Be Good, Love Brian: Growing up with Brian Clough

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Even now, I struggle with what happened. There are days when it hits me more. Days when I just sit there and wonder who I am. Am I the person I have grown into, who I think is predominantly good, or is that a mask? Underneath it all, am I still that scruffy little kid?" While Aaron joined the army at 16, Craig moved in on a more permanent basis. He was close to Nigel and would go on to work for the eldest brother Simon. He speaks fondly of Clough's wife Barbara - always Mrs Clough to Craig even now. To do that I had to be honest about the life I had before I met them. If I then went on to hide what I did the whole book would be a lie. This isn't about what people think of me. It'a about what people think of them. Whatever consequences or criticism I face, I deserve.

Even now, he follows Nigel's teams with a passion, having switched his support from Burton Albion to Mansfield when he moved clubs. He goes to games home and away. "It is my weak way of showing I am loyal when I was not loyal as a kid," he explains.

I don't know if it selfish but that might help me if I am able to contribute to one or two kids having a better life. He would send newspaper cuttings of his success in Poland to the Clough family, perhaps in the hope that they would feel some pride and vindication in their decision. He was not so much proving them wrong but proving them right for giving him that chance. The 2nd reason I wrote it (maybe selfishly because of guilt but also because it's my true charachter) is because I would love to somehow be able to help a kid or two who is in the kind of situation I was as a child, have a better life. He is doing so by using the proceeds to raise money for boys like he was. He has already given much of the book advance to charities supporting the teenage homeless and victims of domestic abuse. "Some good is going to come out of it which is very nice," he says.

The tale itself is a fascinating one, his rough upbringing to a chance encounter that opens up a life so many young kids would dream of, but it's also just as much a story about simple human kindness given what the Clough family do for Craig.This story is incredible. As a younger forest fan I only hear of Brian in stories told to me and this is by far the best one. What a lovely man he was and what a brilliant way to tell it from Craig, you can hear the regret he lives with in the way parts of the story are told but I’m sure Brian knows you were sorry and he’d have loved this story being told by you. Thank you for sharing this brilliant story. For anyone growing up in the North East in the 80s it’s an incredible reminder of the time and landscape through a story of love, kindness, poverty and a chance life changing encounter on a Seaburn beach that you struggle to believe at times. Over to the left, in the Leppings Lane end, Liverpool supporters are being lifted over the fences or being helped up to the second tier of the stand. The game comes to a standstill.

I think that is one viewpoint and many people will probably feel the same way including the author himself. I would have gone to prison because the amount was substantial. My life at that point would have been ruined by a criminal record, a reputation. I had no education. I would have had no chance if they had done what they could have done. In 2018, he saw Nigel at a match. They hugged and talked. Nigel told him he was sorry to hear about Aaron. Craig didn’t know that his brother, by then an alcoholic, had died a few weeks earlier after drinking heavily and taking too many antidepressants. Craig insists Aaron hadn’t intended to kill himself – his clothes were laid out, neatly pressed for the next day. Friends of Aaron had told the Cloughs, but not Craig. Craig Bromfield was just 13 years old when Brian Clough, on a whim, took him and his older brother Aaron in. The next day, I went out to take Del the dog for a walk when someone emerged from behind a clump of trees.Brian has a rifle for shooting pheasants, although it has yet to be fired at anything. Now, he threatens to use it on those milling around outside. For those few days, he retreated totally into himself. He was as quiet and as alone as I ever saw him. Those days will be the start of his being dragged down by alcohol. What happened at that point is that I flipped. I realised the gift that he had given me. I changed as a person. I went from this scruffy little kid who was bullied by everybody to a managing director of three companies over in Warsaw earning six-figure salaries."

I love Brian Clough, he was the Forest manager when I was growing up. I might romanticise my childhood memories but he was one of the best things to happen to the club. It is a study in society. The haves and have nots. It's a story of love and what it means to have it or not have it as a child. It's a story of belonging, escape, believing in magic and miracles and fate and whether you can ever truly escape where you are created. Franz Carr taps me on the shoulder and says: “Hang on a second, son. Sit down and shut up, this is something different.” This is a fantastic read, I found it to be very well written and a very personal and open account of Craig's Bromfield's incredible story. While he talks to Nigel now, there was no reunion with his father. He came close once. At Burton Albion during Nigel's first spell there, but stopped himself. "It was totally my fault. I just bottled it at the last minute because I did not know what to say."I do hope the humour of the book comes across as well. It is dark but it is funny. I don't want the negative side to be the overriding side. I want it to be the beautiful act that they did. Just because I am negative about it, does not mean that the story is." I broke down in the office and could not stop crying for 10 to 15 minutes. I was angry with myself for not fixing it. It left me with such a hole. I have had a fantastic life since meeting Brian but nothing can follow that. It is heart-breaking that he has gone. I was crushed." A really interesting read. Terms like 'a journey' or 'a rollercoaster' are used too often but Craig's story really does take you on a trip. Not just the AtoZ of the the timeline, but if you are of a certain vintage (I'm 40) and have certain interests (football, Forest, Brian Clough) it is a time machine to a world that now seems so long ago but also related to what we all are now as adults. It was the start of the relationship. The book tells stories of Clough saving Craig and Aaron from bullies and even allowing him to sit on the Forest bench. Perhaps intuitively aware of their difficult homelife, the boys were invited to come down and stay with Clough.