Janet Borland

On the 20th of October 1984, 11-year-old Craig Bromfield and his 12-year-old brother Aaron went down to the Seaburn Hotel in Sunderland hoping to get some autographs from the Nottingham Forest players. Aaron spotted Brian Clough walking along the seafront with some of his staff. The boys went over and politely called him Mr Clough. Clough took one look at them. They had no coats on, they were freezing and Aaron had just been swimming in the sea in his pants. Clough called them a couple of “ragtags.” He told them they would “catch their bloody death” dressed like that, and asked if they had eaten any breakfast. They hadn’t. Clough took them back into the hotel and got them fed. Then he told them they could travel to the match with Nottingham Forest on the team bus, as long as they went home first and got permission from their parents. So Craig and Aaron ran the two miles home to Southwick, asked if they could go and ran back again. Once they were on the bus, Clough sat at the front and told them to “bugger off” to the back, where Forest kept the chocolate, crisps and fizzy drinks. They could help themselves. Just don’t disturb the players. For two boys who had grown up in and out of care, begging strangers for money and being sent out to steal, it was the best day of their lives. Craig never got the chance to thank Clough properly, so afterwards he wrote him a letter. Clough wrote back. He told Craig he was pleased they had enjoyed themselves and hoped he would see them again. At the bottom he signed it: “Be good, Love Brian.” Not long afterwards, Sunderland drew Nottingham Forest at Roker Park in the League Cup. Craig and Aaron were waiting at the Seaburn Hotel before the Forest team had even arrived. When Clough stepped off the bus, he hugged them. Again, he decided they looked as though they needed feeding. He told them to go inside and order whatever they wanted. Forest returned to Sunderland again just before Christmas. This time, Clough brought presents. The boys were given a football signed by the Forest squad and padded jackets. Clough hadn’t forgotten how they had looked the first morning he met them. “Now you’ve no excuse for not bringing your coats.” But Clough’s involvement in their lives didn’t stop with football. One day outside the ground, Craig spotted four boys from school who had been bullying him. Clough noticed something was wrong and asked him about it. Craig told him. Clough walked over to the four boys. He gave each of them a ticket for the match. Then he gave them a warning. “I know who you are and I know where you all live, and I’ll come round to yer mams’. Now bugger off!” They never bullied Craig again. Over the next few years, Craig and Aaron became part of Clough’s family. They stayed at his home in Derbyshire, played in the games room, went into Nigel Clough’s bedroom, travelled with Forest and were treated like little brothers by Clough’s children. “We had been brought up to believe nobody could love us; that we were unlovable.” “For the first time, we felt loved and special.” When Craig was 16, his parents decided to move to London without him. Clough told him to come and live with his family. He went from being the 11-year-old boy outside the Seaburn Hotel without a coat to travelling to work with Brian Clough, helping out in the Forest dressing room and sitting in the dugout as they won at Wembley. Years later, Craig was asked what his life might have looked like if he had never walked over to Brian Clough that morning in Sunderland. “If Brian hadn’t done what he did, I wouldn’t have had a life, because I would have been in prison.”