaked in tears of bitter disappointment. For some, however, it transformed into a magnificent outburst of defiance and togetherness. City players trooped from one compartment to another on the Top Brass Special, a railway phenomenon that blossomed during the campaign, chanting, You sang for us, now we ll sing for you!
That must be my favourite line from the entire Norwich City ledger, not so much a quote as the forging of a precious new union between players and supporters. They really were in it together with one of the most poignant singalongs in soccer history as On The Ball, City! scaled fresh heights of fervour.
I know now that gripping chapter in Carrow Road folklore was part of my apprenticeship for a media career, including long spells of trying to make sense of sport in general and football in particular.
Keith Skipper, Cromer, 2015
Introduction
I CLEARLY remember one of the first pieces of advice I was given when I started reporting on the fortunes of Norwich City nearly 30 years ago, Not too many lunar orbits or poorly tropical birds, please.
This was the 1980s and it was a reference to the trend in post-match interviews for victor and vanquished to describe themselves, respectively, as over the moon or sick as a parrot .
There are various explanations for the origins of those phrases. The first has its most likely roots in a nursery rhyme that dates back 250 years. The second is also said to be centuries old, but is credited in more recent times to the former Liverpool defender Phil Thompson. Appropriate, you may think.
I was being warned, politely, to avoid phoning over the same old clich s when following up the traditional match report with the instant reaction of those involved. Have you got the quotes? was the cry from a clutch of anxious reporters trying to do three things at once in the frantic first half-hour after the final whistle, as they compared notes and rushed to file their stories before the next deadline.
Among those hastily gathered words of wisdom from players, managers and even the occasional match official there was always the chance of eliciting the memorable one-liner or classic comment that would be remembered for years to come.
Today s journalists and broadcasters could be forgiven the occasional grimace every time they hear that it is a steep learning curve , that every other match is huge or massive , or that this is a must-win game . As opposed to the games you simply must lose, perhaps? Or, worst of all, in the wake of a fearful drubbing, to be told yet again by the poor unfortunate nominated to meet the press that he and his tea