Being recognised as the best footballer in the country is arguably the ultimate honour in English football and former Leeds defender Norman Hunter had the honour of being the first on the list of PFA award winners.
Mark Walker visited him as he recalled his memories of the first awards night in 1974 ...
The finer details have faded from memory, like the colour of his frilly-fronted dinner shirt or the length of his sideburns, but ask Norman Hunter about that night in a Park Lane hotel in London when his fellow professionals voted him best footballer in the land and he glows with pride.
Hunter won the PFA's inaugural Players' Player of the Year Award at the end of the 1973/4 season and the honour remains his personal highpoint in a trophy-laden playing career spanning 20 years.
The former Leeds United defender won two Football League Championship medals, the FA Cup, the League Cup, two UEFA Cups, a European Cup Winners' Cup and a European Cup runners-up medal with one of the great English club sides. He was included by Sir Alf Ramsey in two England World Cup squads and has a winner’s medal from the 1966 final at Wembley. But for personal gratification the PFA's coveted players' player accolade tops the lot.
"To me personally it meant everything," he says. "It was one of the best things that had ever happened to me. My fellow pros voting for me, a defender, with the reputation I had? It gave me a lot of pleasure and a lot of satisfaction. It was definitely one of the best moments in my career without a doubt and from a personal point of view probably the best.
"It was the first one. Everybody was in there for it. The gaffer told me - and how he knew I don't know - that I was going to win it and he was right."
The gaffer, the late Don Revie, had built his all-conquering Leeds side of the sixties and seventies on the bedrock of Hunter's partnership with Jack Charlton at the heart of defence. Revie's Leeds were a dominant force - they had also been Championship runners-up five times and losing FA Cup finalists on three other occasions - but outside West Yorkshire they were universally unpopular, accused of taking gamesmanship to new levels and the manager's win-at-all-costs mantra did not sit well with the Establishment.
Leeds were, in the main, portrayed by the southern-based national press as a cynical bunch with the likes of Hunter, Billy Bremner and Johnny Giles often cast as the villains of the piece. So there was nobody more surprised than the man himself when Hunter took that first players' player prize.
"I remember on the night there was a strong rumour that it was between (Liverpool winger) Ian Callaghan and myself, but with my reputation at Leeds and everything else, I was as shocked as anybody that I actually got it,” he recalls.
No name in British football evokes memories of an age when the game was played by hard men more than Norman 'Bites Yer Legs' Hunter. Tough as teak and uncompromising in the tackle, Hunter was every striker's nightmare but was also one of the most accomplished defenders of his generation. A converted striker, he was comfortable on the ball and launched many an attack from the back with his astute range of passing, while his anticipation and positional sense made up for any lack of genuine pace.
"Among the pros I got a lot of congratulations," says Norman. "I had this reputation and all that went with it, but players weren't going to vote for you if you couldn't do the other things well, it's as simple as that. If all I could do was tackle and supposedly kick people and things like that, all the players of the day would certainly not have voted for me, so for me personally it was the best recognition. You just don't get that award if you can't play. It's the top award for any footballer."
"It was definitely one of the best moments in my career without a doubt and from a personal point of view probably the best."
Norman Hunter, PFA Players' Player of the Year Winner 1973-74.
Norman, who thinks he voted for Colin Todd for the 1973/4 PFA Players' Player of the Year Award but cannot be certain, is in no doubt about the extra pressures modern-day players have to cope with, on and off the field.
"I can't remember too many players with depression when I was playing, but there must have been. But it never got publicised then. Now, this on-line gambling is a problem. When your football career has gone and you're not doing anything, the easiest thing in the world is to sit at home and get involved with the on-line stuff.
"That's a big problem now. Whatever the players earn today, they still live to it don't they? They might earn millions, but they spend millions. There's more made of it all in the press than there used to be and the PFA does now play a bigger role.
"I've been there myself. All I'd ever done was football, football and you get to 40-something and you're sacked as a manager and then what do you do? Now, the PFA is there for you if you need them. They're there to help and can re-train players and educate players about what's available. They do a good job.
"It played a big part for me, admittedly later on in my career. I was in the PFA pension scheme and as the years have rolled on, injuries and other things happen, the PFA stepped in and did a good job helping pay for certain things.
"You don't think so much about the PFA as a young player. When I was a young man playing the game I don't think I fully appreciated the PFA, you only start to think about it as the years roll on, but players are more aware of it now. Back then it was just a union that you were a part of. Nowadays I think the players are made more aware of what it has to offer."
One thing Norman believes every player is fully appreciative of however, is the significance of the PFA's awards.
"I knew it was some achievement when I won it,” he says. “I did appreciate it at the time and even more as the years went by and I'm sure the players do today.
"You only have to look at the players who have won it to know you're on a special list."
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