In 30 years, former team-mates John Sitton and Terry Howard had never discussed the half-time rant in a Leyton Orient dressing room that ended two careers and was immortalised in what many regard as the best football documentary ever made.

Each man had separately told their side of the story, but before one of the biggest fixtures in Orient’s history – Saturday’s FA Cup fourth-round tie against Manchester City – Sitton and Howard were finally persuaded to sit down over lunch with Telegraph Sport to chew over the extraordinary events of February 7, 1995.

The day before Orient host City marks exactly 30 years since Sitton, who was Orient co-manager at the time, offered to fight two of his players at half-time with the immortal line “and you can bring your f------ dinner”, which it transpires was inspired by a Sean Penn film. So disgusted was Sitton with the performance of Howard, who had made more than 400 appearances for the club, that he handed him his notice in front of stunned team-mates. Howard never played for Orient again.

Credit: Open Media Ltd

Remarkably, it was all captured on the documentary Leyton Orient – Club for a Fiver that traced the 1994-95 season and took its title from a remark by Tony Wood, the previous owner, who joked that things had become so desperate that he would sell the club for £5, before Barry Hearn, the sports promoter eventually completed his takeover.

Howard would go on to play for Wycombe Wanderers, Woking and Aldershot Town, while Sitton, who made more than 200 appearances for Orient, never managed in the Football League again. He was banned by the club until they had to allow him back into the stadium during a period working for the Press Association news agency compiling statistics on games.

‘It was bad management, it cost me a friendship’

Sitton, now aged 65, has been a London taxi driver for the past 22 years, while Howard works at Billingsgate fish market and on match days at Orient, where the 58-year-old remains a popular figure.

Sitton and Howard both started at Chelsea and played together in the 1988-89 Orient team that won promotion to the old Third Division – now League One. But after 30 minutes of discussing this and a host of different managers and team-mates, the pair arrive at the events of February 7, 1995, when Orient were trailing Sam Allardyce’s Blackpool 1-0 at half-time.

Club for a Fiver was memorable in so many ways, not least for the non-stop swearing. By way of warning, 30 years have not mellowed Sitton and Howard in that regard.

“John was a good player for Orient and managed the club. I was a good player for Orient and I’m lucky when I go there, I’m still well received,” says Howard. “People should be talking about what we did for the club and there but for the grace of God, if there’s not a camera in the dressing room, we’re not even sitting here having this conversation now. Listen, while I was disappointed with what John did at the time…”

Sitton raises his hands as if to signify surrender and interrupts by saying: “I’ll hold my hands up. I’ve done it all my life. If I’m wrong, I’ll hold my hands up.

“I was wrong. It was bad management, it cost me a friendship. I loved your mum and dad. I loved your sister, your brother-in-law. I got on with them all and it absolutely f---ing broke my heart for years after. And that’s me wearing my heart on my sleeve. I was f---ing devastated for years. I broke my own heart with what I did to you. I should never have done it. I should have handled it completely differently.”

‘John could have just taken me to one side’

Howard concedes that Sitton’s complaints about him have not been without some justification, but needs to get it off his chest that he feels he should not have been released in front of his team-mates – nor the camera.

“You were 100 per cent right, what you said about me at the start of the season,” says Howard. “I was overweight and, mentally, I was in the wrong place.

“What has disappointed me over the years was the way it was done. Because I think John could have just taken me to one side and said ‘Look, Tel, so this is how it is’. Listen, it turned out to be a curse for John because we had the cameras following us and it was rather merciless, right? But we got on well and I thought John could have just pulled me to one side.”

Howard and Sitton have differing recollections over details regarding contract offers that may or may not have been made to Howard before he was released at half-time of the Blackpool game. But there is a mutual desire to finally draw a line under an episode that has been left unresolved for far too long.

Having thanked him for expressing his regret, Howard asks Sitton why, in 30 years, he has never contacted him to do it sooner. With a sense of melancholy, Sitton replies: “I didn’t know how to.”

While Sitton is prepared to own up to where he went wrong, it is clear over a no-holds-barred lunch three miles from Orient’s ground that he believes he is still owed apologies from those he feels let him down, by damaging accusations of bullying and from people who held the documentary against him.

“I’m not embarrassed now,” says Sitton. “I was, yeah, but I’m not embarrassed now. I’m not going to keep apologising. They f---ing didn’t deserve me anyway. I’ve got the p--- taken out of me as a player. I’ve got the p--- taken out of me as a coach and a manager, right? They’re the ones who should be embarrassed.”

‘I want you to get some closure’

Sitting opposite one another, Sitton and Howard laugh, disagree, agree, interrupt each other and, at the end of it all, shake hands. There is acknowledgement that the former defenders share a lot in common – including both being stripped of the Orient captaincy – despite being different characters.

In one of many direct exchanges, Howard says: “Part of the reason I’m here today, I want you to get some f---ing closure out of what’s gone on as well. I know you worked hard. I know you were honest. I knew what happened at Orient wasn’t your fault, because of all the s--- that was going on. I think at the time what disappointed me was, being one of the more senior professionals, you should have pulled me and a few others to the side.”

A couple of hours after our lunch, Sitton messaged me to say he and Howard had swapped telephone numbers and chatted in the car park, when he had pointed out off the tape that he had called aside some senior professionals and been disappointed by the reaction of others.

Sitton was aged 34 when he first co-managed Orient with former goalkeeper Chris Turner for the final five games of the 1993-94 season. The pair steered the club away from relegation and took the job permanently for the following campaign.

But a career, in which he had played in the five top divisions of English football and started working on his coaching badges in 1988 at Lilleshall, alongside the likes of Alan Pardew and Kenny Jackett, was effectively ended by the two-minute speech in which he part-recited a line from the film Colors, starring Penn and Robert Duvall.

Having given Howard his notice, Sitton turns his attention to Barry Lakin and Mark Warren during the same half-time rant and says: “So you, you little c--t, when I tell you to do something and you, you f---ing big c--t, when I tell you to do something, do it. And if you f---ing come back at me, we’ll have a f---ing right sort out in here. And you can pair up if you like. And you can f---ing pick someone else to help you, and you can bring your f---ing dinner.”

Howard describes it as a “surreal” moment and Sitton explains its origin, by saying: “I remember watching this film about a young punk, played by Sean Penn, undermining a senior officer, Robert Duvall. There’s a scene where Duvall more or less says to Sean Penn ‘think you can f--- with me? Meet me in the gym tomorrow and bring lunch.’

“So, like an idiot, I’ve come out with some complete claptrap. I was taking all the two-faced bull---- above me [from the club hierarchy] – one in the land of the bewildered, one spiv, one who couldn’t afford a pot of tea and one who was an architect – and taking it into the dressing room. I couldn’t handle it. I don’t think any allowances were made for my inexperience.”

Asked how long it took him to realise that the outburst may have lasting consequences, Sitton returns unprompted to the subject of his treatment of Howard.

“Almost immediately,” says Sitton. “I think you can see it on my face [in the documentary]. I was trying to put a brave face on it and tough it out. I was asked a question by a journalist in the next scene about Tel and said I’d lost a friend, but I’d get over it the next day. But I never have.”

Sitton strongly refutes any suggestion that his behaviour amounted to bullying, saying accusations of that nature “broke my f---ing heart”, and revealed that Lakin had even put him forward for another job after they had both left Orient.

“Barry put a word in for me, for me to get the first-team manager’s job at Chelmsford,” says Sitton. “He liked me. I thought the world of him, he thought the world of me.”

‘Coming out of football saved my marriage’

Howard agrees that dressing-room rants, such as Sitton’s, were commonplace in football during his time as a player and says: “He was a f---ing good coach, there was no issue with John as a coach. I think you managed as you played – uncompromising. He was also a rookie manager and, like he said, he took his frustrations with all the s--- above him into the dressing room.

“It was a common occurrence in football. It went with the territory. I remember Frank Clark [another former Orient manager] digging me right out at Crewe. He got right in my face and said ‘son, you want to take a long, hard look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself if you want to be a f---ing footballer. Because if you don’t, I suggest you f--- off right now’. I took it on board and there wasn’t a camera in the room.”

Sitton takes up the theme in stronger terms, referencing his autobiography A Little Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing, by later adding: “In my book, I give a long list of things that have allegedly happened in the game since – car-theft rings, abuse of women, rape of women, bung scandals, drug addiction, gambling addiction, alcoholism, managers who have had questionable liaisons and relationships. I can give you a list as long as your arm and what I did really pales into insignificance, and yet I was ostracised for it.”

Asked how long it took him to get over the documentary and the impact it had on his career and reputation, Sitton answers: “Well, I never have. But I’m resigned to the fact of what happened.

“The bottom line is, I believe things are meant to happen for a reason. Me coming out of football saved my marriage. My wife, Loiza, pulled me back from an abyss. I stopped apologising a long time ago, other than this opportunity to redress what happened with Terry. I haven’t done too bad. As a family we’ve done all right and it’s all down to Loiza.”

This time it is Howard’s turn to interrupt, as he says: “Let me tell you, she’s a f---ing angel.”

Sitton said he could have kept on chatting all afternoon and even joked that he and Howard, whose autobiography is entitled Oooh!, should now write a book together. Maybe we will pick up where we left off over dinner next time.