FORMER CLOUGHIE PLAYER
BACKS STATUE BID
One of the first footballers Brian Clough signed is backing a campaign for a statue of the Master Manager. Nottingham-born Mick Somers was snapped up by Clough in 1965, shortly after he began his first managerial post at Hartlepool United.
Mick Somers Read more about the statue fund
HERE
Mick spent just under two years playing for Hartlepool under Clough's watchful eye - and the 61-year-old says he's fully behind the Brian Clough Statue Fund, which aims to raise £60,000 for a lasting memorial in Nottingham city centre.
Speaking at his home in the Mapperley area of Nottingham, Mick said: "It's tremendous to see so many people supporting the idea of a statue for Cloughie. The man is a genuine hero, and what he achieved during his time as Forest manager makes me proud to come from Nottingham.
"I also feel very privileged to have played under Cloughie. He really was something else. Even though he was new to management when I knew him, you could tell he had something special, and it was obvious that Hartlepool was just a small stepping stone for him onto bigger things.
"Hartlepool were a team that always used to finish in the bottom four of the old Fourth Division, but when Cloughie came in he turned the club around. By the end of his second season at the club, we'd finished in the top half of the league.
"Cloughie and his assistant Peter Taylor then left to take over at Derby. But they'd laid some strong foundations, because the following season we actually gained promotion to the old Third Division for the first time in the club's history."
Having grown up in the Sherwood area of Nottingham, Mick (pictured below) began his footballing career at the City Ground when he joined Forest as an 'amateur' - equivalent of a trainee in today's game.
Mick's contemporaries at the time were players like Ian Storey-Moore, who later went on to become a huge hero at the City Ground. Unlike Storey-Moore though, Mick never managed to break into the Forest first team - and frustrated by this, he decided to make a fresh start at Chelsea. After several years at Chelsea, he then transferred to Torquay United - and it was impressive displays in the outside left position for Torquay that led to Clough signing him for Hartlepool.
"I got on really well with Cloughie and enjoyed playing under him" says Mick, who now works as a plasterer. "But if you stepped out of line you'd be in trouble. Even as a young man of 33 or 34, he was a disciplinarian.
"At Hartlepool I lived in digs with four other players, and one of them was a lad who didn't always tow the line and used to like a drink. But Cloughie knew everything that went on, and he came up with a great way of stopping this lad from going out the night before matches. He'd come round to our house and go 'Come with me, young man' and he'd get him to spend the night babysitting for his children!"
Sadly, a knee injury brought a premature end to Mick's career in the professional game shortly after Clough left Hartlepool to go to Derby. Clough, though, having suffered a similar end to his own playing career a few years earlier, was incredibly supportive.
"Hartlepool granted me a benefit match, and Cloughie provided the opposition for the game by bringing up his Derby team. He did me proud - he didn't even ask for expenses to cover the team's travel costs. That's the way the man was. He was a great bloke. He was so generous. You used to see him giving old ladies a ten bob note and little things like that."