Long before anyone wanted to bend it like Beckham, we all wanted to lamp it like Lorimer.
Back in the 1970s, the hottest shot in football was responsible for a pilot Neighbourhood Watch scheme.
If the kids next door were playing football in the back garden, you were always looking out of the window because the next ball sailing over the fence was only a couple of minutes away.
Especially if one of the little urchins was trying to belt the living daylights out of it like Peter Lorimer.
The last 12 months have been cruel to everyone, but for disciples of Leeds United it has been especially horrid.
(Image: Colorsport/REX/Shutterstock)
From Don Revie’s dynasty in all-white, we have lost Jack Charlton, Norman Hunter, Trevor Cherry and, now, one of football’s most respected flowers of Scotland, the great Lorimer.
Search the internet and you’ll find clips of his finest goals. The harder he struck his shot, the sweeter it flew.
Peter Lorimer’s death, at the age of 74 after a long illness, feels like another star extinguished in the night sky.
You didn’t have to support Leeds to admire that right foot with its own nuclear warhead.
(Image: Popperfoto via Getty Images)
You didn’t have to be Scottish to be out of your set when Lorimer scored against Zaire at the World Cup in 1974.
And you certainly didn’t have to believe in the ‘dirty Leeds’ propaganda to marvel at his impeccable manner if you popped into his pub, the Commercial in Holbeck, for a snifter or a chat.
For Leeds United fans, the greatest cruelty of all – after this unspeakable year of mourning in lockdown – is that Charlton, Hunter, Cherry and now Lorimer have left the stage without the send-off they richly deserved.
When the all-clear klaxon is sounded, surely there will be a memorial service for those four horsemen of Revie’s cavalry.
(Image: PA)
One by one, a great team is being transferred to the celestial dressing room in the sky.
Big Jack took no prisoners, Hunter would bite yer legs in the tackle,
Cherry was a manager’s dream and Lorimer was the golden shot.
Thanks for the memories, Peter. At least when you asked if you could have your ball back, the opposition keeper only had to retrieve it from his net, not next door’s garden.
