Phil Thirkall
Retired
LEEDS
Fan since: I was at school
Favourite player: It would have to be Billy Bremner.
Greatest moment: The years witih the great Don Revie teams in the late-1960s and early-1970s.
Been to Elland Rd: Many, many times.
I went to school in a place called Harrogate, about 15 miles up the road from Leeds. So it sort of became a natural interest to follow the local team.
That was in the days of the great John Charles, and eventually Leeds football really caught my imagination.
They weren't particularly fashionable. They wore a uniform in those days that was regarded as very old-fashioned. It was sort of yellow and blue, which looked quite odd.
Elland Rd wasn't very well attended in those days. They didn't get many people along at all. As a schoolboy, I could roam around the terraces without any problem at all.
Leeds were at their absolute peak in the 1960s and 1970s under manager Don Revie. His teams were just magic, even if they seemed to be second more often than first.
He had Billy Bremner, Norman Hunter, Peter Lorimer, Mick Jones, some real greats.
Revie seemed to have an ability to put them all together as a unit. That was a really class team.
Revie had a remarkable brain. I think he was a bit ahead of his time. He was very analytical, to a fault actually.
There's a great book called The Damned United about Leeds and the experience that Brian Clough had when he went and managed them for all of 44 days immediately after Revie.
He just couldn't get his head around all the analysis that was going on. It was the way Revie's teams played that attracted people. The whole essence of the game in those days was moving the ball around.
You saw a lot of it at Euro 2008 where possession was important and the ball was moving around constantly.
Leeds got the nickname "Dirty Leeds" for a while which was probably down to Norman Hunter.
He was a very physical player and he probably gave the club a bad name. Generally, they played a flowing style of football and scored a lot of goals. People always loved that.
I blame myself for the troubles Leeds have now got into. I was back in Yorkshire in 2005 and went to Elland Rd and had my photograph taken alongside the statue of Billy Bremner.
The moment that Billy and I had our photograph taken together kind of marked the beginning of the end.
We were relegated from the Premier League, then pretty much went straight down from the Championship.
This is our second year in division one but we're second and I've got high hopes we'll be back.
Leeds is a team that should at least be in the Championship.
