Doses the club keep in touch with Doug Laughton ? Or invite him to the club? I've been rereading his book A Dream Come True .

They should do he brought sinfield to Leeds and layer the foundations for the goldens GH owes him a lot IMO

Great Book

His cheque book style of ‘management’ nearly sent us under, leading to the Caddick buy out. So he inadvertently helped us to success!

Laughton wasn't in charge of the finances! He identified players he wanted and the board approved it, it's not his fault they couldn't make the numbers work.

Dougie's sides played some great rugby and his Widnes team featuring Offiah, Tait, Myler, Davies etc was one of the most entertaining (and dirty) I've ever seen. He was a good for a quote too. I remember him saying Franny Cummins would be the next Gene Miles!

As a young fan I would hang off Laughton's every word. I think I knew most of it was BS but he was so entertaining and that Leeds side wasn't bad either despite lacking the final ruthless edge (and maybe team cohesion) which would actually win anything.

Apart from the Golden era it was by far my favourite time to be a Leeds fan.

Don’t know what his health is like now , sadly not many of the players from the 60’s and 70’s are in good nick at 80 years of age, if they get there at all.

He was at a dinner in 2017 for the 40th anniversary of Leeds v Widnes challenge up final along with Reg Bowden and Jim Mills.

Hope he is doing well, he was a great judge of a player, fairly limited in terms of coaching but he always tried to sign players that could do it without much help

This is a great interview from a few years ago - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AMVQN6xqEo

This is a great interview from a few years ago - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AMVQN6xqEo

Nose picker in chief. Good coach, great player, incredible talent spotter. Good days.

I would have said the true architect of the Golden gen was Dean Bell. I loved the Dougie era though.

Doug was a great motivator style coach, with a talent scouts eye, those Widnes teams of the 80's were awesome and every bit as good if not better than the Wigan sides that over took them. I believe one of the reasons he came to Leeds was to be able to match Wigans financial clout, after they were cutting his junior supply lines to stem them. so he did indeed revamp our at the time awful junior development and pave the way for what was to come. we were unlucky not to win some silverware but to (and lost) lost 4 finals under him in about 4 seasons.

he was a great player as well often overshadowed in his era by the likes of Mal Reilly steve Norton phil lowe etc but was a world class international back row. Gb captain, (think ashes and works cup winner as well)

Sir Greg
Dougie limited as a coach?
Best of his era IMO

Did he actually coach the team? Wasn’t the suggestion at the time that Ellery was doing most of the coaching and Doug used to just turn up once a week, put a video on for the players and then leave them to it?

This was a time when the “coach” was the manager.

I wish David Ward had been given the money that was made available to Dougie.

Paul Vautin's description of Alex Murphy's coaching is hilarious. All he knew about fitness was getting the squad doing laps, and apparently barely interacted during training unless the press turned up, and he's suddenly get involved. While the Aussies have more and better athletes, one reason for our relative decline in the 70s and 80s was the standard of coaching. Crazy because we previously had coaches like Roy Francis who were way ahead of their time.

He was brilliant at picking players and players wanted to play for him, I was meaning limited in technical coaching but it was a different era, and he was unlucky in that in those later years he was up against that Wigan super team, albeit I think they were far better coached.

I was one of his signings.......for his central heating company. Lasted 2 weeks, rubbish job.

Schofield didn't reckon much to Dougie according to his biography. It's no wonder Leeds won nothing with that level of dysfunction going on behind the scenes.

IIRC Schofield was battling to keep his 'clique' in the team on top over that of Hanley and the Dougie signings. Dougie responded by basically getting rid of all Schofield's mates in the seasons that followed. At the same time you had the likes of Bobbie Goulding trashing Dougie's car (no wonder he didn't stay long, despite the obvious talent).