~Peter (Sav)

"When I first arrived here in 1980, I instantly fell in love with Launceston. It was very clean and quiet and a bit backward and I really liked that. The population was less than some of the crowds I'd played in front of, and that appealed to me also.

I was initially boarding with a bloke from the soccer club, Ross Wesson and his wife and not long after I arrived, he said to me 'Come on Pete, let’s go to the pub and have a few beers'. That sounded like a good plan. He just walked out of his house, didn’t lock the door, once we arrived at the pub, he left his keys in his car, and in the pub he just left his money sitting on the bar!! I couldn’t believe it. In England, if you did that it’d be gone quicker than you know. You couldn’t even leave your washing on the line in Northern England as some bastard would nick it. Hence to say, I settled in to the relaxed and easy going laid back style of Launceston life very quickly".

"I was born in Bacup, a small cotton industry town in Northern England, about 15 mile from Manchester. My mum had three kids and been divorced before she was 21. Back then, divorce wasn’t the normal you know, it was very much looked down upon, so she struggled on her own with three young ones. My dad just up and left after the birth of my younger sister. No idea why. He just pissed off and that was it. Never saw him ever again.

My sister Pauline was in and out of hospital most of her life. She suffered from asthma something terrible. She ended up dying at 15 from an asthma attack. It wasn’t anywhere near as treatable as it is now of course. It devastated my mum at the time.

Growing up, we had no money, but it didn’t worry us none. We had my grandparents with us, living in a two up-two down house with no bathroom and a toilet down the laneway. People say that life must have been tough but it wasn’t. I had a great childhood. We had the cricket field and football oval next door to our estate. We had it all on our doorstep and life was a lot of fun. Football was our life.

As we got older, my brother John ended up buggering off to a kibbutz in Israel. A kibbutz is basically a drug den. We had a period there where we drifted apart and he ended up moving to Australia and now lives in Queensland. We aren’t very close. Some families are. Some aren’t. But that’s life.

I played football all the way through school and I suppose you could say I showed a bit of form, so, at 13 years of age, I got selected for the representative teams for the region and eventually for the England national team at underage level. 
(See photo in top of comments)

We got to play at Wembley Stadium twice, in front of 60,000 people and in the next 12 months, I played in 7 international matches, including going to Holland and Australia. There were usually scouts around the matches and I must have impressed the right people because one day, after we returned from our trip to Australia, this big, fancy car pulled up at my house. Which was a big deal as no one in our street even had a car. In later years, I was the first person in my family to not only buy a car, but to ever drive.

So anyway, out of this big fancy car climbs Don Revie, who was Leeds United manager at the time. He wanted to sign me up to come and play and asked my mother if she could sign the papers, which of course she did. When he come into our place, he saw we had no carpet, just newspaper and cardboard on the floor, so he organised my mums house to be fully carpeted. He had a colleague who owned a carpet manufacturers so he took care of it. He didn’t have to do that, so it was a such a nice gesture. My mum was stoked.

So there I was, at 14 years of age, leaving school and off to play for Leeds United. It was a pretty big deal I suppose, but it’s only now that I’m older, that I realize how big of a deal it was. My mum then got an official letter from the club asking about my leaving school and other particulars.

I lived with a family in Leeds and they were paid by the football club to have me there as a boarder. So, here I was, just a teenager straight out of school and I was a full time professional footballer, playing in the Central League for Leeds United. It was pretty surreal but it was also a job. They were pretty tough on us young blokes. It was an apprenticeship of sorts. No drinking, train hard constantly, no misbehaving. We'd clean boots, sweep floors you name it. It was a tough but rewarding industry to be in.

Leeds United at the time were the Manchester United of today. They were winning everything. The F.A Cup. The European Cup Final. They were one of the best and richest football clubs in the world.

I was paid 90 pound a week plus 10 quid extra if we won the weekly game. To get some comparison, a full time miner who worked a 44 hour week, was earning about 50 pounds a week. So I was doing alright for a young bloke you know? The top pros were on about 300 quid a week.

I was playing alongside some great names. Billy Bremner, Johnny Giles, Norman Hunter, Tony Currie and Paul Madely. Huge names back in the day. These guys really were amongst the best footballers in the world and are integral parts of the folklore of English football. People like them, and Don Revie of course, when they'd walk into the room, they had an aura, a magnetism about them. It really was a fantastic environment for a young bloke to be in. I loved it really. 
(See team photos with Peter in top of comments)

One day, we were playing a midweek match against Manchester United and we were great rivals. We hated them actually. It was a particularly bruising affair with plenty of vicious tackles. Our captain said to us before the match “If anyone gets sent off, I will personally punch you in the nose”. After I got sent off (laughs) I was having a shower before the match had even finished, and I heard a door slam and I thought hello I'm about to cop a punch in the shnozz here. It was my captain. He’d been sent off too. Talk about laugh.

Now I'm older and my kids are grown, I think about it a lot more. At the time, I wasn't really that overwhelmed by it all because I was part of the inner sanctum of this renowned football world. But now, I recall it as being quite an exciting time in my life.

I never really kept any photos from my time there. Once I moved to Australia, my grandfather sent me over a heap of newspaper clippings and some photos, and that’s all I have today.

I was playing in the Central League and the next few years were quite successful for me. Then in '74 I think it was, Don Revie ended up leaving Leeds to manage the England national team.

During my era there, Brian Clough came to be manager. He was a very intimidating manager and his tenure was so brief and legendary, they made a movie about it a few years ago called “The Damned United” which I absolutely loved watching. It brought back so many memories for me. He said to the players 'Take your medals down! You've won nothing'. The players hated him. Clough only lasted only 44 days. Then Jimmy Armfield came on board, till ’78. 
He was replaced by Jock Stein, the best Scottish manager in history after having a great career with Celtic. Remarkably, he too, only lasted 44 days. The business of football is a harsh world that’s for sure.

The top ten players back then were chain smokers. Times have changed now. We played a European Cup Semi- Final first leg against Barcelona, which we won, and in the rooms, my memories are not of the game, not of the massive crowd, it was of the champion Dutchman and Barcelona striker Johan Cruyff, chain smoking before the match. This guy was the best in the world, second only to Pele', winning the Ballon D’Or three years in a row and he smoked like a chimney. Hard to imagine really. We went onto to be beaten by Bayern Munich in the European Cup Final.

Jimmy Adamson replaced Jock Stein as manager at Leeds and he sacked me when I was 20 years old. That’s life. I have to be honest, I was never good enough to play in the first division. That’s not to say it didn’t devastate me to be sacked from a club I had devoted so much time and energy towards, but what do you do? You move on. So that’s what I did.

After I'd left Leeds, I had received offers from Australian clubs to go and play in Western Australia and Queensland. I was reading a magazine called World Soccer Weekly and I saw an advertisement for a club in Tasmania looking for players. That club was called Launceston Juventus. I answered the ad and made my plans to leave England. It was 1980 when I flew into Tasmania to start a new life.

After my first season with Launceston Juventus, I was offered a contract to go and play for Wimbledon, back in England. Leeds were now in the first division and Wimbledon were in the fourth division. So I went back but when I got back to the U.K, I just felt like it wasn’t right. I had had my time in football, I wasn’t good enough to make it to the top, and it was time for me to settle down, get a job and allow football to become a second priority in my life. So I promptly came back to Tassie and I stayed here. I have never returned to England, but I would like to go back soon to see my mother before she dies. My mum remarried and I have never met her husband either. So I would love to get back there soon.

When I moved here, soccer was not a popular sport. VFL was the main sport. Soccer was a fledgling sport. People called it wogball you know? The president of Launceston Juventus Soccer Club was a great man named Peter Mies. I don’t mind admitting I was a broken down footballer when I came to Australia. I had no trade or skills other than football and Peter Mies took me under his wing and I will never forget the kindness and respect he showed me. I got a job working for him as a painter and decorator, which is the job I’ve done for the last 37 years. When he retired, I took over his business, and it's been a successful profession for me and I’m now only a few years from retiring myself.

The soccer scene in Tasmania is all the more richer for having wonderful people like Peter Mies in it. He is a legend of the game here in Tasmania and I'll always appreciate what he has done for not only me but soccer in Tasmania.

Launceston Juventus ended up becoming Launceston City and I played for them up until the age of 40.
I ended up coaching after I retired from playing. I coached Launceston City, Northern Rangers, Devonport Strikers, South Hobart and finally Hobart Zebras. I have just retired from there halfway through the season. I just didn’t have anything left. I just lost my passion and desire to do it. I remember hearing Leigh Matthews say that after he won three straight flags with Brisbane, he just lost his passion for it, and I really related to it. You have to live football 24/7 and it just got too much for me.

My greatest football memories are from here in Tasmania, not England. I have met some brilliant people through football here in Tassie and I have had a lot of success here as a player and a coach. I am proud to say that I am the only person to coach a Tasmanian team into the FFA Cup, which I did with Devonport Strikers last year. 
(See photo in top of comments) 
Having the Best & Fairest award named after me at Launceston City is such a great honour for me also. Such a great club and to honour me in that way is just terrific.

Soccer has become hugely popular here in the last ten or fifteen years and it's just going to get bigger. Football has played a huge role in my life and although I got a lot out of it on a personal and professional level, I feel that I've also given back to the game, especially here in my adopted home of Tassie. I have two amazing kids and a wonderful wife and moving down here was one of my best moves".

#humansoflaunceston
#leedsunited
#launcestoncity