I don't think this thread should be locked but that's probably because I'm about to post something that may be deemed controversial. Just because someone dies doesn't necessarily mean grudges and ill-feeling die with them and that we should all start fawning over them. Inspiration, legend, genius or not.
Anyway, here's an article someone found and posted on a Leeds site:
"THERE was much outrage at Liverpool fans booing the announcement of Brian Clough's death at Old Trafford on Monday.
One commentator claimed they were dancing on the grave of a great man they never knew. But the so-called great man was merely reaping what he had sewn.
Put bluntly, Clough had been dancing on the graves of 96 people he never knew for over a decade, making money and hardening his controversial image along the way. Here's why.
In 1994, five years after the Hillsborough disaster, a game at which Clough was present, he wrote in his autobiography: "I will always remain convinced that those Liverpool fans who died were killed by Liverpool people."
It was pointed out to him by horrified families that Lord Justice Taylor had vindicated the fans, but the great man would not relent. Indeed on the Clive Anderson chat show he went even further. It wasn't the police, he said. It was the fans. "They were drunk. They killed their own."
The hurt caused by this grossly insensitive ignorance, to people who had largely admired Clough for his anti-Establishment views, was deep. Here was a major figure, an integral part of this appalling disaster, who had a chance to make a difference as the families fought for justice. Yet all he wanted to make was money.
Bereaved families followed him on his book tour, begging for a public retraction, but he offered nothing but contempt. Then suddenly, 11 years after the disaster, he decided to "express my regret for the hurt caused" because "investigations have made me realise I was misinformed."
So what brought about the Damascene conversion? A study of the The Taylor Report? A private dick trawling through South Yorkshire Police files? Not quite. He was given a column by Four-Four-Two magazine, causing Liverpool fans to call for a boycott, which made the editor tell Clough he needed an apology if he wanted to carry on working.
And, possibly because newspapers were hardly queueing up to buy his opinions in 2001, the champagne socialist realised the timing might be right. Thus his expression of "regret."
It was cynical, selfish and all about money and image. Which is exactly how a set of fans who once loved the man had come to see him. Clough had said that when he died he wanted no fawning epitaphs, just honesty. At Old Trafford on Monday, he got it. And deserved it..."
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We've been thru' it all together
and we've had our ups and downs
we're gonna stay with you forever
at least until the world stops going 'round.
We're Yorkshire's Republican Army
MARCHING ON TOGETHER!!
LOUD AND PROUD!!
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