The day Brazil legend Socrates played for Garforth Town

The sight of chain-smoking Brazilian football legend Socrates with a blanket covering his knees in the Garforth Town dugout will live long in memory of those present on that bitterly cold and windy late November day in 2004.

The 50-year-old Socrates smiled and waved frequently and maybe wondered what all the fuss was all about as the entire flock of the national media descended on the tiny East Leeds town and 1350 people came to see him roll back the magic from years gone by.

Socrates had battled against Maradona and the great Dino Zoff at the 1982 World Cup. Now he was facing Jim Collis’ Tadcaster Albion, who had the might of strikers in his armoury such as Steve Ward and Alan Jackson, who remains a fixture on the NCEL circuit as the Armthorpe Welfare assistant manager. A young Gregg Anderson, also featured for Taddy.

Socrates’ 13 minute cameo as a second half substitute in the 2-2 draw with NCEL Division One promotion rivals Tadcaster was the greatest chapter of the Simon Clifford era and it is written in British footballing folklore as one of its most unique moments. People may laugh, but owner/manager Clifford’s masterstroke put Garforth on the map and people over the country still remember Socrates wearing the Garforth jersey.

Greg Kelly, who was the club’s all-time top goal-scorer until Mark Simpson overtook him, missed the second half penalty which Socrates was meant to take. 

Kelly has fond memories of the unforgettable day and he shares them in the latest ‘My Greatest Game’.

He also humorously looks back at Brazilian Soccer Schools supremo Clifford’s madcap mind games, possibly inspired by his idol Brian Clough, which helped him win the psychological battle with other NCEL managers and players, in turn helping Garforth secure two promotions in three seasons to reach the NPL for the first time in the club’s history in 2007.

Garforth Town (Andy Rowan 35, Nick Manousios 44) 2-2 Tadcaster Albion (Alan Jackson 54, Steve Ward 57) – Saturday 20th November 2004

The Teams 

Garforth Town: Andy Brooke, Matt Higginbottom (Socrates 77). Greg Kelly, Brett Renshaw (captain), Nick Jagger, Andy Long, Mike Longfellow, Jay Sobers, Andy Rowan, Nick Manousis, Gavin Birmingham. Subs: Jacques Joblon, Mike Tunnacliffe.

Tadcaster Albion: Tom Ryder, Steve Jones, Matt Cressey, Dave Waddington, Gregg Anderson, Danny Pitts, Dave Watson, Paul James, Alan Jackson, Steve Ward, Matty Howgate. Subs: Mark Brady, Andy Cygan, Andy Battersby.

Referee: David Midgeley 

Attendance: 1350

“When Simon first mentioned it, everyone was like ‘what, really, Socrates, a former World Cup player and Brazil legend playing for Garforth’? He came and everything else came with it. It was the biggest crowd I had ever played in at Garforth because we were lucky to get a couple of 100 for most games. To get just over 1300 was a lot of people to cram into the small little ground. Apart from me missing the penalty it was a good day all round. It was definitely the highlight of Garforth career.

“I first came to Garforth when Jimmy Martin was the manager and I played for him for two years before Simon took charge of the team (in 2004). Simon was in the background as the owner when I first signed. When he took over the team it was certainly memorable, if that’s the right word for it.

“Some of the psychological stuff he did against the opposition worked an absolute treat. A lot of the league absolutely hated Simon and Garforth. Some of it was jealously because Simon had built a profitable and exciting company with the Brazilian Soccer Schools. He is eccentric, but if you’re in his good books, he’ll be one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. 

“With the psychological stuff, all sorts used to go on. One of the stories that sticks out in my mind is from my other favourite game which is when we won our first promotion from Division One at Carlton. We won 1-0 and I scored the goal in the second half to take us up. I think whoever won that game got promoted. We travelled down on the bus and we were late and Simon wanted us to be late. We didn’t warm-up on pitch and we got changed on the bus and did some mad warm-up on the bus and we literally walked off the bus onto the pitch with our kit. I dread to think what the opponents thought? It is one of those stories which you think is absolutely bonkers, but it worked because we won and got promoted.

“Teams used to hate coming to Garforth. It is one of the nicest grounds in the league and the pitch was immaculate. The dressing rooms were nice, as was the bar. They probably did like to come, but they probably thought ‘oh what’s going to happen today, what have they got in store for us’.

“At one point he painted the away dressing room bright pink. It was the brightest and most luminous pink you can ever think of. It was horrible because if you were stood in there you were squinting. He never said why he did it? It was just a psychological thing before a big game we had. It stayed pink for ages.

“At home games if the game was going against us he’d try and break it up. You’d know something was coming and more often than not ‘Road to Armarilo’ would start blaring out of the sound system and the game would come to a halt. 

“He’d get ball boys to hold onto the ball for longer than they should or get them to kick in the opposition direction. There’d be ball-boys stood over the fences and if the opposition were on the attack they’d kick balls over to stop the game. Simon used to say to other managers and referees ‘you can’t do anything about kids playing outside the ground’. If people were a bit savvy they’d realised all the balls had GTFC on them. It worked for us because you only need the odd minute or two to break the momentum against you. 

“It is nothing new and there is all sorts of tactics in football. Until they changed the rules you could tell which players would be getting brought off when a team was winning with a few minutes to go. Wherever you have played, you always get told to stay down longer to waste time if you’re injured and if you’re winning. 

“Simon used to mess around with the numbers. If we were coming up to a big game in a few weeks’ time, he’d have the main strikers wearing full-back numbers. If he could have made a goalkeeper wear an outfield shirt he would have done. The amount of times I played with a three or four on my back, but still played up front were countless. You had the defenders Brett Renshaw and Nick Jagger wearing nine and ten at the back. It was to throw people out and it may have worked, you never know. You can imagine managers getting confused when looking at the team-sheets.

“I think he won the mind games battle with the rest of the league. Even in the modern game some managers get a head-start before further down the line people get savvy to it. A head-start is definitely what Simon had. There was nobody at that level doing what Simon was doing. On and off the pitch there were psychological tactics. Managers at that level had their way of thinking and Simon came in with a new philosophy. Players and managers desperately wanted to beat Simon rather than Garforth if that makes sense. The amount of managers who I saw get wound up by Simon was unbelievable. Simon would shout things at the star players on the opposition team and the managers would get riled up. He’d say ‘number nine you’re rubbish’ or ‘you’re first touch is rubbish’ and ‘I knew I didn’t sign you for reason’. Everybody used to bite. We used to know what was happening and find it funny. It took a lot of pressure off us because the opposition were focussing on Simon or what was going on on the touchline. The referees sometimes didn’t have a clue what was going on on-the-pitch because they were just watching the dugouts. It is crazy when you think about and even my parents thought he was absolute loon, but once as you are in a changing room with him you know why he is doing it. People used to say to me ‘is Simon Clifford absolutely mental’? I’d be like ‘it is an act’. There was method in the madness and if it had been that bad I wouldn’t have stayed for so long. The mind games were definitely deliberate. To talk about it now it sounds insane, but these kind of things go on in football more than we realise.

“He was a big Brian Clough fan because I think he had been involved with Brian Clough at some stage of his career. He did bring quite a bit of Brian Clough into some of his methods. It is a good job that social media wasn’t around at the time because he’d have got himself into trouble with tweets aimed at the opposition. There’d be tweets 24 hours before games putting pressure on the opposition and all sorts of things.

“There is lots and lots of stories and as for training, we once got told to go to South Leeds Stadium and we did train there now and again. Myself, Nick Jagger and Andy Rowan shared the car journeys to training and matches and us three rocked up at training as normal and there was only us three there. I don’t know what happened to the other lads, but Simon ran us into the ground because he had us running round the athletics track. But I was the fittest I have ever been when I was with Garforth. We’d be running down Garforth Main Street, legging it round Roundhay Lane and it improved my game and I really enjoyed it. Simon was very focussed on making sure we were a very fit team and we were.

“We had a good side and we probably should have done better than we did, especially in what I regard as my main time at Garforth. We were solid from back to front. We had Brett Renshaw who was a man-mountain of a centre-half and he had a great partnership with Nick Jagger. Andy Brooke, the goalkeeper. I’ve never played with a goalkeeper that shouts as much. Even when you were doing well he’d tell you off. Then you had people like Andy Rowan upfront. It was quite a good changing room. Everyone was in it together. There were no crackpots.

“We kept the core of the team together for a few years and that helped. A lot of teams who have got promoted with a lot of money will go up and get rid of all the players who got them promoted. Brett, Me, Nick Jagger, Andy Rowan, Jay Sobers and others stayed as we got promoted through the leagues. Whilst Simon added to it with players who dipped in and out, the core of the side grew up together.

“People forget that Lee Sharpe played for Garforth for a while before Socrates came. Recently I put on Facebook the five players that got me into football and Lee Sharpe was on my icons as a young boy. He was left-footed and a winger just I was as a kid and it was a bit surreal to be sitting next to him in the changing room. He was on a different level, you could see that in some of the games he played in. I think it was Parkgate away and it was 5-1 and 6-1 and he absolutely ran the show. I’ll seen good footballers at Non League level, but he stuck out like a sore thumb that day. Everything he did or touched came off. He looked unbelievable and I think he scored a great goal. Everybody was young when Lee Sharpe signed, myself included and he was great with advice. He was like a proper team-mate. He wasn’t a celebrity or professional coming in who didn’t have anytime for anyone. We drunk with him and we had some really good nights out with him in Leeds and other places.

“A few other names were mentioned like Gazza and Romario in regards of coming to play for Garforth, but they didn’t come off. We had the other two Brazilians who came – Careca and Carlos Alberto. Carcea was stark raving bonkers. He didn’t speak a word of English and in a friendly he played upfront and missed an absolute sitter. He came in at half-time and he was screaming and shouting in his native language and everyone were like rabbits in the headlights because we were thinking ‘what the heck is going on here’? No-one had a clue what he was saying. We think he basically said ‘you pass to me and I score goals’. But he didn’t have a translator. Carlos Alberto didn’t play. He came to meet everyone as he was over to do a promotional thing for Simon’s Soccer Schools. He might have done a bit of coaching for us.

“I think with Socrates it was a case of I’ll believe when I see it, but most of the stuff with Simon does come off. If Simon says he is going to do something, he usually does. We knew the date he was meant to be coming and as it got closer it got more exciting. We knew it would be a big thing. A lot of us, myself included had never played with TV cameras there. There was a big buzz around the Town. I’ve got family who live in Garforth and even they say it was a bit surreal because everywhere they went people were talking about Socrates. The TV crews spent the week leading up to the game in Garforth. You drive through Cedar Ridge to get to the ground and I think they were knocking on doors seeing what people thought about it and filming them. Usually you just drive through the estate without any problems, but that day it was absolute chaos. It was like what you’d see at a Premier League ground. There were TV trucks everywhere. BBC, ITV, Sky Sports, you name it. Normally you’d have 30 people scattered around the pitch, but it was two or three deep around the crowd. It was totally surreal.

“We didn’t actually meet Socrates until the day. On the video where he gets out of the car and walks into the changing room, that was the first time we had seen or spoken to him. We all had a quick chat with him and he gave us a team-talk and that was it. He could speak a little bit of English, but it was broken and it was just a couple of sentences to wish us good luck. He got wrapped up with his hat, gloves and scarves on and went and sat in the dugout. It was quite a fresh day and he must have four sets of gloves on. He was also having a cheeky cigarette now and again. After the game I think a few of us didn’t think he was going to make it with the way he was coughing his guts up in the shower.

“We all knew that at some point he would be coming on, even if it was for 30 seconds or five minutes. I think he played 12 minutes and in a way I think Simon wished we had been two or three-nil up. It was 2-2 and Simon had to bring him on. Everybody had come to see him play so if we had been losing he would have still come on. It was just a matter of when. If we had been three or four-nil up he may have come on for longer. But he wasn’t in great physical shape and probably shouldn’t have been playing at all.

“The atmosphere was incredible. It was not something you normally see in Division One of the Northern Counties East League. You had loads of people wearing Socrates t-shirts. Yes there were neutral people there, but I think most of the Town turned out to see us play.

“It was actually a big game because both ourselves and Tadcaster were neat the top and obviously it was a local derby too. We should have won the game because we took a 2-0 lead, but we let them back into it. It was an even first 20 minutes and then Andy Rowan scored the first one. I can’t remember the build-up, but I think it was a lob over the goalkeeper. It was just before half-time when Gav Birmingham scored and it was a decent team goal.

“We were winning 2-0 at half-time and they came back into it early into the second half to make it 2-2. I’d like to say it was around the 70th minute mark and we got a penalty. I think Simon was wanting to bring Socrates on to take it, but they didn’t have time to get him ready. Me being me I just said ‘I’m the penalty taker I’ll have this’. I then ended up missing it. It is probably the only one I missed playing for Garforth. We’ll call it a good save, it wasn’t really a miss! Before then I had taken plenty of penalties and it was the only penalty I missed at Garforth, and it was in front of 1300 people and the TV cameras. That’s not the time for missing penalties.

“Socrates then came on and there were big cheers. It was an attacking game with long balls missing the middle men out in the last ten minutes. Both teams could have potentially won the game. Socrates probably didn’t move much out of the centre circle because it was a frantic game. 

“He had a few passes and a few decent touches and he had a shot at goal which I know some papers said was thunderous. He did have a go, but I wouldn’t have said it was thunderous effort, that’s maybe a bit of artistic licence. I don’t know either if Tadcaster’s players were frightened to tackle him, but it wasn’t a game where he could come on and make a difference. But he came and did his bit which was promote Garforth and Simon’s coaching company and he certainly did.

“Socrates put Garforth on the map. All over the country, everybody has heard of Garforth Town because of Socrates and that game. I’ve been to places with work and you end up with a bit of small-talk and people say ‘have you ever played football or rugby’? I say that I used to play for a team in Leeds and people randomly go ‘Garforth’s Leeds, didn’t they have a Brazilian footballer come and play’. So I always say ‘weirdly I played in that game’. People can’t believe it. I get a bit of stick for missing that penalty and my best men dressed me up as Socrates at my stag do. One of my best men was Nick Jagger. Being able to say I played with Socrates is like my party piece because it is not something many people can say and it is a strange thing to say when you consider the career he had.

“I think he was due to play at Pontefract Collieries the following week and he came to it and he was walking around the ground. He didn’t play. To be honest he had a lot of time for people. He’d sit down and speak to you, he’d sign autographs for people. He’d have photos with people. He was a gentleman.

“I was quite lucky because they gave Socrates some boots which were too big for him. They got left and I thought ‘I’m having these’. I got him to sign them and threw them in the back of my car. When Careca and Carlos Alberto came I got them to sign the boots too. I’ve still got them and they are a nice keepsake.

“It is more my parents who have all the memorabilia from the day. I come across the boots when I’m going through my wardrobe, but for me the Socrates game is more of a talking point.

“I really enjoyed my time with Garforth from the beginning to the end and it was the most enjoyable period of my football career. I made lot of friends off-the-pitch and I was great friends with (President) Norman (Hebbron) and I was devastated when I found he passed away. I’m still friends on Facebook with Garforth Gary who watches Garforth week-in-week-out. I keep an eye on results and I follow Garforth on Twitter and Facebook. 

“I made some lifelong friends from my time with Garforth. I’m still friends with Andy Rowan and Gavin Birmingham. It is the same with Andy Brooke, Nick Jagger and Jay Sobers. I speak to Brett over social media. Andy Rowan recently came across some old videos of my old Garforth days and he was sending me videos of us scoring goals. I think we’re still close because we trained a lot together and we saw a lot of each other for five or six years. I used to see V (Clifford’s assistant Vernol Blair) a lot in Huddersfield. So we’re very much in touch with each other. There’s also lads who we connect with over Facebook. Myself and Andy Brooke were saying a few months ago that we didn’t know what had happened to Jacques Joblon? Nobody had heard from him in years. Lo and behold we were out in Leeds and we’re walking up a street and there’s Jacques walking towards us. It was amazing and it was great to see him again after all these years. We talked to him about the old days and we got his number. A few of us have said that it would be great if we could have a reunion when what’s happening right now is all over.”

Greg Kelly was interviewed by James Grayson