Rick is an author, and sportswriter for the Times
@ricktimes
My fondest memory watching sport was when Leeds got promoted to what was then the First Division in 1990. They played at Bournemouth and, unfortunately, Leeds fans had run riot over the Bank Holiday weekend. My girlfriend, now wife, lived there and her friends told horror stories of beach huts being burnt. One of the Bournemouth players' cars was attacked on the way to the ground. It was a sadly familiar tale. Even when you loved the club you hated bits of it.
Nevertheless, I will never forget that game because it was in the middle of university finals and I should have been studying - and mainly because it was the first title I had ever seen Leeds win. That 1-0 win - Lee Chapman scored - sent Leeds up after eight years away. I loved certain players in that team - Gary Speed, David Batty, Gordon Strachan, Merve 'the swerve' Day - and celebrated on the pitch with my brother.
The next year Leeds got better and added some class with players like Gary McAllister. I interviewed Howard Wilkinson, the manager, a few years ago and he described feeling something cold and metallic on the back of his head. It was the first weekend of the season and he had just climbed on the team bus to Everton. “I turned around and there was Vinnie Jones with his shotgun pointed at me,” he recalls. "He said, 'Make my day punk'." Vinnie knew he was on his way out and it was a joke. Wilkinson got it but he did not pick him. Later, he said his one regret was getting rid of Vinnie Jones too early.
That Leeds midfield of Strachan, Batty, McAllister and Speed was the best I'd seen since I was a boy catching the fag end of the Don Revie team. Batty was always a particular favourite. My favourite ever England story: The players have got a day off. Tony Dorigo plays golf. David Batty goes fishing. He comes back to their shared room covered in blood and guts. “Your tracksuit is disgusting,” Dorigo says. Batty does not miss a beat. “It’s not mine,” he says. “It’s yours.”
That summed up Batty, a blood and guts footballer who did not give a fig what me, you or the left-back thought. When Leeds got promoted to the top flight, Batty, then a rising star, spent the summer helping his dad on the bins. He was the ultimate antidote to the innate pomposity of modern football and is still the cure for the self-regarding, love-me, love-my-tea, egomania of the social media era. Everyone craves hits and clicks and likes, but David Batty does not give a toss.
As a boy he once shocked his teacher at Scott Hall Middle School by enlivening show and tell with a couple of rotting finger tips. They had been lost in an accident several years before and lumped in the back of a cupboard. As a Premier League player he would go camping at motorcycle races. When he developed a heart problem his response was a shrug. It was no problem. He also gave me my first ever interview for Shoot! magazine so I've liked him ever since.
Memory added on April 27, 2021
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