coventryplayersofthe60s

Face to Face: John TudorMar 16 2004

By John Gibson, The Evening Chronicle

Newcastle United legend Malcolm Macdonald called John Tudor his "perfect partner" and together they plundered English soccer for four years in the early 1970s.
They were swashbuckling times for the Toon Army with a momentous ride to the FA Cup final at Wembley when United won every battle on foreign territory.
Now, however, Tudor is far away from St James' Park where his reputation was defined. He lives in America's mid-west in the state of Minnesota, driven out of England to find the coaching opportunity denied him back home.
John and his wife Anne have for the last 10 years resided in the Minneapolis suburb of St Paul, a place he describes as "where Tonka Toys were made, a cosmopolitan city of lawyers and high-rollers".
Now aged 57 and, he says half-jokingly, with his knees, back, ankles and neck hurting - presumably from footballing days - Tudor is in charge of running a youth organisation "like Wallsend Boys Club".
John played for United when those who attempted to prevent goals included Norman `Bites Yer Legs' Hunter, Tommy `Anfield Iron' Smith and Ron `Chopper' Harris - all carrying health warnings.
Perhaps not surprisingly, both Tudor and SuperMac were forced to retire ahead of their time through knee injuries.
"The tackle from behind wasn't outlawed in our days and consequently strikers got kicked up a'height," smiled John. "We both took plenty but then if you attempted to score goals that was the way it was.
"I remember playing centre-half at Coventry City alongside Maurice Setters at the start of my career. Brian Kidd nutmegged him and Maurice strolled over afterwards to have a word.
"He said to Kidd `If you do that again I'll pull your ******* head off'. Now that was scary. Maurice was an ugly beggar and he scared everyone. He would have done it, too."
Tudor admits the game has changed totally in the 30 years since he was a Magpie thieving goals from the best and the toughest defenders in the land.
"The game is much, much quicker now, players are much fitter and the technique is better - partly because you don't get cut in half any more," insisted Tudor. "Virtually everyone has a good touch and wants to play.
"Would Malcolm Macdonald have been a big star today? Probably, yes. But I doubt if I would have survived. My technique wasn't good enough. I was a willing workhorse - Joe Harvey used to say to me: `You're never coming off. I'll bring Goldenballs off before you'. That was because he wanted an organiser, a thinker and a trier.
"I used to chase down the opposition back four when we hadn't the ball to make certain they couldn't get out. That was partly because I knew my limitations. Thierry Henry doesn't do that. He doesn't have to, because he's an artist.
"I saw Arsenal on television out here the other day and they were awesome. Henry is a different class, so is Robert Pires. They can all attack at Arsenal. They have two full-backs who don't think about defending for a moment, who are athletes comfortable on the ball."
That leads to a point where Tudor believes the modern game has lost out to his days.
"The true art of defending has gone," he maintained. "It isn't taught any more. Defending may be seen as a secondary thing but it's still a skill.
"Bobby Moore didn't go round kicking folk. Neither did Bob Moncur. They were both slow - but you had to be able to get at them first. They read things impeccably.
"Maybe strikers don't get kicked the way we used to but what they've got to face today that we didn't is all the pulling, pushing, and shoving that goes on. A penalty could be given at virtually every corner kick because the centre-half invariably has both arms wrapped round the centre-forward."
Times they are a'changing and Tudor, who always visits St James' Park whenever he flies home from the States, smiles when he recalls the lack of professionalism of yesteryear.
"Now it's all about fitness regimes and nutrition, but in the '70s the bell went at five to three, we went out at two minutes to three and kicked off at three o'clock.
"There was no warming-up an hour before, no doing stretches or the like.
"For my pre-match meal I went through the whole gambit. I tried cornflakes and peaches, fish, even roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. I didn't know what was best and what was not.
"And putting fluid back into your system after the match meant drinking beer before going disco dancing until 4am.
But they were exciting, wonderful times. Especially at Newcastle. Huge crowds, magical atmosphere, great players.
"Would I have done anything differently in my playing career? Not on Tyneside.
"I wouldn't have gone to Stoke City, mind you. I'd have been better off at West Ham or Spurs, where I had a chance of going, or with Lawrie McMenemy at Southampton. I might still have been in the game now had I gone to The Dell."
Tudor, always the thinker, had his heart firmly set upon coaching. He used to spend each lunchtime at the Milkmaid in Newcastle city centre with SuperMac and Frank Clark arguing over the relative merits of tactics.
Macdonald went on record as saying Tudor could be a future England manager but, while SuperMac was a success as boss of Fulham and Clark managed both Nottingham Forest and Manchester City, the opportunity never came for a frustrated Tudor.
"Coaching is my strength," he insisted. "Arsene Wenger is a coach, a thinking, tactical man.
"I played under Joe Harvey, Jimmy Hill, Arthur Rowley and Tony Waddington. Not one of them was a coach. You never saw Joe or Jimmy Hill in a tracksuit.
"What they did was motivate and they were good judges of players. Others did the actual coaching.
"I was interviewed for the Darlington manager's job but, frankly, I didn't know what they wanted - a coach or a manager.
"My forte, as I've discovered here in America, is definitely coaching young players. I ought to have become an academy coach back home."
John Tudor dictated the course of the Newcastle United match that never was, a game scrubbed from the record books by the Football Association because of Geordie fans supposedly rioting at St James' Park.
Distance, both in time and geography, hasn't dulled the memory of Tudor about the most controversial moment in an epic switchback ride to the 1974 FA Cup final.
It came in the sixth round when Nottingham Forest were drawn to attend St James' where 54,500 lay in waiting.
However, disaster struck early - Forest were leading 2-1 when Paddy Howard disputed a penalty decision after David Craig had brought down the ever-dangerous Duncan McKenzie and got himself sent off. When tempers cooled, George Lyall scored from the spot. Newcastle appeared doomed.
"We would never have won the game if the fans hadn't run on and the referee, Gordon Kew, taken us to the dressing-room," insisted Tudor. "We were 3-1 down and 10 men against 11. But, worse, we couldn't play because Bob Chapman and David Serella had a stranglehold on midfield.
"Mal and I hadn't had a kick but that was because there was no service. Terry Hibbitt, normally our top provider, was having a stinker. The Forest pair closed ground so quickly there was no space in which to work.
"In the tunnel there were whoops of delight from the Forest players. They thought they had won.
"In comparison, you could hear a pin drop in our dressing-room - until Joe Harvey burst in and demanded to know what we were going to do about it. We decided to gamble and push forward. There was nothing to lose.
"Forest let their concentration slip, they thought the job was already done, and they let us go a bit in midfield after the restart."
United got the break they required when Geordie keeper Jim Barron foolishly pushed SuperMac and Terry McDermott stroked home the penalty. Enter Tudor, who completely changed the flow of a sensational cup-tie.
"Hibby struck a hard, low cross from the left and I dived full-length parallel to the ground and only a couple of feet off it to bullet a header home for the equaliser," he said.
"Then in the final minute I crossed the ball, Mal headed it down, and who was there to score but Bob Moncur of all people. It was 4-3."
An amazing fact amongst a welter of amazing facts was that, despite United scoring four times, ace finisher SuperMac hadn't netted once.
However, destiny was to look after that. The FA expunged the result from the records and demanded a replay on a neutral ground - Everton's Goodison Park - and after two more nervy matches United were through to the semi-finals courtesy of a Macdonald winner.
He was to score in every round up to Wembley and every time away from home.
Spreading the word in the USAFormer Newcastle star John Tudor is attempting to teach willing pupils brought up in an environment of basketball and ice hockey how to play what we consider the greatest team sport on Mother Earth.
The Americans love soccer - but not as we do.
Their desire lies within women and children. Male adults? Forget it.
"The American women's team is hugely successful - they have some fabulous players," revealed John.
"I know you lot back home might find it hard to believe but the skill level is extremely high.
"Kids also love soccer. They play it like mad up to the high school and college age but then there's nowhere for them to go.
"There is no money in pro soccer in America and players just fade away."
Tudor has the right age group - from five-year-olds up to 19 - to stimulate interest and he's been responsible for the rapid growth of his club in Minneapolis.
"I first came over here in 1991 to run a summer camp and I came back every year," he explained. "The trouble was I was running a pub in my home town, Ilkeston, and the brewery didn't like it when I took 12 weeks off to coach in America. They effectively told me to get lost.
"I moved across lock, stock and barrel in 1994 and I have my green card now, though it took me eight years to get it.
"We've developed things considerably at the club and now have 2,600 kids involved.
"I've got qualifications coming out of my teeth, I've sat and passed so many exams.
"I find it extremely interesting - the only trouble is that the board changes regularly and it comprises of the mams and dads of the kids. They often want to tell me how to coach their son.
"I mean, I wouldn't walk into a lawyer's office and tell him how to run his business but they seem to think they have the right to walk into mine.
"All American kids know how to play basketball or ice hockey but give them a football and they walk about with it under their arm. I tell them `put it down, get a feel of it with your feet. Kick the ruddy thing!'"
Tudor has also done some coaching with the local Minnesota Thunder team and has widened his family base.
"My son Jonathan is over here with us," said John. "He's married with a daughter. That's how time flies - he was born in Newcastle when I was playing for United.
"Jonathan originally worked with me at the club but we had to cut back on staff so he's working with the YMCA."
Dazzled by Pele greatness at first hand
Pele is lauded as the most complete footballer ever to have graced this planet.
Well, John Tudor was privileged to share a soccer field with the Brazilian master while playing for Newcastle.
"It happened in the summer of '72 when we were on a Far East tour," recalled John. "We played Pele's club Santos in Hong Kong.
"We were leading 2-1 at half-time and Pele had done nowt. Tony Green scored with a 35-yard screamer and I'd headed our second.
"It was Newcastle who were playing well and we thought it was a doddle. Then for quarter of an hour Pele decided it was time to entertain the crowd. They had come along to see only him.
"He scored three brilliant goals in that 15 minutes. The delicate close-control skills, the amazing acceleration, the powerhouse shooting had the crowd in ecstasy. It was like trying to stop a flash of lightning.
"Job done, Pele walked off to thunderous applause. Every one of us went over to shake his hand. We knew we'd been in the presence of greatness."
Boro snub before my Toon move
He was always destined to play in the North East - but it could easily have been at Middlesbrough instead of Newcastle.
Indeed, originally John Tudor DID play for Boro, as a junior desperately searching for a future in the full-time game that he didn't find until the late age of 19.
"I originally played for Stanley Common Miners' Welfare - a grand title, isn't it? - and basically turned out for whoever I could," John explained. "I signed as an amateur for Nottingham Forest and played in their B team and I also joined Boro.
"I was there for about half a season. I travelled up on a Friday, played on a Saturday and then travelled back home. I felt a complete outsider. I played mainly for the juniors but I had one reserve game at Stockton.
"However, the manager Raich Carter got the pedal and I never heard from the club again, even though I wrote a couple of times."
Tudor was to make it to the North East a few years later when, in January 1971, Newcastle United signed him in an exchange deal with Sheffield United that saw goalkeeper John Hope and striker David Ford go in the other direction.
However, Tudor's big break came from the bearded one, Jimmy Hill, and it was a fluke.
John was offered a trial at Coventry after playing in a benefit match with Hill - but they thought he was 17 and not 19 and played him in their junior side, which was illegal because of his age.
"I thought Jimmy would give me the sack when he found out but instead he offered me full-time terms," laughed John. "I'd scored a few goals, including six out of eight against Birmingham City, so that was probably it

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