Leeds United Quotes

Leeds United had won but I didn’t care. I had lost.

The pigeon had been unlucky. Ten birds had been on their way back to their Ilkley coop, flying in stolid, heavy formation; nine had returned home. The tenth, flying low over the moor at the base of this avian wedge, had plummeted soundlessly to the soil, its senses overwhelmed by the tendrils of consciousness which had enwrapped them. When the pigeon awoke, moments later, all of the rudimentary universal constructs which defined pigeonness in its brain had been carefully swept away, save one. The entity didn't need birdseed; it didn't need a pigeon coup in Ilkley; but it needed to fly. And it needed as much of the pigeon's cerebral activity as possible to focus on getting it to its desired location, which meant that for the first time in its life, this pigeon was reading roadsigns. It was also experiencing emotions for which it was somewhat unprepared, most notably an insistent, imperative yearning for Leeds United.

By the early seventies I had become an Englishman - that is to say, I hated England just as much as half my compatriots seemed to do. I was alienated by the manager’s ignorance, prejudice and fear, positive that my own choices would destroy any team in the world, and I had a deep antipathy towards players from Tottenham, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester United.

I began to understand what Murphy was saying and what it meant. I knew the lads would destroy me after the bell went and we were outside. And they did. They didn’t even have to wait until we were outside the school grounds. The Brothers never minded violence. There was no point in trying to avoid it. I was surrounded, pushed. —Yeh fuckin’ queer. —I didn’t smile. A schoolbag – a Leeds United kitbag – was swung high and into my back. It hurt but I laughed. The slaps became thumps. They were all over me now. But it wouldn’t last; I knew that too. I was kicked, punched, spat on. For a minute. Only a few of the kicks really hurt, and the thumps were just to my arms and chest. No one thumped or kicked me in my face. The spitting – we did that all the time. It was over. There was space around me. They’d drifted away. Only my real friends stayed behind. They laughed. And I laughed. I could breathe. It was over.

There is always doubt and always fear. There is always trouble, always tension. Tension and trouble; fear and doubt; war, war, war and then, right on cue- As if by magic, here come Leeds, Leeds, Leeds.