October, 1965
At just 29, Brian became a manager, with Peter Taylor as his assistant. He described taking over at Hartlepool as like ‘dropping off the end of the world’. The club were hopelessly impecunious, and nearly always finished near the bottom of the Fourth Division. His first chairman Ernest Ord used to ring his office at 4.55pm each day just to make sure ‘I hadn’t scarpered home early’. He once told Brian he would be dealing with the club’s publicity. ‘He thought he was managing Hollywood, not Hartlepool,’ he said. ‘But we were so obscure we were lucky to get a mention in the classified results.’