Former England defender shares stories from his days at Nottingham Forest, his love of music and dressing as a ‘New Romantic’ as he reveals his hand as part of a new 12-episode podcast series
Listen and subscribe to Colin Murray’s 52 sponsored by Grosvenor Casinos with a new episode from former England cricketer, Graeme Swann, here: https://audioboom.com/channels/5020082
Former Nottingham Forest and England defender, Stuart Pearce, talks about the ‘real’ Brian Clough in a new episode of Colin Murray’s 52 podcast series out today.
Colin Murray’s 52 sponsored by Grosvenor Casinos is a 12-episode podcast series which challenges sporting heroes to a game of ‘52’ where every question is left to chance from a unique deck of cards with 52 random questions.
Pearce, who played 408 times scoring 63 goals for Forest during 12 years at the club, features in Episode 11 of the series and faced five questions from the 52 deck with themed rounds including the riffle shuffle, stacked deck and wildcard.
After picking out his first card ‘Who’s the greatest manager or coach you’ve ever worked with?’, Pearce talks about Brian Clough’s humility as a manager and how he tried reverse psychology on the Forest players by getting the team to walk to The Old Den when they faced Millwall away in the old first division.
Pearce said: “He was an individual that was very kind. It is usually the one-liners and put-downs that people wheel out, which I do when I often have a chat at after dinners and that type of thing, but the acts of kindness when things aren’t going well for you. He would keep you in a team when your form wasn’t good for certain individuals in our team.
“We would be driving down the M1 on a bus and he would see a lorry on the hard shoulder and tell the coach driver to pull over and take a tray of sandwiches down the hard shoulder to a lorry driver who has got his head under the bonnet, [he would] offer him a sandwich and ask him ‘is there anything I can do for you?’…All of those types of things that’s probably the stuff you don’t hear about with Cloughie.”
Pearce continued: “We played away at Millwall, when Millwall had just got promoted to the top division, the first division as it was known in those days. There was a fear factor about going to Millwall so to combat that he [Brian Clough] pulled the coach over in New Cross which was about a mile away from the ground and made all the players walk straight to Millwall, as much to say and put a statement down ‘you don’t intimidate us in any way shape or form’.”
Pearce jokingly confesses the experience of walking to The Old Den before kick-off against Millwall is one as a player he would not want to repeat but got the desired result of an away draw.
After picking the card ‘What is your most embarrassing moment’, Pearce also relives an infamous moment at former Forest midfielder’s Ian Bowyer’s testimonial in which Pearce and Des Walker take to the stage and dance to the song ‘Barbados’ by Typically Tropical, while trying to move a packet of crisps move across a dancefloor with nothing but a stocking and potato.
The result was a major wardrobe malfunction for Pearce, who also remembers John Robertson’s Columbo impression and Chris Fairclough singing New York, New York as part of the evening’s entertainment.
Colin Murray’s 52 sponsored by Grosvenor Casinos features episodes with five-time World Snooker Champion, Ronnie O’Sullivan, former England cricket captain, Michael Vaughan, and former world heavyweight boxing champion, David Haye.
Listen and subscribe to Colin Murray’s 52 podcast series here: https://audioboom.com/channels/5020082 which is available on all the usual platforms now including iTunes, Spotify and Deezer.
Colin Murray’s 52 is an original format and produced by CopC Productions: www.copcproductions.com