January 3, 2010
Leeds United grateful for return home of Richard Naylor David Walsh Recommend? (3) ON THE short drive from Wetherby to the training ground at Thorp Arch, landmarks on the road recall memories that make you wince.
This journey was last taken on November 30, 2001, the afternoon Robbie Fowler was introduced to the world as a Leeds United player. Outside the entrance to the complex, fans waited with their dreams and their autograph books. God, as Fowler was once called, was coming to Yorkshire.
Ah, the memories. At this training ground you came to interview Rio Ferdinand, you listened to David O’Leary say that the four strikers he had — Alan Smith, Mark Viduka, Robbie Keane and Harry Kewell — weren’t enough, and Fowler say he liked the way Leeds played.
For a time it worked. Well, it did if you didn’t understand what was meant by “securitising†the club’s assets. Everything was all right if you didn’t know somebody in the club’s accounts department who might have told you that Seth Johnson was on £40,000 a week.
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Closer to Thorp Arch a voice on the radio, with exquisite timing, quotes L P Hartley’s most famous line: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.†Leeds did things very differently, spending almost £100m of money the club never had.
While the dream/nightmare was being lived, Richard Naylor was earning his wages playing for Ipswich. A Leeds boy, Naylor was also a fan. We are sitting in the canteen at Thorp Arch and he is recalling the epicurean days. “I had a friend who could get tickets. So on Tuesday or Wednesday evenings, we would head off from Ipswich for Elland Road. Fantastic nights.â€
The fantasy didn’t last and if Naylor had thought about it, he wouldn’t have expected it to. He was born and raised in north Leeds and his earliest sporting memories are of his parents taking him to Headingley to watch Leeds rugby league team. Soon he would convert his parents to football and his talent won him a place at Leeds United’s school of excellence.
Though he supported the club, he wasn’t starry-eyed and when he had to choose between Leeds and Ipswich he opted for Suffolk. He spent 14 years at Ipswich and though he has the fondest memories of his time there, he learnt also about football’s unromantic side. His goal in the Championship playoff final helped get Ipswich into the Premier League and, used mostly off the bench, he made a good contribution to Ipswich’s outstanding fifth-place finish in the 2000-01 Premier League. Then at the beginning of the following season, everything changed.
“I’d had a good pre-season, scored more goals than anyone and then a week before the start of the season, we signed Finidi George and that was me, out on my ear,†Naylor says. “From a personal point of view, it wasn’t a good time. My wife, Carly, and I had just had our first-born, Jessica, and suddenly I was told that I was going to Milwall on loan. Carly, the baby and I were staying in a room at a hotel in central London — it wasn’t ideal and it wasn’t going to last. I then went to Barnsley on loan and it was just a write-off of a season.â€
It wasn’t much fun for Ipswich, either. With their expensive new signings, the fifth-placed team of 2001 were relegated in 2002 and the spending bankrupted the club, who were put into administration in February 2003.
That ill-wind blew some good for Naylor. “I wasn’t on a big contract and there wasn’t much to be gained from getting rid of me. Lots of other players were moved out, George Burley was sacked and I became part of the team that new manager Joe Royle built.†He loved his years under Royle, although Ipswich became a nearly team, twice failing in the Championship playoffs. But by then, Naylor had switched from playing as a striker to his more natural position as a central defender and he became a regular in Ipswich’s starting XI. The club gave him a testimonial and with his Ipswich-born wife, he thought it wouldn’t be a bad thing to spend his entire career with the club.
Then, last January, Ipswich’s manager at the time, Jim Magilton, called him and asked if he’d fancy a loan move to Leeds. He had started pretty much every match up to that point in the season and was surprised and disappointed that Magilton was prepared to let him go. The positive side was that the move was a chance to play for his home-town team. Naylor joined Leeds on loan in January, he was asked to skipper the side in his second match and he signed the following month.
When he arrived at Leeds, the club were ninth in League One but improved sufficiently to get into the playoffs, where they lost to Millwall. This season, they have dominated League One and Naylor’s defensive partnership with the Australian Patrick Kisnorbo is the rock upon which the team have been built. No team in the Football League have conceded fewer goals than Leeds and barring a collapse, the club will be in the Championship next season.
This afternoon’s FA Cup tie at Old Trafford is one that Naylor says is for the club’s fans. “They’ve had to endure going to some godforsaken places over the past few seasons,†he says. “We had 30,000 for our Boxing Day match and our fans deserve to be at places like Old Trafford. This game is as much for them as it is for the players. We want to get promoted this season, that’s number one.
“But we can’t go to Old Trafford with the idea of enjoying ourselves. We have to work as hard as we do in any of our league games, and we need to have a certain trepidation going there because that will keep us on our toes. The Man U fans will want their team to rub our noses in it — we’re Leeds, aren’t we? But we must make sure that doesn’t happen.â€
When Naylor first settled in Ipswich, there was a part of him he didn’t want to leave behind and so he had the white rose of Yorkshire tattooed on his body. He will take that spirit to Manchester this afternoon and, perhaps, Sir Alex’s United will be reminded of a rivalry they have been missing over the past five years.
Live on TV ITV1 12.45pm, kick-off, 1pm; highlights: 11.15pm
