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Why has Mirror scoop on Don Revie been airbrushed from history?

There was a remarkable piece about Don Revie, the former Leeds and England football manager, in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph by the usually excellent Henry Winter.

It was remarkable for what it did not say, omitting from what Winter called Revie's controversial life story the most controversial episode of all.

For those of you who don't know, Revie made an enormous success of managing Leeds from 1961 until 1974, winning league titles, several cups and European trophies.

He then became the England manager, where his record was anything but spectacular, and in 1977 he suddenly resigned - the first man to do so from that post - to manage the United Arab Emirates team.

Revie angered the Football Association by selling the news of his resignation to the Daily Mail, before the FA received his formal resignation letter.

The FA then suspended Revie from football for 10 years on a charge of bringing the game into disrepute. All this is recounted by Winter but - as with Revie's Wikipedia entry - the real reason for Revie's downfall is airbrushed from history.

For the true situation we have to turn to the Daily Mirror cuttings library and the memoirs of the late Richard Stott, a former editor who, in 1977, was one the paper's senior reporters.

With evidence from the former Leeds goalkeeper, Gary Sprake, he exposed Revie as a match-fixer. In fact, it was when Revie discovered that Sprake was about to spill the beans that he vanished to the UAE.

It's all there in Stott's book, Dogs and Lampposts (memo to Henry: turn to pages 173-181).

Once Revie had taken up his job with UAE for £340,000 a year (a colossal sum in those days), other witnesses came forward. One of them, a respected player and manager, Bob Stokoe, told how Revie tried to bribe him to lose a match.

By the time Stott had completed his investigation he was able to present the FA with a 315-page dossier cataloguing Revie's long period of corruption.

Revie sued the Mirror for libel, but he did not pursue his legal action. The FA simply swept it all under the carpet, though it did issue the ban on Revie.

I just can't understand how, in a piece of more than 1,500 words, Winter managed to overlook this key incident, the real reason for Revie's downfall.

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