Reply With QuoteI expect they’ll be disappointed when they discover the Lawrenson Kitbag story is complete fiction ?Originally Posted by Penywaun gentrified
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I was cheered up last night when I looked at the WhatsApp group of my walking football team up here in the Midlands - one of the guys had just started reading the biography 'The greatest footballer you never saw'. I'm the only Bluebird here and another player had also read it. The guys thought some of his antics hilarious, especially Mark Lawrenson's kit bag!
I expect they’ll be disappointed when they discover the Lawrenson Kitbag story is complete fiction ?
Is it?
Really?
The story may have been enhanced but I have it on good authority that he left a message in the opposition's bath after the sending off.
If you read the “Greatest Footballer You Never Saw” book it’s says that it was supposed to have happened but doesn’t confirm it. The Wikipedia entry on Friday which Is quite detailed says “according to legend” it happened but doesn’t confirm it. Roger Titford , the Reading FC club historian and biographer and authority on Robin Friday stated categorically that it did not happen but was a story made up in the 1990s after his death by a “punk” football t shirt seller. The historian of Brighton FC had never heard of the incident. Also, in a 2018 Radio 5 interview on the subject of Robin Friday Mark Lawrenson denied that it had happened. According to David Giles, who was there, after he was sent off he got back to the changing room he threw all the City players clothes and belongings in the bath and disappeared. Brighton had to lend the rest of the City team tracksuits to go home in. If the kitbag incident had happened I doubt if Brighton would have been so charitable
The defecating in the opposition team bath was supposed to have happened when playing for Reading away to Mansfield
it happened. out for a curry with my brother we sat next to david giles and he told us the whole story.
he was there enoch and i dont believe you were?
Have I read this incorrectly?
I know that Friday was a strange chap but why would he throw his OWN team mates clothes in the bath? Maybe the opposition teams’, if he was really that wild.
But his own team mates’ doesn’t really make sense, unless I am missing something very obvious here?
Here is my source for the David Giles aspect of the story. He is quoted in this article
https://thegoldstonewrap.com/2013/05...-robin-friday/
It is a Brighton article and it also states that the kitbag incident did not happen
I also didn't mention that I had contacted our Club Historian Richard Shepherd who confirmed what happened in line with the David Giles
quote.
So, I am quoting a version according to 3 Club Historians, a Brighton Blog who would have gone to town on it if it had happened, Mark Lawrenson and David Giles.
The only obvious thing is that he was a nutter.
His concern for his team mates is exemplified by the incident in training when he punched Steve Grapes so hard he was in a neck brace for a fortnight, all over an incident when Friday was accidentally hit on the back of the head by a ball and Steve Grapes had the temerity to laugh at him
I know the shitting in the bath thing to be true because Richie Morgan told me so.Though I can't remember whether it was the home or away bath.
It is true, it took place 8 November 1976 at Field Mill, Mansfield in a 4-0 defeat. He was substituted and broke in to the Mansfield dressing and defecated in the Mansfield team bath. Lovely bloke ! He was dropped for 2 games, played 3 more times for Reading before reluctantly joining us for £28,000. We were not his first choice but no-one else was mug enough to buy him.
That last line is the relevant part.
No one else would touch him.
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