R.i.p. Gary sprake

Quoted from gtfc55

In fact even Reaney got 3 England caps and he was a regular in the squad but not first choice full back.

You mean regular in the England squad? He was a regular member and almost certainly would have won a lot more caps but he had a very bad leg break. When he came back he wasn't quite the player he was but more importantly, Paul Madeley had taken the RB spot at Leeds and very often for England as well.



People mention the "Dirty Leeds" tag which is fair enough though a lot of other teams were just as bad, Chelsea in particular were cloggers personified in those days from Chopper Harris through to Elbows Osgood.

A lot of Leeds' reputation came from Bobby Collins in the first place. He was a fantastic player but being very small he always  wanted to make his presence felt by leaving his boot in. He was captain and he started the tradition of 'one in, all in' when there was a foul or a fracas. Giles, Bremner & the others followed his lead and it became a trademark

It has to be said though that the Leeds side around 1969 to 1975 was as good a footballing side as I've ever seen though I'm not a Leeds supporter. They were consistently better taken week to week even than the Man Utd Charlton, Law, Best side. Only Liverpool were close for consistency. Apart from that wonder passing move on MOTD against Southampton when they won 7-0, I saw them totally destroy a decent Forest side 6-1 in 1972 which wasn't exactly easy.

Quoted from Ipswin

But you can't remember what happened yesterday Pete!  

Depends on what day it was yesterday Swin.

sad news.

I never saw Sprake play ...he was just a little before my time. But when i was a kid i had heard of him. His reputation was that he made some high profile mistakes.

Of course back in those days teams werent on TV every week so if a few mistakes are picked up on TV (which unfortunately for Sprake was often the case) it seemed to over exaggerate them even more.


The truth is all keepers make mistakes from time to time even the very best.


Fact is he made almost 400 appearances over nearly 10 years for one of the best sides in the land and won almost 40 caps for his country. Not bad at all was it?


RIP Gary Sprake

This was in today's Yorkshire Evening Post. Quite an interesting perspective.

[url]http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/sport/football/leeds-united/the-black-sheep-why-gary-sprake-was-shunned-by-leeds-united-for-30-years-1-8190242[/url]