A Duty To Be Modern

Some football kits evoke a favourite player or a team; some a single moment or an entire season; and others mark the exact point your whole life changed. Aged 10, I’d been hanging on every word my dad said about Leeds United for a while, but I was yet to be taken to an actual game. Norman bites yer legs, ninety miles an hour Lorimer, McKenzie jumping over a Mini Cooper; by the time we climbed the West Stand steps in November 1986 and I saw the turf’s unbelievable green for the first time, I felt reasonably versed but was totally unprepared for what would happen next.

Dad had seldom set foot inside Elland Road since Paris ’75 — but this was Leeds ’86, and there were absolutely no indicators of what this season would have in store for us. With Billy Bremner at the helm, Don Revie’s team was still very much in the ether, and like many in attendance Dad upheld the colossal standards of ten years before — and then the players marched on against Shrewsbury Town, waving in the second division to just 14,966 people.

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