A Quote by Craig Johnston
We were having a trial game against Leeds, and Jack Charlton was the boss of Middlesbrough at the time.
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Well, when I was at Leeds it was the best and worst time of my career, because when I was a kid it was my ambition to play for Middlesbrough, where I was born, and my dream to play for Leeds, and everyone said I couldn't have two teams.
So for a year I spent all my time hiding from Jack Charlton in the car park practising my skills.
All my mates are massive Leeds fans because I live in Wakefield, but my best friend in the entire world is the Middlesbrough chairman.
Now Jack Charlton wasn't wrong, I was a bad footballer.
I've been a Leeds fan for as long as I can remember. When you are about five or six, you adopt a team - obviously, I didn't grow up in Leeds. I grew up in a small town on the Irish border, and most of the people my age were Leeds fans, both then and now.
I think that in any argument about right or wrong in football, a reference to Don Revie's Leeds United is the nuclear option. There is, quite simply, nowhere to go after that. There has never been a more horrible football team. The Leeds of the Seventies were found guilty, week in, week out, of crimes against humanity.
It is a trial within a nation but a trial of victors against the vanquished. Even before the trials started, the victors who are our judges were quite convinced that we were guilty and that we should all pay the price.
My family are all Leeds fans, they always tell me about the times when Leeds were in the Premier League.
The great Jack Nicklaus summed things up neatly during a charity match on the Old Course at St. Andrews where he and I were playing against Ben Crenshaw and Glen Campbell. I asked him what he considered to be the most important factor to overcome in the game of golf. His reply, "It's an unfair game."
Michael Owen's wonder goal against Argentina in 1998 was one defining memory, and as a Sunderland supporter, I remember crying my eyes out after they lost that play-off final against Charlton. Much as that hurt, it made me realise how much I wanted to play the game.
Even on the witness stand at trial, there were people up there and I had no clue who they were. I had never seen them a day in my life and they were pointing the finger at me saying that I was their boss.
At Leeds, it was to stay up. I was such a young player, Leeds were my club, and we didn't do it. That was a lot to take. At Newcastle, the expectations to win a trophy were enormous. The No. 1 thing everyone up there thinks about is the football club.
The game of golf was bigger than Jack Nicklaus when Jack was dominating the game.
It was when I came back from Leeds that things started to change. I went from being a kid to having to man up and going into a man's game.
For Leeds, we have a history of being 'dirty Leeds' and we actually channel that. We want to play great football and we are doing that but we also need to fight every time we go on to the pitch.
It's true I didn't get a fair trial, but the problem is people don't understand the details. It is important to understand the details of the trial and why I'm not guilty under the charges that were brought against me.
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