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OMG I can't believe, they played for Leeds United: # 1 Tony Arins

Number One in a new feature, Marko looks back at men who have donned the famous white shirt....unfortunately. He starts his dubious A-Z by recalling Tony Arins.

If you ask a Leeds fan of a certain vintage to sum up the farcical Leeds United era under Jimmy Adamson, it is likely he will response with one of two names.

Tony Arins is the first and Marshall Burke is likely to be the other, both youngsters arrived from Adamson's old club Burnley in the summer of 1980

Whilst pillorised in Leeds, just over the Pennines in his native Burnley, Jimmy Adamson is revered as having nurtured a youthful Claret's side and Chesterfield-born Arins, like Burke, was a product of that Turf Moor Academy. Signed in the close-season of 1980, Arins played for just thirty minutes in a Leeds shirt and had to wait over a year for half hour of "fame", by coming on as sub for Brian Greenhoff in the 2-1 defeat at Ipswich Town on 26th September 1981!

This however is thirty minutes more of an opportunity than Marshall Burke got in the white shirt of Leeds. Burke returned to East Lancs, albeit to Burnley's hated rivals Blackburn without having kicked a first-team ball in anger.

In November 81, Ariins joined Scunthorpe initially on-loan before completing a free transfer to the Old Show Ground. In the Claret of Scunthorpe he made 20 appearances scoring once.

Arin's other significant point of note in his Leeds career was picking up a booking in those 30 short minutes down at Ipswich. Ironically in 1982, aged just 24, Arins decided to retire from football and join the Police force.

Now believed to be DC Tony Arins of Nottinghamshire Police's Crash Investigation Unit, he appears in the local Notts press every so often appealing for witnesses to serious road-traffic accidents.

Were you unfortunate enough to witness his criminal half-hour in a Leeds shirt at Portman Road on that day in September, nearly thirty years ago?

 

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