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INTERVIEW WITH TERRY COCHRANE 6-11-06
Steve Goldby
Terry Cochrane bounded into Middlesbrough's prestigious Thistle Hotel, full of the joys of Spring and displaying a youthful energy that was reminiscent of the way that he played the game.
Images of Terry belting down the Ayresome park wing, ball at feet and leaving opponents trailing in his wake have remained with those who witnessed his magical skills in the late seventies/early eighties and it was a real privilege to hear the great man himself recall the highlights of a quite brilliant career.
Terry handed me a book and a large photograph.
"I was home the week before last", he told me; home being Killyleagh in County Down, Northern Ireland.
"They've painted this huge mural in the town called 'Northern Ireland International football players from Killyleagh. There's three of us on there - Hugh Henry Davey who played for Reading and was an international between 1925 and 1928, David Healy who scored the goal that defeated England in Belfast last year and myself.
"They've also brought out this book called 'Six Famous Sons Of Killyleagh'. It's not on general release yet but here's an advance copy."
The book is a quite remarkable piece of work. Written by Terry's former Scout leader Clive Scoular, the title is self-explanatory. Terry is featured alongside Sir Hans Sloane, the founder of the British Museum and discoverer of milk chocolate; Sir Henry Blackwood, who was Lord Nelson's only Irish captain at the Battle of Trafalgar; the Rev Henry Cooke, the 'Black Man' who is considered by many to be the most famous of all Presbyterian ministers; church rector Dr Edward Hincks, the world's greatest expert in the translation of Middle Eastern hieroglyphics and the aforementioned David Healy.
"I haven't mentioned this to anyone in Teesside." Terry told me. "I'm not really interested in the self publicity thing."
It became more and more evident throughout our conversation that Terry is indeed a very modest man, despite the obvious and justifiable pride that he felt on being honoured by his hometown in this way.
On the day that the mural was 'unveiled', Terry was apparently in huge demand and I got the distinct impression that he experienced a day that will live with him forever. One of many, as you will find out during the course of this article.
"When I get the ball, I move forward."
Terry Cochrane is definitely a Middlesbrough supporter, as anyone who meets him will instantly realise. He is however, very critical of the club in the present day.
"I know Steve Gibson quite well and he's a great guy but some of the people he has working for him at the club don't deserve to be in the positions they are in and I'm surprised he still employs them.
"Most of them are in it for themselves and not for the good of the club and they blank you as soon as you have stopped playing. That's what happened to me anyway. There are people there in charge of the club who should know their places. They should be thankful to know people like us.
"But when the club's history is recalled in later years, it won't be those people who are remembered. It will be the players who did it on the pitch.
"I don't include Diane O'Connell in that as she is very realistic and a really great person."
Terry is not particulary impressed with what's happening on the field at the moment as well.
"As a winger in the Boro first team, I was expected to put in at least ten to eleven decent on-target crosses per game. If I didn't, I fully expected to be playing my next game in the reserves. Last Monday night against Manchester City, Stewart Downing managed to get in four.
"Now that's not necessarily down to Stewart as he is a great lad but you have to look at the coaching set-up at the club. I have my Uefa 'A' coaching badges and yet every time I have applied for a job at the club, I've been completely overlooked and they've given the positions to guys who only have their 'B' licences.
"Also, one of the biggest problems with Middlesbrough right now is the scouting system. It needs completely reviewing. We need people who can get players who can actually play. I want to see a winning team at Middlesbrough and players who play with passion. If we had played like the current team are playing now, we would have ended up in the reserves."
Born on 23 January 1953, Terry's football career started in the Irish League where he played for Derry City, a club who the Irish League side which was soon to disappear because of the 'troubles'. He then transferred to Linfield and spent three years playing for the club before being forced to move due to his marriage. Linfield, a staunchly Protestant club, were unhappy about Terry marrying a Catholic girl and time was called on his stay with them.
"I didn't care about all that Catholic and Protestant stuff" Terry told me. "It didn't mean anything to me."
Although the circumstances of his departure from Linfield were undoubtedly acrimonious, the move was a major factor in the success of Terry's career as it led to an international call-up and a first taste of European football.
"I was doing all right at Coleraine and a few commentators were saying that I should be in the Northern Ireland side."
Manager Dave Clements responded and Terry became the first ever part-time player to gain a Northern Ireland cap when he appeared as a substitute in a European Championship qualifier against Norway in October 1975 at the age of 22.
Terry went on to gain twenty-six caps for Northern Ireland, plus two appearances in Australia where caps were not awarded. One of the two uncapped appearances was the last international to be played at the original Perth stadium. Northen Ireland beat Australia 5-2 that day.
Terry scored three goals for Northern Ireland, the most famous of which was when, as a Boro player, he netted the winner at Wembley against England on 20th May 1980. That was the last goal that Northen Ireland scored against England for twenty-five years. The next man to achieve the feat was none other than David Healy who grew up just a few doors down from where Terry had spent his childhood in Killyleagh.
"I wish they would bring back the Home Internationals." Terry remarked. "England could use them to 'experiment' instead of doing so in European qualifiers."
I asked Terry just how special the goal against England was for him.
"If you'd have killed me then, I'd have died happy." he replied. And I guess there's not much more you can add to that.
"I didn't think that kind of thing went on..."
Coleraine had qualified for the 1975/76 European campaign by winning the Irish Cup in the previous season and were drawn to play Eintracht Frankfurt over two legs with the first leg to be played in Germany.
"I was used to playing in front of 2-3,000 every week but when we got to Frankfurt, there were 25,000 there. We went out to the tunnel to have a look around and all these guys were coming off the field, covered in sweat. I said to the manager that there must have been another game before ours that was just finishing and he told me that this was the Eintracht team finishing their warm-up. Half of our players were stood there with fags in their mouths.
"We were well up for the game and genuinely thought we would win. But Eintracht were in a different league and we were 5-0 down at half-time so we decided that all we could do in the second half was contain them as they could clearly change gear at any time they wished to."
Coleraine did a good job of containing the Germans and the final score in the first leg was 5-1 with Terry scoring Coleraine's consolation. Frankfurt finished the job off in Ireland two weeks later winning 6-2 with Terry again appearing on the scoresheet.
It was to be one of the final appearances that Terry would make as a Coleraine player as unbeknown to him, he had been noticed in England when he made his Northern Ireland debut the previous year.
Burnley eventually made their move and Terry crossed the water to play trials for the Lancashire club. It proved to be an eye opening experience as Terry recalls.
"Burnley's Youth/Reserve coach at the time was Dave Merrington, who went on to become Southampton manager. We went to Morecambe to play a match and Morecambe won 2-0. We were sat in the dressing room afterwards and in comes Dave and smashes a tea cup against the wall. Ian Brennan stands up to walk out and Dave tried to stop him but Ian wasn't having any of it. So Dave steps back, takes out his false teeth and goes to whack him one. Frank Casper had to pull him back and Dave was shouting at the others, 'This young lad has come over from Ireland and he's tried his bollocks off. You lot are all a waste of space...' I was quite rattled by that. I didn't think that kind of thing went on.
"I liked it at Burnley as it was a working class town and I felt that I fitted in. I moved into a house when I first arrived and there was a knock on the door and there was two little girls standing there who were very small. They wanted to introduce themselves as my new neighbours and I invited them in. A few minutes later there was another knock on the door and there's this really tiny man standing there who said he was the girls' father and he also wanted to welcome me to the area.
His name was Albert and we became really good friends and he went on to get a part in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as one of the Oompaloompah men. I love watching that film now, just to see Albert."
Terry spent over two years at Burnley where he caught the attention of some of the biggest clubs in the land.
"I now know that Arsenal were tracking me and if I hadn't gone to Middlesbrough, there is a chance that I could have signed for them. But no regrets on that one. It's nice that a club like Arsenal were interested but I'm glad I went to Boro."
"We played Arsenal at Highbury once and I was about to take a corner when I saw big Billy Ashcroft go down in the box. He had to be taken off with a suspected heart attack and taken to hospital and we had to collect him on the way home after the match. He was OK though."
The move to Middlesbrough in 1978 was quite sudden, as Terry relates.
"I was a substitute in a match against Oldham and watching the match from the dugout was like watching paint dry. The manager Harry Potter told me I was going on and I told him 'Am I fuck - it's terrible.'
"I don't know what came over me really but the following Monday, two days later, I was in Middlesbrough to talk to John Neal, then the Boro manager."
Terry Cochrane signed for Middlesbrough in October 1978 for a then club record fee of £210,000, with Coleraine receiving a fair percentage, as per an arrangement in Terry's Burnley contract.
"I got nine out of ten in the Sunday People last week."
"The Middlesbrough fans were very good to me", said Terry. It was very obvious that he appreciated them as much as they appreciated his skills and effort.
"I never got any stick from the 'chicken run' and I think that was because I always went out to entertain.
"But I did get plenty of bollockings off John Neal which I found strange because my main job as a winger was to put in crosses and I felt as though I always did that."
Terry most certainly did do that and although he didn't actually say so, it appears that John Neal had turned him into some sort of scapegoat.
"We played Crystal Palace once and Kenny Sansom took two one-two's and scored. John Neal asked me at the end of the game 'where were you?' and Kenny had beaten nine players on his way to goal..."
So did Terry consider John Neal to be a good manager?
"No, I didn't. I was with him for three years and I never knew him. He was a very quiet man and not a motivational manager at all. And his organisational skills were terrible. Do you remember that goal I scored in the FA Cup at Swansea?"
Do I remember it? How could I ever forget it? For younger readers, Boro were drawn away to Swansea City in the third round of the FA Cup in 1980 and won 5-0 with Terry scoring the final goal with a bicycle kick, a goal that will always remain in Boro folklore and is included in the top three of best Boro goals on a recent DVD release.
"Everyone wanted us to lose that day and if Tony Curtis had scored with a chance in the first few minutes we may well have done, but Jimmy (Stewart, then Boro goalkeeper) got down and saved it. From then on, everything we hit went in the net. It was just one of those days when everything went right.
"But we had to train for that match in a farmer's field in Wales, which was ridiculous really, but that was John for you.
"I went to his office one Saturday morning and Stan Cummins was in there, asking why he had been left out of the team. John didn't really give him any proper answers and so Stan told him 'you just can't possibly leave me out'. John asked why not and Stan said 'because I got nine out of ten in the Sunday People last week'...
"Another time we went to Vila Park and we brought no kit with us so John had to send someone to a local sports shop to buy some kit and we played in replica Manchester United away strips.
Nevertheless, Terry considered Middlesbrough a big step-up from Burnley but unfortunately sustained a groin strain in only his third game.
"I got through the match and at the end, they gave me this tablet and told me it would relax me so that the injury could be treated. It relaxed me alright as I didn't wake up until the Monday."
Terry was soon back in action for Boro but told me that although he enjoyed his time at Ayresome Park immensely, the future never really looked bright.
"When we lost to Wolves in the FA Cup quarter-final in 1981, it broke our hearts. It's been said that that game killed off that particular team and I think that is about right. There was a lot of soul searching in the dressing room afterwards and we really felt as though we had let the fans down. We were expected to win that one and we just didn't play well.
"The players really did care in those days. I remember getting knocked out of the Cup the previous season at Birmingham and we were crying our eyes out in the pub that night. The wife told me to stop being silly but I just couldn't help it."
"A fee for this and a fee for that..."
Terry's international career continued whilst he was at Middlesbrough and on the day he scored at Wembley, Terry's wife was playing Bingo in a local club and the MC stopped the game to announce that Terry had scored. A huge cheer went up in the hall, despite the goal going against England.
By this time, Billy Bingham was the Northern Ireland manager.
"We used to call him Billy Bung-em or FIFA." Terry told me. "Because he always wanted a 'fee for' this and a 'fee for' that..."
But it was Bingham who led Northern Ireland in their World Cup campaign of 1982 with Terry making the goal that put them through to Spain.
"It was against Portugal at Windsor Park and we needed to win. I took the ball down the wing and crossed for Gerry Armstrong who banged it in. It was a very proud moment."
But the World Cup turned out to be a heartbreaker for Terry.
"There's no question that I would have gone but I picked up a hamstring injury playing against France in a friendly. Billy gave me an extra two weeks to try and get fit but it was not to be. But he did insist that I receive the same pay as the other lads and that happened. It was a fantastic gesture but I was gutted to miss out. But you just have to get on with it."
Terry was replaced by Norman Whiteside who still holds the distinction of being the youngest ever player to grace a World Cup.
Terry played at Wembley four times for Northern Ireland, all against England but experienced difficulties with his international career before Billy Bingham took over as manager.
"Danny Blanchflower was manager and he was a nice guy but he was senile. We were playing at Windsor Park one day and Gerry Armstrong kicked me up the backside, so I hit him. We made up and there was no problem but in the dressing room at half-time, Danny came up to talk to us both.
"What's gone is gone." he said. "Let's not make any more of this." Not that me and Gerry were going to anyway. "Now you" he said pointing to me, "Get in the bath"...
"I didn't get on with Danny's assistant Tommy Kavanagh. He used to call me The Barfly. He was really running the show, not Danny and at one match in Bulgaria, I right hooked a defender and he took me off straight away. Chris McGrath came on and got nutmegged straight away, went on his arse and got his two front teeth knocked out. 'Good substitution Tommy' I said and he just stared at me.
"Danny once said that we could have played like his 1960's Spurs team but there was no way. We were at a match somewhere in Eastern Europe once and an orchestra was playing. Danny got a bit carried away and started conducting them, which only served to fire them and their team up even more. He really was senile, I tell you."
"I'm going to put this club on a firm financial footing."
Danny Blanchflower made another ironic appearance in Terry's career in 1979 when he took over as Chelsea manager. His very first game in charge was against Middlesbrough at Ayresome Park and despite being behind to a Peter Osgood goal at half-time, Boro ran out convincing winners by 7-2.
"That was a great game" recalls Terry. "But all I did was go out there and entertain."
The goal that Terry scored that day was an absolute masterpiece, starting with a mazy dribble that left half of the Chelsea team for dead and ending with a brilliant finish that had the Ayresome faithful chanting 'we want eight'.
"That goal at Swansea - I don't think it was one of my best. I scored plenty of goals that I think were better than that."
We both agreed that if you ask most musicians or artists what their best composition or creation is, they are highly unlikely to name their most famous piece of work.
"That's a shame that is", commented Terry after a moment's reflection.
Things were starting to go downhill at Middlesbrough after that defeat by Wolves in the FA Cup and Bobby Murdoch was drafted in as manager after John Neal took over at Chelsea.
"I loved Bobby but he never really had a chance. We'd lost players and because of the board's reluctance to spend, it took ages to replace them and when we eventually did, the replacements were not adequate.
"Irving Nattrass never gave his best for Middlesbrough and Joe Bolton was a great lad but just not good enough. We ended up getting relegated and it was a very bleak time.
"Malcolm Allison came in after that and the first thing he said was that he was going to put the club on a firm financial footing. So he sacked the tea-man who was on all of £18 per week.
"The lads weren't happy about that so we all chipped in £1 a week to keep him.
"We used to call him 'Big Mal - The Kiddie's Pal' because if you were over nineteen years old, you wouldn't be looked at.
"Mal brought in Lennie Hepple to teach us dance steps and posture, like how to stand up and walk. What a stupid idea that was. Another time he brought in Roger Spry, a martial arts instructor, to teach us how to fall. Poor old Heine Otto didn't quite grasp it and ended up breaking his collar bone.
"Then before his first game against Blackburn at Ayresome Mal had us all holding hands in the dressing room and chanting 'we're going to win' over and over again. We lost 5-1, and I scored our goal. We always had to do that but sometimes we would chant 'we're going to lose', just to show what we thought of this procedure.
"Mal never liked me or Jim Platt, even though we were the only two internationals in the team at that time and it became clear pretty quickly that I was not going to be getting a game at Boro. So one Sunday morning the phone rang. 'Terry, it's Bobby Moore here' said the caller. I didn't believe it was Bobby Moore so I told him to fuck off and put the phone down. Luckily he rang back and yes, it really was Bobby Moore. He'd just landed a job as coach of Eastern, a club in the Hong Kong league and he wanted me to come and play for him.
"Middlesbrough had no objection to me spending some time out there and so I joined Bobby in Hong Kong and had a great time. We did well and I scored eight goals in twelve games but towards the end of the season we had a fixture against Eastern's sister club and Graham Paddon told me that they needed the points. The owners of both clubs were in the dressing room and talking to all the Chinese lads and I was thinking 'we need the points as well.'
I really tried hard that day but we lost narrowly because of mistakes by the Chinese lads and in the dressing room afterwards, one of the Chinese owners gave me $1,000. I didn't know what it was for until one of the other English lads told me it was for throwing the game. I really tried hard that day as well.
One time in Hong Kong I was asked if I had any advice for the Chinese players on the team. 'Yes', I said. 'Sell your boots.'
"One of my team-mates was Arijia, the Chinese national skipper and he would go missing every time we got paid. His wife had to come looking for him and would always find him at the horsetrack gambling all the money away.
"I remember one of the other lads showing me some photos of a hut built from corrugated iron once. 'What's this?' I asked. 'It's my home' he said and I just couldn't believe it. He also told me that he hid all of his money under a rock."
"He doesn't like you. You can sign for me."
"When I got back from Hong Kong, I found Keith Peacock, the Gillingham manager, waiting for me at Ayresome Park. 'Malcolm doesn't like you. You can sign for me instead' he told me. So that was the end of my Middlesbrough career. I was very sorry to go and I honestly think that if Willie Maddren had been manager then, it wouldn't have happened.
"I really like Middlesbrough. Great people and working class, just like me. I still have the same friends now that I am not playing that I had when I was playing. I don't have time for fools and I'm very happy in this area.
I asked Terry who he thought was the best player he played with at Boro and he named David Armstrong.
"If you wanted a ball put in by Spikey, he could give you it anywhere he wanted, he was that good. He'd keep Stewart Downing out of the team now if he was playing. He's a bit big these days though and we call him 'Ironside' now.
"One of my goals for Gillingham was voted the club's best ever goal. It was against Bristol Rovers and I chipped the keeper from the half-way line. But there were no TV cameras there unfortunately."
Terry made 131 appearances for Gillingham and then played in the US Indoor League for six months before returning to the north-east and joining Hartlepool. Injury finished his professional career but he continued for a time in the Northern League before finishing for good.
"The Northern League was interesting. It was basically people trying to kick the shit out of you every week."
Terry played against some noteable opponnets during his career including Paul Breitner, Johann Cruyff and Karl-Heinz Rumenigge before accepting an interesting appointment as coach of the Saudi Arabian Military team.
"I was called 'The Angry Man' out there", recalls Terry. "I still have a letter of no objection, which means I am allowed in the Kingdown at any time, but I doubt if I will ever go back.
"It was 1991 when I was there and the Gulf War broke out just as I started so most of my players were called away to the Kuwaiti border. Some Americans who I had made friends with said that I could use their swimming pool and other facilities and I found out later that they were the Saudi King's private helicopter pilots."
These days Terry is concentrating hard on a career in the media and has been with TFM for three years now.
"We are third in the league table behind Century and Radio Cleveland but we will do better because our programmes are bright and lively. We're looking for the point of view of the listeners and trying to make it better all the time.
"The football club could do with doing that but that's down to the people in charge. Maybe they'd like to come on the show sometime and tell us more about what they are doing to correct the things that are currently wrong at the club?"
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