Blog

Graham Taylor had class both as a manager and as a person.

I spent a lot of time with Graham in his role as manager and broadcast expert. We shared a lot of laughs together too.

He was a full-back with Grimsby Town and Lincoln City before a serious hip injury ended that at 27 and he became manager of Lincoln, the youngest in the Football League.

He then went on to be in charge of Watford under chairman Elton John, Aston Villa under Doug Ellis, England and then Wolves, where the chairman was Sir Jack Hayward.

When Elton bought Watford a second time, he soon installed Graham again.

Sadly, Taylor died of a heart attack on January 17, 2017, at age 72.

I met Graham in the early ’70s when he was a manager at Lincoln, which was within ATV’s huge regional territory.

He was a live studio guest at my Friday night Sportsround on a wet winter’s night in Birmingham city centre. The interview lasted three minutes.

When I saw Graham in the parking lot after his long drive home, I was surprised to see a thick fog and thanked him so much for making the effort. I remember him responding by saying that Fourth Division Lincoln was worth talking about in front of a large audience.

The son of football writer Tom Taylor (who covered Scunthorpe for the local paper there), Graham understood the media and was always available. Sometimes that was not appreciated and when things went wrong when he was England manager he was cruelly called ‘Turnip Head’ by the Sun. But that was all to come.

My next encounter with Graham was when I organized a chartered flight to Rome for the Italy-England World Cup qualifier on November 17, 1976.

With Birmingham restaurant owner Lorenzo Ferrari I had just formed the Midlands Soccer Writers group and we planned this trip.

The Aston Villa manager at the time suggested that we take a 24-hour trip so that all the managers would not be away too much from training. All managers in the region agreed.

But in the end, only one manager boarded the plane from Birmingham: Lincoln City manager Graham Taylor. And not only that, the club offered to pay for his three places. But Taylor insisted on paying for himself. In the end we were 92.

Graham won the fourth division title with Lincoln and soon left for Watford, where he led the club from Division Four to the top Division One within five years, losing in an FA Cup final and semi-final along the way.

His next stop was Aston Villa in 1987 and Deadly Doug! Villa had been relegated and Taylor soon got them back.

They then finished runners-up in the First Division in 1990 having led the table for most of the season, only to be edged out by Liverpool towards the end.

In between, after some bad results, Taylor had confided in me that he was about to get fired. It was a home game with Derby. Before the game, President Ellis had called a board meeting in the locker room AFTER the bandage was later cleaned.

Taylor told me grimly that he thought he knew what would happen if Villa lost.

But Ellis was dropped as Villa pulled off a narrow victory. A smiling Graham told me later that a flustered Ellis came up with bland reasons for the brief meeting. Normal service restored! Both the president and the manager knew that I was very nice to each of them, but they both trusted me to keep their confidences, which I always did.

Taylor, by then, was very adept at television commentary and pundit work. He was with the ITV team for the 1990 World Cup in Italy.

During this time, England showed interest in signing Taylor as Bobby Robson’s successor. I invited Graham and Doug over for lunch for an off the record chat about it. Doug was playing a little rough around the edges and I was unnecessarily pleading Graham’s case.

In fact, I must confess that I had too much wine for dinner. Taylor had to kick me under the table to shut me up while they happily figured it out!

Earlier, for the England-Germany semi-final in Turin, commentator Brian Moore, Graham and I, due to a booking error, had to stay 90 miles away in Turin. Both Brian and Graham had been there the night before.

As we walked to a nearby restaurant, Taylor pulled me back and asked, “What are you eating?” and explained that she had not seen the menu.

We both laughed when Taylor said Moore had chosen for both of us…and laughed again when Brian proceeded to order the three of us “a quiet bottle of good white wine.” Good memories.

I have always enjoyed sharing corporate nights and after-dinner chats with Graham, who has been happily married to Rita (they met at school) since 1965 and has two beautiful daughters.

I hope you will join me on Tuesday in both the Birmingham Mail and the Coventry Telegraph.