Mackay: 'He turned good into great'

Brian Clough: The motivator

It has been a week of reminiscing on the road for Dave Mackay, losing count of the local radio stations as he publicised his new autobiography, and the death of Brian Clough last Monday added a poignancy to his recollections.

It has been a week of reminiscing on the road for Dave Mackay, losing count of the local radio stations as he publicised his new autobiography*, and the death of Brian Clough last Monday added a poignancy to his recollections.

Even if Cloughie had taken the easy way out in May 1968 and accepted that it was futile trying to sign the Tottenham captain for his Second Division strugglers Derby County, there would have been no shortage of tales to tell for one of the great warriors of postwar football. Captain of Hearts and Scotland at 23, reviving a club that had not won a title for 50 years; whisked away to a new life in London at a time when football magazines ran articles entitled "The Double - is it possible?" (and concluded it was not); becoming part of the first team to achieve it in the 20th century; suffering a humiliating 9-3 defeat by Scotland's auldest enemy at Wembley that cost him countless caps; in tears at missing a European final when Spurs finally made one; having a leg broken by an opponent he has not forgotten and then breaking it again in his first comeback game, yet somehow returning as Tottenham's FA Cup-winning captain in 1967; and knocking on Bill Nicholson's door 12 months later to say, "I can't do the job any more".

Nicholson reluctantly accepted that judgement and set up a move back to Hearts as player-manager. But before the deal was done the young Clough, as energetic as he was ambitious, insisted against the Tottenham manager's advice on jumping into his car at dawn and driving to north London, where he bearded his quarry in the White Hart Lane players' room.

"I'd played against Brian once, for Scotland Under-23s, and I knew him only vaguely," Mackay recalled during a break from broadcasting last week. "He'd finished fifth from the bottom in his first season at Derby, they'd almost gone down, but he said, 'If you come to this club we will win the Second Division'. That's the way the guy talked, giving people so much confidence in themselves. For the younger players in particular, he'd tell them how good they were and they'd begin to believe it themselves."

Almost to his own surprise, Mackay found himself agreeing to the move, though there was one further shock, revealed at his first meeting with Clough's sidekick Peter Taylor: a role in the back four he had never played before.

"The thing with Hearts was that I'd put on weight after breaking my leg - or after Noel Cantwell broke it - and I didn't want to go back to my favourite club and have dads taking their kids and them saying, 'Who's that fat guy?' If I was going to fail anywhere, it wasn't going to be in Edinburgh. If I fail at Derby, at least I've only just got there and I'm 33 years old. I used to be up and down the whole length of the pitch the whole time. But Derby gave me a role I could have played until I was 50. It was perfect, it worked out so well."

He gives Taylor the credit for that, and for much else that the dynamic managerial duo achieved in the East Midlands over the next dozen years. "All the accolades went to Brian, but they were a brilliant double act. I believe it was Peter who told Cloughie, 'Get Mackay'. Peter's job was to locate the players, Brian's job was to ignite them. Peter identified good players. Brian made them great."

No need to thrust greatness upon Mackay. He was there already and that stature, allied to the fact that he was actually a few months older than Clough, seemed to spare him the manager's worst verbal excesses. It was probably just as well; having worked only for "gentlemen managers" including Nicholson and Sir Matt Busby, a Clough dressing-room was enough of a culture shock in itself. "Brian could be a gentleman one day and bollocking you the next. But all the time I was there he never raised his voice to me, and I've seen him crucifying everybody else. Then after he'd gone, Peter would say, 'He didn't really mean that'. But I never saw him physically hit anyone, like he did to Roy Keane."

The Second Division title was duly won, and Derby established in the higher League, before Mackay moved on to management at Swindon and Nottingham Forest. But the dazzling light that was Clough cast a long shadow, and escaping from it was not easy. When Derby's elderly chairman, Sam Longson, finally lost patience and sacked Clough and Taylor, sparking the revolt in which players signed petitions and threatened to go on strike or occupy the boardroom, Mackay was the former hero the board turned to as replacement.

"I had phone calls from Derby players like Roy McFarland and Henry Newton, who were really good pals of mine, saying, 'Don't come'. And if I'd been captain there I'd have been 100 per cent behind them, I'd have wanted Brian back. They thought he'd come back, but I didn't. I knew Sam Longson was a strong character, so I said to the players, 'If I don't take the job, somebody else will'. It never bothered me."

As bold off the pitch as on it, Mackay would drive alongside supporters with "Bring Back Clough" stickers in their car and stare them down. He remains upset at being forced out after three years, having won the championship in the second of them, the blow softened only a little when Clough, who was beginning to work his magic down the road at Forest, declined to return to the Baseball Ground out of loyalty to his new club. The rest of the story is better known in Clough's case than that of Mackay, who was successful managing abroad in Kuwait, Egypt and Qatar, less so back at home with Doncaster Rovers and Birmingham City, before retiring in 1996.

In 25 years of management he admired but never attempted to emulate Brian Clough, on whom his final word last week was: "Anybody who tried to follow Brian would fail. There was never anybody like him and never will be again."

¿ "The Real Mackay" (Mainstream Publishing, £15.99)