Savill chuffed with his soccer career

His roaring Lancashire accent – still surviving 35 years on since landing in Launceston to play soccer – bears testament to that.

The fact he could also play a bit in his day almost is inconsequential.

England schoolboys’ caps against traditional football adversaries Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, West Germany, France and The Netherlands in 1973 is just another reminder.

Savill pulls down one of his England caps to his deeds on the pitch that is displayed on the wall of his Hadspen family home.

‘‘They don’t give them away in paper bags,’’ he laughs.

Twice Savill played the internationals in front of 60,000 fans at the old Wembley, but when Savill’s England team toured Australia later that year against an assortment of state opponents, it was more like a few hundred devotees in a foreign land.

‘‘My grandma never went further than half an hour from home all her life and my grandfather only did because he went to war,’’ he said.

‘‘When I said I am going on a tour of Australia, I might as well been going to the moon.’’

The 60-year-old has called Tasmania home since 1980, and despite playing, coaching and achieving most things in the game through all points around the state, there is nowhere he’d rather be than Launceston.

‘‘The lifestyle is miles better than back home in England,’’ Savill said, looking out on the valleys and hills that flow on from his backyard.

‘‘But by the time I’m done with work and football, I haven’t got much time to cut all that grass out there.’’

Savill would eventually turn his back on the English football after seven years at one its country’s best clubs.

Leeds United had signed the apprentice professional Savill after that Australian tour.

Manager Don Revie, who would soon take charge of the England national team, had turned the Whites around over the past decade.

‘‘He came to my house in a small industrial town in Lancashire,’’ Savill said.

‘‘He drove in with his big fancy car – well nobody else had a car in our street in them days and I was the first person to drive in our family.

‘‘The chairman, who was the owner, had a carpet business and I remember that Don Revie authorised for new carpet to be put in my mum’s home.

‘‘We didn’t have any carpet when he walked in – we had just newspapers, cardboard on the floor then.’’

The red carpet was rolled out for Savill when he walked into Elland Road, playing among greats Billy Bremner, Paul Madeley, Tony Currie, Eddie Gray and Johnny Giles.

That was during a golden era for the Yorkshire side after floating between promotion and relegation nine times in the club’s previous 44 years when they were one of England’s strongest representatives in European competitions at the time.

‘‘The Leeds United then, when I arrived, were the Manchester United of today,’’ Savill said.

‘‘And we hated Man United then – we used to kick them to death.’’

Quite literally.

Leeds were a hard team in the day and hard tacklers.

Brian Clough, who would go on to spend 19 seasons at Nottingham Forest, damned his new players’ successful tactics on his arrival, according to Savill.

‘‘Put all your medals away,’’ Clough would say, ‘‘you haven’t won nothing.’’

Savill was once told to clean Brian Clough’s son, Nigel’s boots when he spent time kicking the ball around during school holidays.

‘‘That’s when we’d be inside cleaning up the gear and (Brian) would walk in with his boots and say ‘clean these for me’,’’ Savill said.

A wry grin rises on Savill’s face when he talks about Clough lasting just 44 days before he was sacked.

But he reserved special praise for Jock Stein – by coincidence also only lasted 44 days – who only left Leeds when he accepted the Scotland job.

‘‘The big thing for me is Don Revie and Jock Stein were the Mourinhos and Fergusons of my era and the magnetism they’d have when they walked in the dressing rooms was unbelievable,’’ Savill said.

Savill was finally sacked by his sixth Leeds manager, Jimmy Adamson, and yearned for a sea change.

He fielded offers from Perth, Townsville and Melbourne, before he responded to an advert from Launceston Juventus.

A contract offer from Wimbledon to return to England was of no interest after Savill’s enjoyable first year in Tasmania.

Launceston was paying $50 a game and he was earning about $250 with a stable job.

‘‘That’s double of what I would have been getting at Wimbledon,’’ Savill said.

For the next decade, the club life member would dominate on the pitch with state league’s best player award in 1987 and 1989 and later the Peter Savill Medal named in his honour for the best player at the club.

But the newly appointed Devonport coach, as he reflects on more of a football journey than a career, has come to the realisation he owes the game more than it owes him.

‘‘Every season is a bonus to me,’’ Savill said.

‘‘They might turn around and say we don’t want you any more.’’