by Veteran football writer Fleet Street once shared the story of running into Stan Bowles in a betting shop in Nottingham shortly after his move to Forest in 1979. Bowles was disconsolate, but not because he had backed a loser. another.
“What’s up, Stan?” asked the reporter.
“This manager,” replied Bowles, and went on to tell a story about Brian Clough.
The first time Bowles sat down in the Forest dressing room, Clough stared at him and said: “You. What is your name?”
“What do you mean, what’s my name?” Bowles replied.
“What’s your name,” cried Clough.
“I’m Stan Bowles. You just signed me from QPR.”
Clough pondered the answer and said: “I want you to get the ball and give it to that fat man over there [pointing to the great John Robertson].” According to the old reporter, Bowles, who died at the age of 75, was in the bookies nursing suspicions that he had joined the wrong club. If Clough wanted to remove the ego, conformity was unlikely to always be the result.
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Signed by Clough to provide “time and space” for Forest, according to his assistant Peter Taylor, Bowles was indeed expected to do that service for Robertson and he complained bitterly about playing out of place. The relationship lasted a season. In a row between the two, Clough shouted: “His cocks are the same.”
“Excuse me,” said Bowles, “I was born and bred in Manchester.”
When they associated the term “maverick” with a generation of footballers in the 1970s, Bowles was at the front of the queue for the badge. His autobiography is a litany of dog tracks, drinking sprees, pranksters, carousing, gambling clubs, broken relationships and bookies’ debts.
A maverick wouldn’t have made the papers without talent, but Bowles had plenty of that. In a memoir written by Ralph Allen and John Iona, Terry Venables said in the introduction: “He fell into the Dalglish and Beardsley category. Was he a midfielder going forward or a forward coming back? I wouldn’t hesitate to put him in their company either – he was that good.” Denis Law said of him: “He has 100% skill. Nobody in English football can work the ball better in the fourth.”
For Queens Park Rangers supporters, Bowles was the chaotic genius of their greatest side. For modern viewers, the mavericks are fascinating. The question that lurks beneath the surface of their cash-in-hand lifestyles is: how long would they survive in today’s game? The Premier League’s army of analysts and data crunchers would meet their Waterloo with Bowles, who, at Manchester City in the late 1960s, overslept on a pre-season flight to Amsterdam and hid out at a friend’s house for so long that the police listed him as missing person
Two fistfights with Malcolm Allison, City’s assistant manager, were huge even by the standards of the 60s and 70s, and before Bowles could find “real happiness” with QPR he went into exile at Bury, Crewe Alexandra and Carlisle. . The popular image of him as a dilettante is partly contradicted by his long transition as a professional: eight league clubs from 1967-1984. At the last of them – Brentford – he was persuaded in 1981 to sign “£4,000 in readies”, which he gave to the dogs of the White City and he mostly conceded to his old friends the bookies.
If 507 appearances in club football spoke volumes for his ability to mingle with majesty, his five England caps put him in the wrong category of the underdog artists of the 1970s: the players who were often assumed by spectators to rescue England from the desert of the unqualified. tournaments.
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Maybe. Bowles had just one trophy for that trouble and deceptive pass – the 1979 Uefa Super Cup, at the end of his short time with Forest. He played in Alf Ramsey’s last game in charge and chose two of his successors (Joe Mercer and Don Revie). He also walked out on England after being sent off 15 minutes into the second half against Northern Ireland in 1974, again heading to White City when he should have been traveling to Scotland. Then, at the dogs, a friend met a Daily Mirror photographer who was following him around to report on Bowles’ no-show for the Scotland game.
After QPR and Forest, he entered the twilight zone of his era, before mega-pay, joining Leyton Orient, where he threw a bucket of water over the abusive Grimsby fans. His victory was QPR. He moved to Loftus Road in 1972 as a replacement for Rodney Marsh, who had signed for Manchester City, and formed an immortal bond with Dave Thomas, Don Givens, Gerry Francis and Frank McLintock as a side they remembered almost as fondly of neutrals. QPR fans.
Francis called him a “happy-go-lucky type who lives day by day” – a euphemism, given his struggle with what could now be diagnosed as a gambling addiction. Back then the compulsion to bet was seen as a colorful character trait and a mine of good stories rather than an illness that needed treatment.
HMRC were less cautious. Bowles always swore he wanted Hamburg, ahead of Kevin Keegan, in 1977. QPR chairman Jim Gregory offered him £4,000 in cash to stay: a move they honored on an evening in the Champions League. Keegan went on to become European footballer of the year, twice.
Like George Best, Bowles maintained a defiant stance about his drinking and gambling. One of his books ends with a trademark quip: “I have enough money to last me the rest of my life – provided I drop dead at 4.30 this evening. I also have a big mortgage to pay – the mortgage of my books.”
The rambunctious story off the pitch hides the lasting memories of him, especially in the blue and white hoops of QPR, where he was always a good bet to please the eyes. Forest bought him, Taylor explained with praise, “because he could play”, even if Clough pretended not to know his name.
