Legend relives City stop over

FROM V to Y in the alphabet is but a short jump, unlike from Vancouver to York.

Unlikely as it may sound, such a cross-globe expedition was being relived this week by one of football's mega-forces of the 1970s.

Modern-day York City open their programme of pre-season friendlies this Friday night with a visit to KitKat Crescent of mighty, but now fallen Leeds United.

For one legend of the latter it is a duel that has stirred memories of a brief stopping-off point at the former as he reached the end of a distinguished career.

Peter Lorimer, he of the thunder-booted cannon-shot that propelled admiring Leeds fans into raucous exhortations of "100 miles an hour", once spent close on two-thirds of a season in the red of York City. Yes, the very Lorimer who patrolled the right wing for the mighty whites with pace and predatory power. Yes, the self-same Lorimer who starred in the 1974 World Cup campaign for Scotland.

It was some five years after excelling for the Scots in Germany that the Dundee-born hot-shot landed, literally, at York after the Minstermen had beaten off the challenge of several clubs to acquire his service during the break in the fledgling North American Soccer League.

Then City manager Charlie Wright, hearing that his countryman was available for the next six months, contacted the Scottish international just ahead of the start of the 1979-80 Fourth Division campaign. Just three weeks later, Lorimer lined up at Bootham Crescent for his City debut against Peterborough on September 8.

It was not an auspicious start, City losing 2-0, but Lorimer was as booming as his percussive feet in making an impact on the York faithful as York was to do for him.

Recalled Lorimer this week from the Commercial Inn he runs in Leeds: "I was in between leaving Toronto Blizzards and then joining Vancouver Whitecaps as player-coach in the new American season when I came back to Britain.

"Charlie Wright, whom I did not know, was first on the phone to me out of the blue really. But he asked if I'd fancy coming along to York to play and keep up my level of fitness.

"It would only be a brief spell as I was contracted to the NASL, but it was a way of keeping reasonably fit between the two seasons with a good standard of football, so I said yes."

It was a City patrol he was never to regret.

The bald facts state that Lorimer figured in 32 games and bagged nine goals - some laced with his trademark shooting ferocity - for the Minstermen, mainly clad in the number eight shirt rather than the number seven he adorned at Leeds for close on 16 years before his move to Canada.

But the brief tenure on the right for York proved a mutually beneficial blessing. City's fortunes improved and Lorimer revelled in the cut and thrust of league football at basement status.

"I thoroughly enjoyed my time at York City," revealed Lorimer.

"They were good, footballing people there. The football club was always well run and tidy, and the chairman, Michael Sinclair, was a really nice man.

"At Leeds, you were always aware of York City. While it was just down the road, it was also a place where some of the kids who did not make it at Leeds would go, so you'd take note of how they were doing."

It's not always total recall of his Crescent spell for Lorimer.

He confided he could not recall any of his nine goals, adding how he struggled sometimes to recall the majority of the legion of the goals he bagged for Leeds. But he was aware of some of the personalities at York and he painfully could never forget his farewell.

Said Lorimer: "I remember they had some real good players already in the team there like Stanny (Gordon Staniforth) and Gary Ford. And there were a couple of good young players coming through in John Byrne and Alan Kamara.

"My only regret at York was my final game where I got sent off. Some youngster kept coming through me and I finally turned round and pushed him. It was nothing really, but the referee came over and sent me off. Maybe he was trying to make a name for himself.

"Either way, it was not the way I wanted to end my final game for York, where I'd had a really enjoyable time before going back to Canada."

I hope Becks isn't thinking it's going to be easy in America'

PETER Lorimer and David Beckham have more than the number seven they wore at their respective Uniteds of Leeds and Manchester in common.

Beckham is in the United States counting down the days to his debut with Major League Soccer club LA Galaxy, who paid an astronomical amount to end his status as a Real Madrid galaticos. While the money now is many light years and orbits away from when Lorimer first made the trip across the Atlantic to join the first NASL with Toronto Blizzards and then Vancouver Whitecaps, like Beckham, the ex-Leeds man was a pioneer.

He recalled: "The Americans were trying to get football off the ground and they did so by importing big names on the world stage like Franz Beckenbauer and Johann Cruyff at about the time I went.

"I believe it would have taken off then had they won the right to stage the World Cup in 1982 when all the big business was ready to come in. However, the bid first went to Mexico and when they could not stage it, the World Cup was held in Spain. Some of the interest then collapsed a bit."

Lorimer thinks Beckham's input will help to swell the interest in a country where the market has as yet been untapped.

"It's waiting to take off. The interest is there and you only have to look at the number of American investors in the Premiership now," he said. "However, I hope Beckham does not think it's going to be easy. The American clubs now have a lot of excellent players."

Lorimer's City firsts...

* First game: v Peterborough at home, lost 2-0, September 8, 1979* First goal: v Wigan away, won 5-2, September 15 1979* First home goal: v Stockport, drew 2-2, September 22, 1979* First FA Cup goal: v Mossley at home, won 5-2, November 1, 1979* First dismissal: v Tranmere at home, lost 1-0, March 1, 1980.