MARK LEATHER spent six years as the first team physiotherapist at Anfield having previously been Brighton’s physio in the early days of Barry Lloyd’s reign as manager.
Leather tended the injured when Albion were promoted from the old Third Division in 1987-88 and half of the 1988-89 tier two campaign before moving back to his native north west.
Roy Evans added Leather’s specialist knowledge to the backroom team at Anfield in 1994 but the physio was controversially sacked by his successor Gerard Houllier following a row over the then teenage striker Michael Owen’s fitness.
A sign of the way Leather expected to work with managers came in an interview for Albion’s matchday programme. “Barry Lloyd will respect the decision if I say a player needs more time to get back to fitness,” he told interviewer Dave Beckett. “From that point of view, he is sadly in the minority.
“If it was different, I wouldn’t hang around, but it still amazes me that some clubs don’t realise that if we all stick to what we know things will run more smoothly.”
Leather, who’d spent three years studying for a diploma, and gained experience in the National Health Service, added: “We’re getting away from the old ‘bucket-and-sponge’ image.”
Ahead of his arrival at the Goldstone, Leather had combined his studies with helping out Exeter City, Leek Town, Port Vale and Sheffield Wednesday. And during the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh in 1986, Leather provided specialist medical support for the weightlifters and wrestlers.
He revealed a funny story against himself in a matchday programme article. Asked to reveal his ‘most embarrassing moment’ he said: “During the Port Vale and Scunthorpe match in 1985, when Port Vale scored, I jumped up out of the bench hitting my head on the dugout roof and needed smelling salts and a cold sponge.”
Perhaps predictably nicknamed ‘The Fizz’, Leather sought to give an insight to his role in his matchday programme interview. “I try to be friends with all of the lads and the management too, but sometimes you really do have to sit on the fence,” he said.
“There’s pressure sometimes from both sides to say a player’s ready to return, but you have to stand back from the situation and give a professional opinion.”
The Albion gave him a regular slot in the matchday programme which he used to give readers updates on the progress of injured players, and in recent times he has become a regular source for the media seeking expert comments on football injuries.
Leather now has his own physiotherapy business and back in the day at Brighton he and his physiotherapist wife Lucy ran a sports injury clinic for the general public two evenings a week.
Born in Bolton on 24 June 1961, Leather left the Seagulls halfway through the 1988-89 season to return to more a familiar part of the country and took a job in the NHS in Chorley, Lancashire.
Leather had been an ardent Bolton Wanderers fan from an early age and his all-time favourite player was Frank Worthington, who had played for the Seagulls during the 1984-85 season.
When Evans stepped up to take charge of Liverpool, Leather was one of his first appointments (along with goalkeeping coach Joe Corrigan, whose playing career had ended with the Seagulls).
An insight into Evans’ decision-making was given in the book Men In White Suits, by Simon Hughes. “With Mark Leather’s arrival, there was an end to the running repair jobs carried out by a succession of unqualified coaches mid game,” he wrote.
“Regularly injured players had long been treated with suspicion at Liverpool. (Bill) Shankly maintained his side were the fittest in the league, with pre-season geared towards building stamina and therefore preventing muscle tears.
“It was a difficult theory to argue against. Liverpool won the 1965-66 title using just 14 players all season. Anyone who suffered an injury was almost bullied into feeling better. ‘Otherwise you really were persona non grata,’ Alan Hansen said.
“Leather’s recruitment meant that (Ronnie) Moran could focus on drilling the first team in the Liverpool way rather than writing what Evans describes as ‘little scribbles’ on an old ledger, charting training patterns.”
Endorsements to Leather’s attributes appear on his website from the likes of Robbie Fowler and Jamie Redknapp, who is quoted as saying: “Mark Leather has been brilliant with me. He has kept me going and it’s because of him really that I’m back to full fitness as soon as I am.”
In 1999 media reports said Houllier was facing “a furious players’ backlash after his escalating row with Liverpool physio Mark Leather took a dramatic twist”.
Leather was left in the UK when Liverpool went to Oslo for pre-season games, a move which was said to be causing disquiet in the dressing room.
“Leather is one of the game’s top physios and he was publicly praised by Robbie Fowler after helping the striker make a miraculous recovery from a cruciate knee ligament injury last season,” said one report in the Scottish Daily Record. “Other stars, including Michael Owen and skipper Jamie Redknapp, are known to have a close bond with the medic.”
Houllier was angry at the length of time it was taking for Owen to return to full training after a hamstring injury and sent him to a specialist in Germany for a course of treatment.
In 2013, when Owen’s many injuries finally forced him to his retire from the game, he recalled bad decisions in the past that ultimately affected his career.
“I was compromised because I played too much too soon as a youngster at Liverpool. In my opinion, had I been managed differently I would have been at my best for longer as opposed to being a better player,” he said in The Mirror.
“I basically run on two hamstrings on my right leg and three on the other. I lost a third of the power.
“If I hadn’t, 90 per cent of the other injuries wouldn’t have happened and I would have been the all-time leading scorer for England.”
The Mirror article continued: “If there was a defining moment in his career, then it was a snapped hamstring when his then-manager Houllier ignored the advice of his physio and insisted Owen be brought back from injury quickly because he needed his goal threat so desperately.
“The French coach fell out so badly with the physio, Mark Leather, he forced him out, but Houllier later admitted to the mistake, which Owen believes led to the moment that changed his career – on a cold March evening at Elland Road, Leeds, in 1999. ‘My hamstring snapped in two and it was at that point that my ability to perform unimpeded was finished,’ said Owen.
Leather wasn’t finished with football, however, and he moved to his beloved Bolton Wanderers as Sam Allardyce’s physio for a year, before joining former Trotter Peter Reid at the Stadium of Light.
“From a personal point of view, I’ve had the privilege of working with two guys I used to support from the terraces at Burnden,” Leather told the Bolton News ahead of a match between Bolton and the Black Cats in September 2001. “There’s only one team I’ve ever supported and leaving them last year was purely a professional decision,” he said. “Financially and from a facility point of view, it was the right move for me, but I’ll never stop supporting the Wanderers.”
Leather spent four years (2000-2004) as the head physio at Sunderland straddling the managerial reigns of Reid, Howard Wilkinson and Mick McCarthy.
It certainly wasn’t all plain sailing for Leather on Wearside, as the Republic of Ireland winger Kevin Kilbane, now a TV pundit on the BBC, mentioned in his autobiography (Killa: The Autobiography of Kevin Kilbane; Aurum Press Ltd, 2014).
The player was determined to play for his country but the physio obviously didn’t feel he should because he was still trying to recover from an ankle injury.
Leather had already put him through some tough routines to test the strength of his ankle and when they were then on opposing sides in a two-a-side hockey match, Leather caught Kilbane on the tender joint with his hockey stick.
“After a few times and much pain, I finally snapped, and I gave him a left hook and decked him, leaving him with a fat lip and a very surprised look on his face,” Kilbane admitted.
Although he told the assistant manager Bobby Saxton what had happened, nothing more was done about it. Kilbane said: “I later apologised to Mark Leather but was disappointed he didn’t reciprocate. Things were never right between us after that, although we didn’t let it interfere with our professional relationship.”
After Sunderland, Leather switched sports and took on a similar position with Wigan Warriors rugby league side before moving into the world of academia. He spent seven years at Edge Hill University as a senior lecturer in sports therapy and programme leader for the Football Rehabilitation MSc course.
In October 2006,Leather joined Chester City as club physio, with City chairman Stephen Vaughan declaring: “He is a fully qualified physio and has a wealth of experience at Premier League level, so it’s something of a coup to bring him to the Deva Stadium.”
In 2013, he returned to Bolton, spending three years as Head of Sports Performance.
He had also set up his own physiotherapy business in 2008 and, since 2016, has been a senior lecturer and course leader for the Football Science and Rehabilitation MSc course at the University of Central Lancashire.
• Pictures from the Albion matchday programme and various online sources.
When Lawrenson was fit to return, Mullery sprung a surprise by utilising him in midfield, but it was an inspired decision and he stayed there for the rest of the season, helping Albion to finish a respectable 16th of 22.
In parallel lines 