Today I'm going back 43 years to 1978 to Leeds United's first home game of the season against Manchester United.
First of all an admission. I used to have a Leeds United season ticket! Yes, just for one season, for my fifteenth birthday I asked for a Leeds United season ticket. Why did I do that when I don't even support Leeds I hear you ask? Well there were a few reasons. As a fifteen year old I had only just been allowed to attend football matches for the first time. My family were never a football following family and so I tended not to have anyone that would take me to a match. But now I was allowed the adventure of travelling by bus from Wetherby to Leeds followed by a good couple of miles walk to Elland Road. I had been very enthusiastic about football as a child and had followed the BBC Radio 2 Saturday afternoon commentaries and watched the local football highlights on a Sunday from an early age (sadly I was still regarded as too young to stay up and watch Match of the Day on a Saturday night!). I devoured every issue of Shoot!, did their League Ladders using the Sunday paper every week and kept scrapbooks galore listing out every team's results. I was, frankly desperate to watch top level matches on a regular basis and Leeds were my only realistic option at the time.
Prior to this game I had used my new season ticket to gain free entry to a couple of Leeds United Reserve team games in the Central League. This was to practice the journey but now the big day had arrived. The first match of Leeds' season was a huge one! I don't think that I had quite understood the intensity of the rivalry between the two clubs until that evening. I could use a number of words to sum up the atmosphere but none capture it precisely. It was electric, a powder keg, evil, toxic and unforgettable. This wasn't just any old Leeds v Man U fixture. This was also the first return by two former Leeds players who had betrayed the Leeds cause and gone over to "the other side". "Jordan and McQueen are homosexuals" chanted the Leeds crowd and you could feel the sheer hatred directed towards the men in red shirts.
Joe Jordan's spell at Leeds lasted eight years between 1970 and 1978 during which time he made 223 appearances but scored only 47 goals which, for a striker, is a poor return by any standards. He was good in the air and absolutely fearless however and he played without his front teeth which had been lost when putting his head in where it hurts. Without his teeth he was nicknamed "Jaws" after the Bond villain doing the rounds at local cinemas at the time. During his time at Leeds Jordan won the league title in 1974 but was otherwise runner up on too many occasions. In January 1978 he moved to Manchester United for £350,000 and he went on to make 126 appearances for the Red Devils scoring a more respectable 41 goals but won absolutely nothing. Jordan's subsequent career took in AC Milan, Verona, Southampton and Bristol City and by the time that he had finished he had clocked up 555 club appearances scoring 130 goals (just over a goal every four games). In addition Jordan made 52 appearances for Scotland scoring 11 goals.
Gordon McQueen made 140 League appearances for Leeds scoring 15 goals from his position at centre-back. He also won a First Division Championship medal and transferred to Manchester United shortly after Jordan in February 1978 for £500,000. Just prior to the transfer Jordan had declared that he wanted to spend his entire career at Elland Road but after the move he claimed that "99% of players want to play for Manchester United and the rest are liars" which I think must mean that he was admitting that he was a liar? McQueen played for United until 1985 making 184 League appearances and scoring 20 goals as well as winning the FA Cup in 1983. McQueen also played for Scotland between 1974 and 1981 making the surprisingly low number of appearances of just 30 and scoring 5 goals. Earlier this year, in common with a host of other former professional footballers, McQueen was sadly diagnosed as having vascular dementia.
That evening, Leeds, under the management of Jock Stein for the first time, scored through Paul Hart in the first half but Manchester United held a half time lead thanks to goals from McQueen (yes really) and Sammy McIlroy. Leeds' equaliser came early in the second half with Frank Gray converting a penalty before the Red Devils had the last laugh with a Lou Macari winner in the last 10 minutes. Stein ended up being boss of Leeds for just five home games that season before accepting the job of managing Scotland. The attendance that night was a surprisingly low 36,845 and I suspect that the threat of violence kept many away.
CRB Match No. 14
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