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Supported by Leeds United Supporters Club and Colin S. Jeffrey
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Billy Bremner
| Category: | Male Player |
| Year Inducted: | 2004 |
Profile by Robert Galvin, the author of the Football Hall of Fame, the official book of the National Football Museum Hall of Fame:
Nailed to the wall in the Leeds United dressing-room at Elland Road during the 1960s was a sign. It read: Keep Fighting. ‘It hangs above my peg, appropriately, for I am the captain,' Billy Bremner said at the time. ‘I am supposed to set an example to the rest of the lads.'
Over a period of 16 years, this ‘10 stone of barbed wire', as The Sunday Times described him, did just that, inspiring the most consistently successful team in England between 1964 and 1974.
Bremner was a vital cog in the Leeds machine. When Don Revie, the manager, heard that the Scotsman might be sold, he gave the board an ultimatum: ‘If he goes, I go.' Bremner and Revie stayed put.
‘Billy played more with his heart than his head,' Eddie Gray, the Leeds winger, said. ‘He had a heart the size of Elland Road. As a midfield player, he was a free spirit who worked on instinct.'
The ‘Keep Fighting' motto was followed literally on several occasions, particularly during the mid-60s when the club was establishing itself in the First Division. ‘We were so determined that none of the elite clubs were going to get in our way,' Bremner recalled. ‘We weren't star-gazers.'
A Scotland schoolboy international and a right-winger in his early days at Elland Road, Bremner was later switched to the centre of midfield, where he formed a lasting and productive partnership with Johnny Giles.
In later years, Revie would occasionally withdraw Bremner into a deeper role, particularly for difficult away games. ‘Billy was an outstanding sweeper,' said fellow defender Norman Hunter. ‘His versatility was another of his great attributes.'
Above all, though, he was an instinctive attacking player, and he developed a knack of scoring late winning goals in vital matches. None stirred as much feeling as his late header against Manchester United in 1965 which took Leeds through to the club's first ever FA Cup Final. At Wembley they lost to Liverpool.
Mentally, too, they fought on despite the disappointment of missing out narrowly on major honours three seasons in succession. The indefatigable and relentlessly ambitious Bremner set the tone for the team, and their remarkable resilience was finally rewarded with victory in the League Cup final in 1968.
‘Now that we've won some silver at last, we'll go on to collect other trophies,' Bremner said, and he was right. Bremner and Leeds won two championship titles, one FA Cup and two Fairs Cups.
There would be one last, great disappointment, however: in 1975 Leeds United were unfortunate to lose against Bayern Munich in the final of the European Cup. It was the swansong for Bremner, now at the veteran stage, and the Leeds side built by Revie in terms of major honours. A riot by Leeds fans in Paris added disgrace to despair.
‘Above all Leeds have Bremner, the best footballer in the four countries,' John Arlott wrote in The Guardian in 1970. ‘If every manager in Britain were given his choice of any one player to add to his team some, no doubt, would toy with the idea of George Best; but the realists, to a man, would have Bremner.'