Campaign To Create Lasting Hometown Tribute to Don Revie

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A campaign has been launched to create a lasting tribute to the Middlesbrough-born former England manager Don Revie in his hometown.

Despite growing up in Middlesbrough and being highly decorated for his successes as a player and a manager there is currently no formal acknowledgement of his achievements in the town.

Now Middlesbrough MP Andy McDonald, Fly Me To The Moon fanzine editor Robert Nichols and the headteacher and deputy headteacher of Mr Revie’s old school Archibald Primary have agreed to look at finding a way of celebrating the man.

Donald George Revie was born on July 10, 1927 at number 20 Bell Street in the Newport area of Middlesbrough.

He attended at Archibald, including the then Archibald Secondary Modern School, where he honed his football skills in the playground. He played for Newport Boys’ Club and Middlesbrough Swifts as a junior, left school at 14 to become an apprentice bricklayer before being scouted to play for Leicester City.

From there he went on to play for Hull City, Manchester City – where he lifted the FA Cup – Sunderland and then Leeds United where he became player-manager.

He was capped by England six times, scoring four goals in those games in 1954 and 1955.

But it was at Leeds as a manager that he truly made his reputation, having arrived at a club in 1961 that was in the second division and had never won a major trophy.

By the time he left in 1974 to manage England he had led them to the First Division title twice, an FA Cup win, a League Cup victory, a Charity Shield and two Inter-Cities Fairs Cups.

He served as England manager for three years until 1977.

Middlesbrough MP Andy McDonald said: “Don Revie had a remarkable journey from Bell Street in Middlesbrough to being one of only 15 people to ever hold the top job in English football and that should be acknowledged in his hometown.”

Robert Nichols, of Fly Me To The Moon, added: "Middlesbrough was birthplace to two iconic figures from a golden age of football personality managers, Brian Clough is remembered in a statue and a plaque, let's now mark the early life of his great rival Don Revie."

Anita Jefferies, headteacher of Archibald School said: "We are looking forward to the opportunity to be involved in celebrating the life and work of an ex-pupil of Archibald.”

Anyone who would like to get involved in the campaign can email andy.mcdonald.2nd@parliament.uk

Don Revie 1.jpg

Don Revie 2.jpg
 
Norman_Conquest said:
Not for me, Sunderland player, Leeds manager and then there was the England incident. I think the area should pass on this one, there are plenty of other ex-pros from the Middlesbrough area who deserve this before Revie.
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Have to agree with Norman. Harry Pearson's views on him in The Far Corner are fairly accurate I think in terms of how he is viewed generally. The Dirty Leeds tag comes straight from his tenure.
 
GibbosEmpire said:
Didn't he kind of hate Boro? Or am I imagining that?
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Imagining it - he said a great deal of positive things about Middlesbrough and Boro - remember he brought the Championship winning team to Ayresome Park v Second Division Champions for Bill Gates testimonial. A big thing.
Alan Peacock told me many positive things about Don - and how he looked after Alan when injury forced his early retirement.
 
From The Guardian:

To the public, Revie's crime was not his disloyalty but his greed. It emerged that a month before his 'defection' he had offered to resign as England manager - without mention of his offer from Dubai - in exchange for a £50,000 pay-off. He boasted in the Mail of how he would spend his new salary. 'I will travel to the great sporting events of the world,' he said. 'The major golf tournaments, the Olympics, World Cup finals - whatever takes my fancy.'

Sir Harold Thompson exacted his revenge, charging Revie with bringing the game into disrepute and summoning him to a disciplinary hearing at which he acted as judge and prosecutor; Gilbert Gray, who defended Revie, calls the hearing 'a kangaroo court, an absolute disgrace'. After the disciplinary committee gave out its inevitable guilty verdict, its punishment was severe: a 10-year ban from English football. Revie appealed to the High Court; the ban was overturned, but the judge expressed reservations about Revie's integrity and ordered him to pay two-thirds of his costs. 'Mr Revie... presented to the public a sensational and notorious example of disloyalty, breach of duty, discourtesy and selfishness,' said Justice Cantley. 'His conduct brought English football, at a high level, into disrepute.'

Two months after Revie left the England job, the Daily Mirror alleged that a number of Leeds matches had been fixed over the course of the 1960s and 1970s. Previous allegations by the Sunday People in 1972 had claimed that three unnamed Wolves players were offered £1,000 apiece to throw what would have been a title decider with Leeds, but Wolves had won and neither police nor FA investigations found evidence of wrongdoing. 'Don Revie planned and schemed and offered bribes, leaving as little as possible to chance,' wrote the Mirror's lead reporter, Richard Stott. 'He relied on the loyalty of those he took into his confidence not to talk, and it nearly worked.'

The star witness was Gary Sprake. 'I was quite surprised by the amount of information they had,' Sprake says. 'Richard Stott asked me to get involved, but everything was already written, really.' Sprake told Stott that there had been attempts to fix the Wolves game - a claim he subsequently retracted - as well as several other matches. Jim Barron, the Nottingham Forest goalkeeper, meanwhile said that Billy Bremner had been sent to the Forest dressing room before a game in the 1971 title race to persuade his opponents to 'go easy'. The request was rejected. Alan Ball, meanwhile, revealed clandestine meetings with Revie on Saddleworth Moor in the mid-1960s, when Revie wanted to sign him from Blackpool. Revie also sent weekly £100 bribes to Ball's home as part of his attempt to tap him up. The FA fined Ball £3,000, even though he had ended up at Everton, and not Revie's Leeds.

Bob Stokoe, the Sunderland manager who had outwitted Revie in the 1973 FA Cup final, was the most compelling witness. He said that while managing Bury in 1962, when Leeds were battling relegation, Revie offered him £500 to 'go easy'. When he turned him down, Revie further enraged him by asking to speak to his players.

The notion that a man who left nothing to chance and whose obsessiveness bordered on paranoia would try to fix title- or relegation-deciders was not implausible. But the evidence against Revie is shaky. Sprake had spoken out only after being paid £14,000. The FA deny the existence of a 300-page dossier of allegations supposedly handed over to them by Stott. No criminal or FA charges came out of the match-fixing allegations and, when the Sunday People repeated them, Billy Bremner sued and won £100,000.


'The people who made these accusations - we didn't have to bribe them to be able to beat them,' Peter Lorimer says. 'I was never aware of it and I don't think any of our players were ever aware of it happening. You would think you would get to know if that sort of thing was happening, but certainly we never got to know anything.'

And yet Stokoe, a well liked and widely respected manager, stood to gain nothing by speaking out. He never profited from the allegation, which he repeated hundreds of times before his death in 2004. The thought of it, he said, made him feel ill. 'It always riled me when I see the career Revie has had. At the back of my mind, the bribe is always there. He was always an evil man to me.'

Former team-mates have shunned Gary Sprake for his allegations, but the goalkeeper has since made more. He tells me that Revie asked him to 'tap up' fellow Wales internationals Colin Green and Terry Hennessey when Leeds played Birmingham on the last day of the 1964-65 season. Sprake refused and Leeds drew 3-3, losing the League title to Manchester United on goal average.

Lovely man!
 
festa5 said:
Can you ever see York putting up a statue of Steve McLaren?

Just feels like a desperate attempt to piggy back on the success of another team. One most Boro fans hate or at least strongly dislike. Bit small time for me.

Not really thought this one through have they?
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Yep we certainly have thought it through - we would like to do something for the school. And walking around the school a couple of weeks ago we could see how interested the pupils were in finding out about a past pupil that had gone on to the very top of his profession. For an inner town/city school having a figure like that born round the corner and that played and managed England and was a massively famous public figure For and Against at the time is really inspiring for them.
 
coluka said:
From The Guardian:

To the public, Revie's crime was not his disloyalty but his greed. It emerged that a month before his 'defection' he had offered to resign as England manager - without mention of his offer from Dubai - in exchange for a £50,000 pay-off. He boasted in the Mail of how he would spend his new salary. 'I will travel to the great sporting events of the world,' he said. 'The major golf tournaments, the Olympics, World Cup finals - whatever takes my fancy.'

Sir Harold Thompson exacted his revenge, charging Revie with bringing the game into disrepute and summoning him to a disciplinary hearing at which he acted as judge and prosecutor; Gilbert Gray, who defended Revie, calls the hearing 'a kangaroo court, an absolute disgrace'. After the disciplinary committee gave out its inevitable guilty verdict, its punishment was severe: a 10-year ban from English football. Revie appealed to the High Court; the ban was overturned, but the judge expressed reservations about Revie's integrity and ordered him to pay two-thirds of his costs. 'Mr Revie... presented to the public a sensational and notorious example of disloyalty, breach of duty, discourtesy and selfishness,' said Justice Cantley. 'His conduct brought English football, at a high level, into disrepute.'

Two months after Revie left the England job, the Daily Mirror alleged that a number of Leeds matches had been fixed over the course of the 1960s and 1970s. Previous allegations by the Sunday People in 1972 had claimed that three unnamed Wolves players were offered £1,000 apiece to throw what would have been a title decider with Leeds, but Wolves had won and neither police nor FA investigations found evidence of wrongdoing. 'Don Revie planned and schemed and offered bribes, leaving as little as possible to chance,' wrote the Mirror's lead reporter, Richard Stott. 'He relied on the loyalty of those he took into his confidence not to talk, and it nearly worked.'

The star witness was Gary Sprake. 'I was quite surprised by the amount of information they had,' Sprake says. 'Richard Stott asked me to get involved, but everything was already written, really.' Sprake told Stott that there had been attempts to fix the Wolves game - a claim he subsequently retracted - as well as several other matches. Jim Barron, the Nottingham Forest goalkeeper, meanwhile said that Billy Bremner had been sent to the Forest dressing room before a game in the 1971 title race to persuade his opponents to 'go easy'. The request was rejected. Alan Ball, meanwhile, revealed clandestine meetings with Revie on Saddleworth Moor in the mid-1960s, when Revie wanted to sign him from Blackpool. Revie also sent weekly £100 bribes to Ball's home as part of his attempt to tap him up. The FA fined Ball £3,000, even though he had ended up at Everton, and not Revie's Leeds.

Bob Stokoe, the Sunderland manager who had outwitted Revie in the 1973 FA Cup final, was the most compelling witness. He said that while managing Bury in 1962, when Leeds were battling relegation, Revie offered him £500 to 'go easy'. When he turned him down, Revie further enraged him by asking to speak to his players.

The notion that a man who left nothing to chance and whose obsessiveness bordered on paranoia would try to fix title- or relegation-deciders was not implausible. But the evidence against Revie is shaky. Sprake had spoken out only after being paid £14,000. The FA deny the existence of a 300-page dossier of allegations supposedly handed over to them by Stott. No criminal or FA charges came out of the match-fixing allegations and, when the Sunday People repeated them, Billy Bremner sued and won £100,000.


'The people who made these accusations - we didn't have to bribe them to be able to beat them,' Peter Lorimer says. 'I was never aware of it and I don't think any of our players were ever aware of it happening. You would think you would get to know if that sort of thing was happening, but certainly we never got to know anything.'

And yet Stokoe, a well liked and widely respected manager, stood to gain nothing by speaking out. He never profited from the allegation, which he repeated hundreds of times before his death in 2004. The thought of it, he said, made him feel ill. 'It always riled me when I see the career Revie has had. At the back of my mind, the bribe is always there. He was always an evil man to me.'

Former team-mates have shunned Gary Sprake for his allegations, but the goalkeeper has since made more. He tells me that Revie asked him to 'tap up' fellow Wales internationals Colin Green and Terry Hennessey when Leeds played Birmingham on the last day of the 1964-65 season. Sprake refused and Leeds drew 3-3, losing the League title to Manchester United on goal average.

Lovely man!
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You see Bob Stokoe was not a widely respected or liked manager. He was not popular in certain quarters of the game. He was despised by Brian Clough - go and look at the video of Stokoe standing over Cloughie after the career ending injury - trying to drag him off the ground and shouting cheat at him. Stokoe had a chip on his shoulder, he thought he had a bad deal in his career as a manager and was embittered against some of the managing establishment.
As for Gary Sprake - was he a lovely man! He was also bitter after being finally dropped from the Leeds team and I say finally because he had so many second chances. Remember the "careless hands" chant from the kop. Sprake had a sorry time after football, bitter and fell on hard times.

But if you want to know about bribery and corruption - you might to look far closer to home. One day perhaps I will tell you the details but it might shock you to know quite how many big games and big names were involved,
The thing is if Revie really was bent then he didn't really do a very good job of it did he? I mean Leeds were notorious for coming second. Either he bribed the wrong people at the wrong times or he was very poor at it.
 
fmttmadmin said:
Yep we certainly have thought it through - we would like to do something for the school. And walking around the school a couple of weeks ago we could see how interested the pupils were in finding out about a past pupil that had gone on to the very top of his profession. For an inner town/city school having a figure like that born round the corner and that played and managed England and was a massively famous public figure For and Against at the time is really inspiring for them.
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I wonder how they would feel after reading Coluka's post and the allegations made by Bob Stokoe?
 
Norman_Conquest said:
I wonder how they would feel after reading Coluka's post and the allegations made by Bob Stokoe?
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They know he was a controversial figure - no one has denied that to them.
We do know that the dossier that was prepared on Revie that was to be presented to the FA etc has never actually seen the light of day. No one alive today ever saw it. And there was never a record of its contents.

When you look back Revie became a figure of real hate - as if he was a mass murderer rather than a football manager. He walked out on England but the media had been calling for his head for months before. He failed at England but he had been a very popular appointment.
Look again at that amazing Calendar head to head with Brian Clough - it is interesting to ask who really did come out of it on top? You know many would have said Revie at the time and looking back after all these years one of the figures is clearly inebriated.
Anyway, the point is one of the top managers in the 1960s/70s was born and went to school in Middlesbrough - his house and school still exist. Imagine how good it could be for people living and going to that school to be able to celebrate one of their own.

Do you really want to take that away from them?
 
fmttmadmin said:
They know he was a controversial figure - no one has denied that to them.
We do know that the dossier that was prepared on Revie that was to be presented to the FA etc has never actually seen the light of day. No one alive today ever saw it. And there was never a record of its contents.

When you look back Revie became a figure of real hate - as if he was a mass murderer rather than a football manager. He walked out on England but the media had been calling for his head for months before. He failed at England but he had been a very popular appointment.
Look again at that amazing Calendar head to head with Brian Clough - it is interesting to ask who really did come out of it on top? You know many would have said Revie at the time and looking back after all these years one of the figures is clearly inebriated.
Anyway, the point is one of the top managers in the 1960s/70s was born and went to school in Middlesbrough - his house and school still exist. Imagine how good it could be for people living and going to that school to be able to celebrate one of their own.
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Rob, it's good that young people can see that people can become successful from humble backgrounds and I get that part but feel this is a good school project at most and not one most people would support. I delivered something similar on Bob Champion who overcame cancer to win the Grand National.
 
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