Eddie Gray (footballer Born 1948) - Playing Career

Playing Career

Gray was a schoolboy international for Scotland, he had aspirations of signing for his boyhood team Celtic, but signed professional forms for Leeds at the age of 16. He made his first team debut on New Year's Day 1966, less than three weeks before his 18th birthday, and would go on to play for the club for almost 20 years.

A winger in the classic mould, Gray was feted in world football for his ability to beat opposing full backs for skill, pace and thought. As the Leeds team grew in stature and experience through the 1960s, Gray became a vital component of the team.

In 1968 he was in the Leeds team which won the League Cup and the Fairs Cup and then the League championship a year later. It was in 1970 that he made his most famous appearance in a Leeds shirt.

The team was chasing a unique "treble" of League championship, FA Cup and European Cup with Gray in sparkling form. He had already scored what many Leeds fans call the greatest goal ever by a Leeds player – a solo run past several Burnley players which involved flicks and backheels as he somehow got from the byline to a shooting position – when his day came at Wembley for the FA Cup final against Chelsea.

Gray's marking full back was David Webb, a steady but undistinguished defender whom, for the 90 minutes and extra-time period, Gray would duly torment. Webb was, time and again, left on his backside or looking the wrong way as Gray ghosted past him on countless occasions, including one run where he cut inside onto his 'weaker' right foot and crashed a shot against the crossbar. Though Leeds dominated the match, the game still ended 2–2 and a replay was required – Gray had taken the corner which had allowed Jack Charlton to open the scoring. In the replay, Chelsea changed tactics and put the more uncompromising Ron Harris on to Gray and as a result, Gray's danger was snuffed out, Harris badly injured Gray with a brutal tackle to the back of the knee. Chelsea won 2–1 and, in a final twist, it was Webb who scored the winner. Leeds lost the League championship race to Everton and the European Cup semi final to Celtic, thereby ended with nothing.

Gray's frequent battles with injury started, and he missed more than half of the 1971 season, during which Leeds again snatched League championship defeat from the jaws of victory but won the Fairs Cup again. He was in the team which won the FA Cup against Arsenal in 1972 and duly lost it a year later to Sunderland, but missed out on a title medal when Leeds finally won the League again in 1974 thanks to more injury woes. These had become so frequent that when Brian Clough succeeded Don Revie at Leeds United, he began his first team meeting by stating that if Eddie Gray had been a horse, he would have been shot long ago.

His performance on the wing earned the famous tribute from Revie that when he plays on snow, he doesn't leave any footprints.

Gray played in the team which reached the European Cup final in Paris in 1975 but lost, controversially, to Bayern Munich. Also in the team was his younger brother Frank, who had likewise come through the ranks at Elland Road. This was the swansong of the great Don Revie team (Revie himself had left a year earlier to take over as England manager) and Gray's team-mates started to leave the club. By the end of the 1970s, Gray was the only player from any part of the Revie era still at the club (although Peter Lorimer and David Harvey would later make comebacks). Converted to left back, Gray prolonged his career and was in the side which was relegated under former team-mate Allan Clarke in 1982.

Gray's unfortunate injury record meant that his Scotland career was short and infrequent. He won just 12 caps and missed the 1974 World Cup through injury. In an era of hard men – Bremner, Harris, Smith, etc., Gray also had the distinction of never being booked in his career.