1972 was the year when it all came together for Don Revie and Leeds United, when the legend of Super Leeds was born and for a while blotted out the memory of Dirty Leeds.

During the spring, Revie's Leeds played some truly remarkable football. It was fitting that they should commemorate the period by winning the FA Cup for the only time in the club's history. It was just as fitting that Leeds chose the Centenary Cup final to finally lift the trophy.

It would have been even better if they could have got the draw they needed a couple of days later to have added the league title. But wasn't that just like Revie's Leeds, not being able to celebrate their Cup win as they sought in vain for the next peak.

Sunderland nearly did for Revie a year later, but he returned to lead United to their second league title and more plaudits.

Revie left for the England job in 1974 and Leeds would never be the same again, though they almost won the European Cup under Jimmy Armfield.

Eight years after Revie left Elland Road, the money had gone, Leeds were in the Second Division and Revie was consigned to history as the man who betrayed English football.

That was the popular version of events but for those who love Leeds there is another version, the tale of a man and a club that were cheated of glory again and again and again, the story of the Fall of the Revie Empire and a legacy squandered. But there were also good times, very, very good times and nothing can destroy those memories.

Being a Leeds fan - Where it ended

28 May 1975.

Leeds United take the field in Paris for the European Cup final. Don Revie may have gone but he is there in spirit as Jimmy Armfield listens to the advice of Revie's backroom team and ignores his instinct by picking Revie's old stagers in preference to Trevor Cherry and Duncan McKenzie.

This is Revie's team on the verge of living Revie's dream against the Johnny Foreigners of Bayern Munich, such perfect black hat bad guys.

Dave is 15, tense now rather than excited as his favourites fashion a sweeping domination of the Germans. But something is going wrong: Beckenbauer, the devil incarnate, hacks Allan Clarke to the ground in the penalty area, but the French referee will have none of it. The German has already got away with one penalty when the official ignored his arm diverting the ball to deny Peter Lorimer.

'Just a matter of time, though,' thought Dave, Leeds are all over them. Even when Sepp Maier blocks Billy Bremner's point-blank effort, he remains confident.

'Thank f*** for that!' he almost screams as Lorimer hammers the ball past Maier. But the joy is short-lived as Beckenbauer draws the referee's attention to an invisible offside and he buys it (probably using the bag of deutschmarks in his changing room).

Time stands still as Franz Roth's clipped shot slips past David Stewart and inside the post. And the tears and despair come in equal measure as Gerd Muller makes it 2-0 to deliver not Revie's dream but John Giles' nightmare as the Irishman's final game for Leeds ends in sadness.

The world stopped that night and everything changed.

Such is the lot of the Leeds United fan. The ecstasy and the agony and then the yet deeper agony. But still they return, ever in hope that the Gods will ascend to Olympus rather than sink into a depressing Purgatory, as they wait for a new season that might finally be the one.

Supporting Leeds is a calling, an obsession, a gut instinct, a thing born in the blood, which we cannot ignore.

This book celebrates what it's like to be a Leeds fan, or even any football fan anywhere come to that, a masochistic member of a cult, usually left in a place where you feel lower than low, but sometimes able to walk on air. They have to be rare these moments, or you end up acting like the Prawn Sandwich Brigade over at the Theatre of Dreams, with an insatiable demand for silverware and happy headlines.

And they have been rare for us, but OH SO precious.

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