Read All About It....................Book Extract

THE DOOG (David Harrison and Steve Gordos)

24-05-2008

The untimely death last June of Wolves icon Derek Dougan rekindled memories of his great football career, but in this special extract from a recent biography, he’s remembered as a political activist and a broadcaster too.

The year is 1970. Dougan becomes chairman of the players’ union, the PFA.

FAILURE TO BE APPOINTED chairman of the Professional

Footballers’ Association in 1967 had rankled with Dougan. He found it

exasperating in the extreme.

While he had every admiration for PFA secretary Cliff Lloyd, he felt Terry Neill as chairman was far too weak when it came to negotiating with the Football League and the Football Association.

The players were battling for some important changes in their working conditions

and were doing so against football authorities who still showed a somewhat condescending attitude to them.

Dougan believed tough, but respectful, talking was needed and found himself and Lloyd doing most of the negotiating at meetings.

He may have enjoyed having his say, but knew that his words did not carry the same authority as they would if they had come from the chair. He desperately wanted power because he genuinely felt he could do a better job than Neill.

As he put it in Doog, ‘Chairmanship of the PFA, I knew, would give me an extra dimension in which to express myself on behalf of the association which had become my way of life. That is why I was so exasperated at times in negotiations and wanted to put words into Terry Neill’s mouth.’

Neill’s desire to go into management finally allowed Dougan the chance he longed for. Neill was in June 1970 appointed player-manager of Hull City and so would have to give up his PFA appointment. Dougan duly succeeded him and according to his recollection in Doog 'the committee agreed unanimously that I should be the next chairman.'

As well as becoming PFA chairman, Doogan was also a TV panellist during the 1970 World Cup.

The brief was to be controversial and they could hardly have had better ingredients

for ensuring that was the case than Dougan, Manchester United’s Scottish wing-half Pat Crerand and Manchester City’s outspoken assistant manager Malcolm Allison.

Bob McNab completed the quartet, but it was the three larger-than-life characters who made the panel compulsive viewing. Michael Parkinson, then a columnist with the Sunday Times, wrote that Dougan, Crerand and Allison were the most entertaining trio since Wilson, Keppel and Betty. For the uninitiated, Wilson, Keppel and Betty were an old-time music hall act who specialised in doing the sand dance.

The television people wanted outspoken views and they got them. Dougan described the German and Italian teams as ‘peasants’ because they employed a sweeper system and when there was a discussion about the merits of Total Football he brought the panel down to earth with “I keep hearing about total football but what is it? All I know is Total petrol!”

If PFA work and TV work were not enough, Dougan was also carving out a career in local radio with a regular show on Radio Birmingham, the station which later became Radio WM. Cutting his teeth in broadcasting in those days was one Denis MacShane, later to become a Labour MP and a minister in Tony Blair’s government.

This is how MacShane remembers those days. “At the BBC he had the best contacts book in the business. A call from Derek and the top stars of football, rugby, cricket, athletics were ready to come and be interviewed and take part in studio discussions.

"I travelled with him as we went to talk to sports men and women and he loved the

business of reporting and trying to dig new information out of people in a way that journalists who have never played high level sport cannot quite manage.

"He was generous with tickets for matches and everyone at the BBC in Pebble Mill loved to see the lanky fella with the smiling face as he came into the news room and other offices for a chat.

"Derek took his work as chairman of the PFA very seriously. In addition to my BBC

work I was already involved as a trade union activist in political work and Derek and I spent hours talking about how social justice could be delivered to a wider community.

"Derek loved political engagement. In 1978, the World Cup was played in Argentina where an evil military junta had seized power and imprisoned thousands of trade unionists, socialists and journalists.

"I was then president of the National Union of Journalists and Derek came with me to the Argentinian Embassy in London where we handed in a football covered with the names of some of the victims of South American fascism.

"Derek's politics were not mine, but he understood the need to stand up against injustice and was not afraid to be counted. My life led to work in Europe and then to become an MP and minister. Derek stayed in his beloved Wolverhampton and did not retire to some sunny resort as do so many sports stars. Derek had an energy and love of life that was bigger than most."

At the time, Dougan was also at his playing peak with the Wolves

Dougan in 1970 was truly a national figure, but he had endeared himself to people in and around Wolverhampton, too. Phil Morgan, in the Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Book, which was published at the end of the season, tried to sum up the appeal of the man who had achieved something close to cult status.

'Why is the Doog a household name?' asked Morgan. 'Why did an eight-year-old boy on the Low Hill council housing estate in Wolverhampton who had never seen a football match, throw himself on the floor at home and cry when he heard on television that the Doog had been suspended for eight weeks?

'Why did two teenage girls write to say they would not attend another match at Molineux until he returned?

'This is the sort of adoration that used to be reserved for film celebrities and is now lavished on pop stars. He has the easy bravado, the genial flamboyance and the extroverted charm of a pop star. But that combination is but a part of his popular appeal.'

Morgan also mentioned Dougan’s charity work. As Wolverhampton

chairman of the Mental Health Research Fund, he had raised more than

£1,000 to buy a coach formentally-handicapped children and this work said

Morgan was not compensation for self-indulgence but an awareness of his

public responsibility.

This was how Dougan explained it to him, “A player who has enjoyed success in the game and who is in the public eye owes a great deal to the public. He has to give something back. I don’t mean that I feel an impersonal obligation to help various charities. I have a particular interest in those with whom I am associated.

"I mean that a player who has a personal following ought to look around and see how he can respond straight from his heart. This isn't sentimental; it's what I mean by responsibility.

"If you just sat back and lapped up all the praise and compliments, wallowed in your fan mail and bought the papers just to see your name in the headlines, you'd be a big-headed fool with an irresponsible outlook on life."

Without doubt, Dougan had become a cult figure in Wolverhampton. The word ‘Doog’ was prominent among graffiti around the town in places like the ring road pedestrian subway. Even in the glory days of the 1950s no one player had been singled out for such adulation.

As John McAlle put it many years later, “On the pitch his rapport with the supporters was as special as it was instant. He just had that way about him – real charisma. I

can close my eyes now and see him perhaps missing a chance and looking

at the North Bank with his arms raised as if to say ‘I can’t believe I missed

that one.’ And they loved him for it.”

To see Dave Woodhall’s review of The Doog, click here

You can buy the book for £18.99 here

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