Peter Lorimer an absolute Leeds United great, long before fun police were spoiling the game - Dom Matteo

And away from being just the great guy and brilliant man that he was, I was lucky enough to work with Peter and be around him quite a bit.

We were both ambassadors for Leeds United at the same time along with Eddie Gray.

That was an amazing learning curve for me just to be sitting, talking with Peter and spending time with the man away from the legend he was which was just a lovely guy.

I had so much time for him.

I became an ambassador for the club alongside him but Peter has always been an ambassador for the club really.

He was Leeds through and through even though he was born in Dundee.

But I was very down for a couple of days after the news broke that he had passed away and I was just trying to remember the good times and the things I learnt from him.

You don’t think about that stuff until somebody goes but he used to tell me so many things about football.

You get to a certain age and you think you know it all but you don’t and I just used to love listening to what he used to talk about.

What I also loved about him was that he was very honest in the way that he talked. Sometimes when you work for Leeds United, it is difficult to have that honesty all of the time because you want to protect your club.

He always had that and all the greats have that because they have always had that relationship with the club and more so than any of us because these guys achieved more than anybody else did at Leeds.

Let’s be honest, they won everything and I am just absolutely gutted that he is no longer with us.

We have lost a lot of legends over the past year and I am sad. I am going to miss him, and I have said that about a lot of people lately.

It’s the same with Ian St John as I did quite a lot of work with Ian.

It’s a similar type of thing and it really saddens me.

People talk about what age these people are and things but, to me, that doesn’t really matter.

I don’t see it like that. I see it as losing a great man in Lorimer and you can see what it did to people like Eddie Gray, and he needs us now to get around him.

I’m certainly glad that I never had to face Peter as a player by the way. He just loved scoring goals, he was the club’s record goalscorer and the goals that he scored always seemed to be belters!

I know he got some tap-ins as well but he scored some unbelievable goals and, if that was nowadays, someone like that would be getting so much praise for being that type of player. I genuinely believe that a lot of people forget how good people like Peter were.

He probably didn’t get as many Scotland caps as he would have liked - a bit like myself.

He got 21 of them but you have got to remember the era that he was playing in and the players that he played against.

There were some really brilliant players in Scotland at that point as well but Peter had that goalscoring ability that not many people have ever had.

He is ahead of players like John Charles and Allan Clarke on the club’s all-time top goalscorers list and you have got to compare Lorimer with the absolute greats.

And everyone loves a goalscorer!

What I also remember from the footage that I saw of Peter as a kid was that he always had a smile on his face.

He was a tough guy - they all were - but he always played with a smile and not an arrogance.

I always feel that the top players play with a confidence, not an arrogance, and Peter had that.

The news of Peter’s passing came after Friday night’s 2-1 win at Fulham in which I thought Luke Ayling’s celebration for his goal was brilliant, only to then see it disallowed by VAR.

It came up quite quickly on the TV screen and I was sitting there saying ‘they are going to lose this goal here.’

You could see that they were going to disallow what was a brilliant goal and I was just gutted for him.

I hate this VAR thing, I genuinely don’t like it and it’s like the fun police taking all the good that we want from the game. It drives me nuts.

That, for me, was a goal. Come on.

With a judgement like that which is so close, you have got to give people the benefit of the doubt, and I just think it spoils it.

Then we saw the celebration which was absolutely brilliant and that’s what we all want to see.

We want to see people enjoy that but, for Luke, he never got that opportunity - or he did until it was disallowed.

It was a great celebration though I’m not sure about the hair cut.

In my era, he might have got a bit of stick for that long hair!

But this week’s piece is for Peter, an incredible footballer and just a brilliant person when you met him away from football.

I can’t speak highly enough of him.

Dominic Matteo's column in association with Data Facilities

https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/sport/football/leeds-united/leeds-uniteds-internationals-diary-who-is-playing-when-and-how-to-watch-them-as-helder-costa-starts-angola-career-3175981

https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/sport/football/leeds-united/yorkshire-evening-post-launch-leeds-united-only-digital-subscription-ahead-premier-league-campaign-2967964

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Thank you Laura Collins