Johnny Giles vs Mother Nature (and Cardiff) - The Square Ball 30/11/22

SUPER LEEDS

Written by: Rob Conlon

The nature of supporting Leeds United encourages us to find bad omens. Earning eight points from our opening five games in 2022/23 gave us a 96% chance of avoiding relegation, we were told, which only left us worrying about the remaining 4%. When it comes to being drawn against lower division Cardiff in the FA Cup, you don’t need to be a mathematician to understand the bad juju: we hate going to Cardiff, particularly in the FA Cup.

It’s justified pessimism, based on over half a century’s worth of gloom. Between 1956 and 1958, Leeds were drawn away at Cardiff for three consecutive years in the FA Cup third round, losing each tie 2-1. Fast forward to 2002, United were top of the Premier League when they were drawn away at the third-tier side at the same stage of the competition. Naturally, we lost 2-1 again in a game stirred into a violent hysteria by Cardiff’s own chairman Sam Hammam. Our entire club subsequently fell apart.

But it doesn’t always have to be this way. Don Revie’s Leeds were no strangers to FA Cup humiliation, and ahead of United’s fifth round tie at then-Second Division Cardiff, he was insisting the opposition were a better team than their league position suggested. It was a 50,000 sell-out at Ninian Park, where Cardiff had beaten Real Madrid 1-0 in the Cup Winners’ Cup quarter-final the previous season. The bad vibes of South Wales meant even Mother Earth was conspiring against Leeds. Torrential rain meant the uncovered pitch ‘resembled a river’ the day before the game, according to the Yorkshire Evening Post, which became a beach when it was covered with ‘hundreds of tons of sand’. Revie was no stranger to superstition, but he remained nonplussed by the force of nature.

“I don’t think I need brief the boys about how to play on this pitch,” he said. “They have enough experience and sense to take care. We are not even talking much about conditions. We’re certainly not scared of them.”

Cardiff could have their raindances, because Leeds had Billy Bremner and Johnny Giles.

The centre strip of the pitch from one six-yard box to the other looked like it had been ploughed by a tractor. Despite the conditions, Cardiff couldn’t get the ball off Leeds; the territory belonged to Bremner and Giles. Rookie Cardiff ‘keeper Bill Irwin made saves from Eddie Gray, Mick Jones, and Peter Lorimer in the opening fifteen minutes. Jones had two more chances cleared off the line, Lorimer forcing another goalline clearance.

When Don Revie picked up the phone to call Paul Trevillion, he thought he was getting a public relations expert. What he got instead was a true born artist, a whirlwind of ideas and action, a charismatic tempest. Revie soon nicknamed him, ‘The Beaver’.

Given his teammates weren’t finishing the chances he was creating, Giles decided the match by scoring them himself. He half-volleyed the opener after Jones’ header from a set-piece deflected into his path, and completed the 2-0 victory by calmly finding the top corner while three defenders desperately tried to stop him. Giles celebrated his second by holding his hands up as if apologising to the 50,000 fans who were watching the second half in resigned silence.

Afterwards, Revie described Giles as “one of the greatest inside forwards that ever lived”. In our 1972 special, See You Win, the artist Paul Trevillion remembers the performance as the definitive Johnny Giles display, owing to some words of wisdom he was told by Revie when they first met in 1955:

“There are only three things a player can do when he gets the ball. Number one, you can pass it to a team mate. Number two, you can hit the ball and hurt the opposition by playing a pass behind the defenders, so your forward can run onto it. Number three, you can take the ball forward on your own and take a shot at goal, either you score or test the goalkeeper. You can only do three things, you can’t do any more than that, Paul, and that’s what I like to see in a player.”

Revie was still playing for Manchester City at the time. Seventeen years later, at Ninian Park, Trevillion realised Revie’s simple genius was timeless:

“In 1972, in the FA Cup fifth round against Cardiff City, there was Johnny Giles. In that match he never misplaced one pass, not one, every pass went to a teammate. And he put through three or four good balls, that with a little bit of fortune could have resulted in goals. Then he went forward himself and he scored the two goals in the 2-0 win. And Don Revie said to me, if you want to see the perfect performance by a footballer, just look at that Cardiff game. Never mind all the other inside forwards you see, he told me. Every pass, to a teammate. Three or four forward balls hurting the defence. Saw the gaps and went through and scored twice. You couldn’t ask for more. That was perfect, and that was Johnny Giles.”