Classy touch from Leeds United with all eyes now on German restart - David Prutton

IT was a wonderful gesture by Leeds United to rename the South Stand at Elland Road as the Norman Hunter Stand.
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Norman was part of the furniture at Leeds and the club is not revered around the world without people such as him putting those building blocks in place.

Those of us from around these parts are fortunate that we are Yorkshire people who have had Leeds United on our doorstep all our life.

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We know how big the club is and the attention that it attracts.

CLASSY: Tributes are laid in memory of Leeds United legend Norman Hunter at Elland Road with the ground's South Stand now renamed the Norman Hunter Stand. Photo by Simon Hulme.CLASSY: Tributes are laid in memory of Leeds United legend Norman Hunter at Elland Road with the ground's South Stand now renamed the Norman Hunter Stand. Photo by Simon Hulme.
CLASSY: Tributes are laid in memory of Leeds United legend Norman Hunter at Elland Road with the ground's South Stand now renamed the Norman Hunter Stand. Photo by Simon Hulme.

But having had a taste of it myself and knowing how iconic that football club is, renaming the stand is a very classy touch from the club and the people that run it nowadays, and fitting more than anything else.

We have also seen the news this week that former Leeds captain Dominic Matteo has fully recovered from having an operation on a brain tumour. That’s awesome news.

I texted Dom on Thursday and the only reason I had his number was because I got it from a mutual friend.

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I was chatting to Dom before this hiatus in football about coming on Sky and doing a Leeds game.

We love the guests that we get on and people that come on to talk about football.

With Leeds United and Dom Matteo, there are not many bigger names in recent years that have played in bigger games and done what he has done.

It is obvious what he means to Leeds and the fans, and I text him about coming on the show.

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Dom then rang me back pretty much straight away and he was very chatty, approachable and humble.

You could chat to him like you had spoken to him a hundred times before.

I can’t remember if I ever played against him, possibly, but in essence he doesn’t know me too much from Adam.

But he was chatting away in detail about what he had been through, the unbelievably horrendous experience he has had with it all and how utterly grateful he was for the people that looked after him and where he was in life even more so now.

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None of us know what is around the corner and these last few months have been a rollercoaster.

At one end of the spectrum there’s condolences and sympathy and empathy that goes out to Norman’s family and people lucky enough to call him a friend.

Then at the other end of the spectrum you see someone like Dom, a young man being declared fit off the back of what he has been through.

The two ends of the spectrum can really make you feel very emotional about the whole thing, one legendary existence sadly coming to a close and another one being re-affirmed and prolonged.

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It really does give you a sense of where we all fit in the world.

We can all look at statements from the EFL, the Premier League and people in positions of responsibility talking about when the game could resume.

You have people looking at it thinking ‘I cannot believe they are talking about football’.

But that’s their job. They are employed to try and work out contingency plans and to knit competitions and seasons together.

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And they are working wholly reactively to what the government are doing and in turn the government are reacting to what the science is and what the biology of the human condition is with regards to how we deal with this virus.

We are all hoping for a glimmer of something that is normal.

Whether that’s something as nonsensical as a football match or an end to a season, it gives us some semblance of what life was like and what sort of life we would like to get back to.

We will wait with bated breath and see what happens with Germany who are intending to resume on May 9.

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If that happens in the way they want it to happen then it might reflect on how we go about things in England.

But it’s not even a week-by-week thing as the day-by-day existence of some clubs in the Football League and how treacherous that is is a genuinely terrifying position and it’s not even something of their own making.

There are fingers being pointed about how clubs are run and that’s just the way football has been, week-to-week, month-to-month, not necessarily hand-to-mouth but relying on the livelihood of the players and fans through the door.

As much as there is a disparity at the top end, it just goes to show that fans are the lifeblood of a football club.