5/26/2023 0 Comments Only time will tell bookHe strikes me as a somewhat melancholy figure by the end of his life, a fallen hero who had endured far too much bad luck and disappointment.Football was never the be-all and end-all to him. Certainly if it wasn't for George Petchey's painstaking care at Orient Cunningham would not have become the player we all know, but having spent his latter years playing for so many different clubs, and not staying for long, who knows where he'd have gone once the football ended.I don't think he would have turned to coaching as so many players do. It would be nice to think he might have ended his career where it all began at Leyton Orient and he hinted as much in a newspaper interview in 1979 when he was bound for Real Madrid. When he died in 1989 at the age of thirty three Cunningham probably had a couple of seasons left in the game. Following the good news that the house in Finsbury Park where Laurie Cunningham spent a large part of his childhood is to receive a blue plaque later this year, Leyton Orient FC and Waltham Forest Council announced a joint campaign yesterday to raise funds for a Cunningham statue to be placed in Coronation Gardens in Leyton where his career began.The anouncement is well timed as today would have been Laurie's sixtieth birthday.
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