25- Poor Shilts and on my way to Coventry
Derby were our next visitors to Elland Road and you'd thought I'd be buzzing after being at Maine Road the previous weekend and watching the Rams being put to the sword, but I was still going through post-Dimples depression and making everyone's life a misery with my abject moaning. I'd befriended a guy from Swadlincote called Derek, who was married to a much younger woman, life seemed so easy for him! She'd drop him off at the coach and no doubt have dinner and "afters" waiting at home for him. Anyway we swept aside a poor Derby side, who were second from bottom, with relative ease. They had Peter Shilton in goal, who got some stick from the Kop. Shilton was the keeper Brian Clough wanted to sign for Leeds from Stoke City 16-years earlier and in one interview he claimed this was the catalyst behind his infamous sacking after 44-days, the fate of David Harvey unsettling the rock-solid dressing room-but some fans were shouting "Tina! Tina!" at Shilton. I've not fact checked this but someone once told me that Tina was the name of a young lady who was found in Shilton's crashed car when, drunk, he managed to wrap it round a lamppost - at the time he was married to someone called Sue. There was a rumour that "Tina" originally came from Leeds but I don't know how true it is. This happened towards the latter part of his time at Derby' s hated-rivals Forest.
Shilton's 2004 Autobiography doesn't she'd much light on it either: "Sue and I had a few words, probably about the level of my betting and, as usual I went off on my own.....I went to a Nottingham club and ran into a group of friends.....as everyone sorted themselves out, a young woman sidled up to me at the bar. She seemed to be on her own and asked where we were going. I told her for a curry and said she could tag along if she wanted to."
According to Peter-the-keeper with the whole-world-in-his-hands, the curry was a "pleasant social occasion" and "When it came time to go, I asked her how she was getting home. She thought it was too difficult to get a taxi at this late hour and, having established that she loved not far from me, I offered to give her a lift."
Shilton admitted he'd "had a few drinks and "...knew myself to be over the legal limit", he claimed he thought he was being trailed by a police car, he decided to drive down a country lane and wait a few minutes....but he "began to panic" when a set of headlights appeared and the woman cried "that's my husband" poor Pete was stunned, "I assumed that she wasn't married. Not that it mattered, seeing as my intention was to on my give her a lift...." - anyway he panicked and drove his Jaguar into a lamppost! (Excerps taken from Peter Shilton "The Autobiography", 2004, Orion, Great Britain).
England's World Cup keeper must have felt like he'd hit another lamppost that afternoon Strachan setting up Chapman for the first, Chappy turning provider for the second, lashed home by Strachan and poor-Peter clearly knew it wasn't his day again when Gary Speed smashed home our third. Like the dejected Derby fans, we headed back on the M1/A38 to the new pick up and drop off point which was a pub called The Derby Turn in Burton. As regular as clockwork, Derek's missus was there waiting for him in the warm car, dog in tow, ready to whisk him away for a great evening meanwhile I was contemplating a bag of chips on the way home after I'd scraped the ice off the Fiesta window. Having made arrangements to pick him up before the Coventry away game, I waved them off. The match programme for the Derby game featured what was then a relatively new phenomenon, betting kiosks at Elland Road where punters could have a flutter on the game or the "full racing service", hopefully Peter Shilton's picks for the afternoon romped home for him on such a lousy day!
In the run-up to the Coventry game, according to the papers Leeds would bolster their squad by signing the Glasgow Rangers and England defender Terry Butcher for £400,000. Butcher, 31, claimed he even went to Howard Wilkinson's house for a cuppa and shook hands on the deal that fell through when the Sky Blues nipped in and offered him their vacant manager's role, albeit as player-manager.
Me and Derek arrived in Coventry early and decided to go for a couple of pints. I remember thinking how drab and dreary the place looked and I think I've only visited "Cov" about half-a-dozen times and most of those visits coincided with Leeds playing there. We shuffled towards their Highfield Road stadium which I thought was a cracking little ground, under grey underpass after grey underpass. To be fair, the Luftwaffe pretty much flattened it during WW2 so it can be forgiven for being a bit ugly.
On the subject of gambling, I think this game was the one where Lee Chapman got into a bit of lumber by admitting he'd been betting on himself to score. He was in a rich vein of form after his lacklustre performance against Leicester in the League Cup, and got his 7th of the season as we braved the cold, November air and close attention from the West Mids Police, on their open Kop away end. Alas we didn't finish them off and Kevin Gallagher grabbed a 2nd half of equaliser to send us on a gloomy walk back through the grey underpasses in the dark and cold.
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