Teamwork Quote by Richard Gough

What looks like a plain-spoken tribute is really a miniature manifesto about trust under pressure. Richard Gough isn’t praising Johnny Collins for highlight-reel flair; he’s praising him for being an escape hatch. “Available for a short pass” is the language of someone who’s felt the panic clock ticking down and knows that survival in a tight moment depends on the boring, repeatable option. The compliment is tactile: you can picture the cramped space, the opponent closing, the split-second decision between a risky punt and a safe outlet.

The subtext is that reliability is a skill, not a personality trait. “Allowing you time to clear a ball” suggests Collins didn’t just take passes; he managed tempo for everyone else. That’s a subtle kind of leadership: making teammates look calmer than they are. The final line, “He would never give the ball away,” lands like an absolutist oath. It’s intentionally hyperbolic, the sort of exaggeration athletes and teammates use to mark a standard rather than a statistic. He’s describing an ethic: protect possession, protect your friends.

Context matters, and the attribution is odd. The wording reads like modern football (soccer) analysis, but the dates given for Gough (1735-1809) don’t align with that idiom. That mismatch hints at either a misattribution or a later quotation grafted onto an earlier name. Either way, the intent stays legible: it’s elegy in the key of pragmatism, mourning the teammate who made the game feel less chaotic by always being there, always safe, always on your side.