Chapter 35

Shoot Magazine - Exclusive

  This week’s ‘Focus On’ is Forest’s new number 9, Pete Sheath

It was a highlight of our week during the early seventies. The popular magazine contained a wealth of updated statistics, plenty of colour action photos, some coaching tips and a couple of comic strips. It also had a 'Focus On’ feature that, along with the colour photo of a player, asked him to reveal some basic biographical information as well as some personal information, such as his favourite entertainer or his least favourite opponent.  Throughout the 1970s, it seemed every players' answer to 'person in the world you would most like to meet' was overwhelmingly the boxer Mohammed Ali and they all wanted to drive a Jenson Interceptor car.  What they weren’t allowed to reveal was which actress they’d most like to get to know in the back seat.  Raquel Welch, Jane Fonda maybe?

Sadly they never contacted me.  So, in order to put the record straight, I’ll reveal what I’d have said back then and compare it with what I’ll declare now fifty years later.

Let’s start with a few traditional questions about favourites:

Team                1972    Forest

                         2022    Forest     ‘Till I die.’   (read ‘Mist rolling in from the Trent’)   

Players            1972    Duncan McKenzie and Johan Cruyff

                          2022    Joe Worrall and Ryan Yates.   Who?  

                                       (Nottingham lads; key to our recent return to the Prem’)

Car                    1972    Jenson Interceptor but I’d have settled for a Ford Capri

                          2022     McLaren 720 but I’d settle for a Jag.

Meal            1972     Steak and chips and a Black Forest Gateaux                           

                          2022     Can’t beat the Rogan Josh from the Tikka Raz up the road

                                  but I’d still be more than happy with a steak.

Breakfast         1972     Golden Nuggets and Rice Krispies combined

                        2022     Granola, banana and Weetabix but I can’t resist a

                                       Full English whenever the opportunity arises.

Drink               1972     Dandelion and burdock or a strawberry milkshake

                         2022     Marston’s Pedigree or a decent Merlot.

Ice cream          1972    Rocket lolly or Fab - could never decide.

                           2022    Magnum or a 99 - can never decide.

Film                   1972    Live and Let Die

                           2022   Close Encounters of the Third Kind - never tire of this one.

Cartoons           1972   Top Cat or Whacky Races

                        2022   The Simpsons

TV Prog             1972   Top of the Pops, Match of the Day, The Goodies, Question of Sport 

                           2022   Match of the Day, Ten O’clock News, and The Apprentice (Sad? I know)

Maybe the next set of questions require a bit more consideration.

Band/Artist      1972   The Faces come out on top given a close run by Slade and T.Rex

    2022   Far too many to choose but still always tend to default to Pink Floyd, Deep Purple,  Blondie, Talking Heads or Eagles

Female Artist   1972    Olivia Newton-John

                         2022    Debbie Harry (1980 version)

Male Artist       1972    David Bowie

                        2022    David Bowie

Female Act      1972     Raquel Welch or Susannah York

                         2022     Lily James for now, but Michelle Pfeiffer and Juliette Binoche forever,     

                                      despite a flirtation with Diane Keaton

Film Character  1972   Bond, James Bond, or the Sundance Kid

                           2022   Hans Solo or Indiana Jones

What would you have liked to be when you grew up?

1972  That’s easy!  If I can’t be an astronaut, I know exactly…

I really want to be the manager of a factory making a million tumble driers a year and responsible for the livelihood and safety of 500 employees.  And I’d just love being stressed by the need to be efficient, hit the margins, and continually satisfy the customer.  And tumble dryers are such a necessary product; where would we be without their energy-guzzling help with the weekly laundry?  Same place as humanity was for the previous ten thousand years I guess.

2022 

Retired now, after a career of thirty-six years in the domestic appliance business, I reckon I’ve earned the right to look back and consider what alternative paths I might have followed if I’d been determined, brave, daft, clever or fortunate enough to try something else.

So…. I reckon I’d have made a half-decent teacher, probably at junior or secondary rather than infants.  Standing in front of a group at work, delivering a briefing, presentation or training module was usually quite enjoyable and developing a reasonable rapport with any audience generally happened without too much effort or angst.  The teams at work would sometimes comment on the enthusiasm and patience with which I shared skills, tips and techniques.  Okay, so they were adults, but helping with the organisation and coaching of various junior football and cricket teams was always rewarding and the boys usually listened without too much mucking about.

During one particularly difficult spell at the factory, I even researched how to jack-in the job and career-switch into education.  The numbers didn’t stack; re-training for a year followed by the uncertainty of finding a suitable position and the certainty of less income just made it all too risky.  The moment passed.

What I really wish I’d done was gone into medicine and not just because I quite like watching ’24 Hours in A&E’ and other hospital and NHS documentaries.  Although definitely not cut out to be a surgeon, I’d like to think I’d have found a useful niche in some specialism or other and actually perform a role that’s interesting, challenging and clearly contributes something to society.   Neither parents nor teachers ever suggested it might be possible whilst I was at school and at the time I certainly didn’t possess such a social consciousness or any strong vocational pull.  Consequently, it never even made it onto my radar when choosing appropriate A-levels and a decade later there was no real way back.  To be honest, if I wasn’t gifted enough to be a doctor, I wouldn’t have minded being a paramedic; I’ve met a few over the last few years and always been impressed with their demeanour, professionalism and calm, caring approach.  And they get an ‘action-man’ style uniform and the chance to race through red traffic lights with the blue lights flashing and sirens blaring.

Villains            

1972  Don Revie and the entire Leeds team. 

And if I paused long enough to think about things, I had a growing awareness of the real bad guys from recent history, top of the list being, of course, Hitler and his Nazi chums, with Stalin and Franco cut from the same odious cloth.

2022

Fifty years on and sadly there’s no trouble finding candidates. Let’s start with Diego ‘Hand of God” Maradona and then up the ante somewhat with the           following selection from a whole range of current tyrants and despots.   Putin,  Assad, ISIS, Taliban…..

Heroes           

1972   Ian Storey-Moore (before he joined Man U).  Jim Lovell

 2022   Let’s elaborate a bit on this topic as these days the word ‘heroes’ is used far too glibly.

For a start I’m excluding sporting heroes on the grounds that their heroism occupies a different dimension to the true heroes.  Most of them are paid to perform and a great day at the office hardly justifies the description.  It’s rather like the use of the term ‘National Treasure” which seems to have crept more frequently into our language. However, just for the record, let’s go with John Robertson (jinky winger from Forest and Scotland's glory days) and Derek Randall( maverick Notts and England batsman and best ever cover point fielder) as my sporting heroes across the decades.

More debatable perhaps but nevertheless also being ruled out are the good folk who make up our emergency services.  No-one can argue that they sometimes find themselves in scary situations, sometimes upsetting situations, taking risks on behalf of others and all that.  Some of the exploits described in the press, seen on TV news clips or fly-on-the-wall documentaries illustrates just how brave these people can be and sometimes leaves a lump in the throat. They have, however, volunteered, usually been well trained and equipped, and, on top of their commitment to helping their fellow men, are in it partly for the thrill, adrenaline rush, and chance to pit themselves against the conditions.  I’m sure those with an RNLI or Mountain Rescue bleeper in their pocket are often sub-consciously willing it to go off.

So who does this leave us with?  It’s those characters who didn’t ask to be where they found themselves, suddenly confronted with a situation that wasn’t what they expected when they signed up or got out of bed that morning.  It’s the teacher shielding her pupils from a gunman, the pilot steering a stricken plane away from the housing estate, the guy who ensures everyone else has made it into the lifeboat first or races into a burning building before the professionals arrive, a child holding their younger sibling’s hand whilst the bombs explode around them. 

Wartime provides endless examples; with so many exploits happening in such a short time, it’s difficult to do justice to each of the many individual instances.  Some only come to light many years later: the resistance fighter, the undercover secret agent, the code-breakers.  The obituary section of the Daily Telegraph has always fascinated me; it’s here, throughout recent decades, that a seemingly endless stream of names has been acknowledged at the point they finally pass into memories.  Whether groomed for a military career or temporarily acquiring one as a volunteer, or even having been conscripted, it doesn’t really matter as the reporting format is always the same.  A paragraph on their background: 'the son of’  educated at ‘Sherborne, Corpus Christi, and Sandhurst,’ or ‘grew up in a mining village in Durham’ followed by a mention of their regiment, squadron, ship or a reference to ‘special operations.’  Then follows a description of the exploit itself: ‘suicidally storming a gun emplacement under heavy fire to save a pinned-down platoon’; ‘rescuing a wounded comrade from a burning plane’; ‘refusing to divulge names to the Gestapo’, and so on.  The number of obituaries for these brave, sometimes foolhardy, individuals has been steadily declining since it peaked at the turn of the century.  There aren’t so many of them left now.  But it also reveals an upside.  For us here in the UK there’s been less conflict; the heroics are now reserved for those professionals in the military who still occasionally find themselves in desperate situations in places like Iraq or Afghanistan.

Leaders 

1972    I didn’t really get the idea of leadership.

2022    I’m still struggling a bit with this one.

Where have they all gone?  Did they ever exist?  Are they just the product of a fawning media or a well-managed publicity machine?  Am I just too much of a cynic these days?   I’ve programmed the Time Machine to search for ‘Leaders since 1900’ and then applied a few selection criteria and filters.

Firstly they must have been in the public-eye and therefore faced wide-spread scrutiny.  This effectively rules out the majority, those local leaders, the small-fry who have championed their teams, their organisations, their businesses and kept them afloat through thick and thin, motivating their colleagues, protecting their welfare, gaining respect and loyalty along the way.

Now let’s filter out those who are suddenly faced with making instant decisions of leadership often in times of danger or stress. These are the true leaders; the ones who didn’t get the sycophantic advisors prompting them; the ones that didn’t ask to be in the position they find themselves; the ones that looked around, heart pounding, and found that everyone else was looking at them.  Sadly, in most years there’s a crisis or incident that thrusts these people temporarily into the limelight; we’ll acknowledge their role, their cool-heads under pressure, before allowing them to quickly fade back into welcome obscurity. 

So who’s left?   Which public figure would you follow ‘over the top’?  Who would you bother to go to hear speak?

Who could be trusted to lead a band of brothers in jeopardy, a nation under threat, a planet in crisis?

Em…..

Well let’s rule out almost every politician who has held a leadership role over the course of my life.  Most don’t come remotely close; in fact most display such a lack of integrity and empathy that they barely deserve the title of ‘leader’ let alone be in the hat for earning any of my respect. In fact, in my opinion, a few have actually managed to ‘lead us’ in the wrong direction following their ideological route map to the land of milk and honey (for a few).  More elsewhere on this subject.

Once upon a time we had a lead to follow

Well respected men used to show the way

Folks would follow on 'cause they believed the promise

Well respected men would never betray

Now look around it's hard to see integrity

You ask for direction and they don't know

Once upon a time the sun was shining brightly

But once upon a time was a long time ago.

Jimmy Nail ‘Once Upon a time’ 1994

I did hold out some hope for Blair after he was elected but he failed to capitalise on a first term of good will, sound economic policies that had encouraged both the City and business, and the first signs of rejuvenation of NHS, education and crime statistics.  Rather than taking the chance for an Attlee-like legacy, he became too big for his boots, too keen to adopt a presidential approach and persona to his role, inevitably slowly losing the support of his team and supporters.  Attempting to stay as PM for a third term, on top of his unwise commitment to the invasion of Iraq, was the nail in the coffin for his claim for leadership greatness.  His successor, Gordon Brown, had the vision and the policies but completely lacked the personality and, in this day and age, without the press-machine behind him, he had no chance.

One guy stands out.  Mandela.  Educated lawyer, freedom fighter.  Branded a terrorist by the apartheid regime (a view echoed by Thatcher and Tebbit in 1987).  Imprisoned under harsh conditions for 27 years.  Leader of a troubled, divided, fledging nation.  Remarkable advocate of reconciliation and forgiveness.  Respected world statesman.  Undoubtedly he had some shortcomings, maybe a darker side to his past, but he seems light years ahead of our current crop on virtually any criteria you want to choose.  Maybe Zelansky will emerge from the diabolical mess in Ukraine with more credibility and integrity than most. He’s doing okay so far for a former comedian.  Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

If we look elsewhere, away from the international stage and the murky world of politics, and into a totally different sphere, there’s someone else who always springs to my mind when we’re talking leadership. 

Okay so it’s now over a century ago, but the story of polar explorer, Ernest Shackleton, is awe inspiring.  He made three trips to Antarctica being part of Scott’s first expedition in 1905/6 when he accompanied his captain in a trek that reached 82 S, the furthest south anyone had travelled. Three years later, during the his next visit in 1907–1909, he and three companions established a new record latitude at 88°S, having walked 800 km and turning back only 180 km from being the first to reach the South Pole.  The temptation to push on for a few more days and claim the glory for King and Empire must have been huge but common sense and good judgement prevailed and he turned them around to trudge, disappointed, all the way back to their base, leaving themselves enough time and provisions to make it safely before the weather turned.  There’s a contrast to be made with Scott who, two years later, made it to the Pole but cut it too fine and ran out of food and luck on the return leg.

After the race to the South Pole ended in December 1911, with Amundsen’s conquest, Shackleton turned his attention to the crossing of Antarctica from sea to sea, via the Pole, and sailed south in 1914.  Disaster struck this expedition when its ship, Endurance, became trapped in the pack ice and the entire crew spent 11 months including a dark, freezing Antarctic winter, drifting with the pack.  Eventually, the pack won and the ship was slowly crushed.  The crew escaped by camping on the sea ice for two months, hoping to drift north to the open sea. Eventually their floe disintegrated, forcing them to launch the lifeboats and, after five harrowing days at sea, they finally landed on a bleak, narrow shingle beach on the remote, uninhabited Elephant Island, their first time on solid ground for 497 days.  Unfortunately, the only hope of rescue depended on Shackleton and four of the crew crossing the treacherous Southern Ocean in one of the lifeboats, just 6m long, to reach a whaling station on the island of South Georgia.  Their stormy ocean voyage of 1300 km took 15 days, a fantastic feat of navigation in a tossing open boat, for frozen mariners in threadbare and sodden clothes.  And, after making landfall on the wrong side of South Georgia, their tribulations weren’t over.  With no mountaineering equipment, no maps and utterly exhausted, Shackleton and two of his companions climbed, traversed, and descended the snowfields and glaciers of the mountainous island for 36 hours to finally raise the alarm. 

Shackleton immediately sent a boat to pick up the three men from the other side of South Georgia while he set to work to organise the rescue of the Elephant Island men.  His first three attempts were foiled by sea ice, which blocked the approaches to the island but it was fourth time lucky in a boat supplied by the Chilean government and the remaining 22 men, waiting there for four and a half months, were finally evacuated.  How he kept spirits up, hope alive, and brought all the crew safely back home after three years of miserable discomfort and peril is equally as impressive as their actual travels across ice, sea and mountains.  I can’t do it justice but any one of the stack of books on this odyssey is worth a read.

Where were we?  Ah yes, ‘leaders’.

Enough on that, let’s wrap up this ‘Focus On’ feature with something a bit more upbeat.

What things give you a lift, raises the spirits?  

                  1972   -    Forest running onto the pitch to the sound of ‘Robin Hood’

                  2022   -    Forest running onto the pitch to the sound of ‘Robin Hood’

                                 Trees, clouds, sunsets, starry nights, waves on the ocean....

Sounds like I’ve turned into a bit of a pagan.

In next week’s Shoot ‘Focus on…’  talks to Harry Kane. 

Images removed: Lily James (Wikipedia)   Hans Solo  (Wikipedia)  Indian Jones ( Lucas film) Vogue Collection Christophel © Lucasfilm

Images removed:  Ian Story-Moore, Jim Lovell, Derek Randall.  Nelson Mandela, Ernest Shackleton, James Caird boat ernestshackleton.net