It turned out that they had already made overtures to Newcastle for the return of Alex Bruce, a small, lively striker who had been sold at what I thought was a very good price. I said that I considered this behaviour unacceptable. Their response was that in order to fund the Bruce signing – which I told them would be a bad move because in football you do not go back on a decision like that – I had to sell John Bird, a big and very capable central defender, a player I regarded as the backbone of my team.
I told the directors that if there was one player in the club we shouldn’t sell it was this big lad. I also pointed out that in the lower divisions there were a couple of crucial positions: you needed someone who could really head the ball up front, and someone who could hold a defence together. John had proved he was the latter. I argued my case with as much force as I could muster, saying finally, ‘I can’t stay here if you sell him.’ There was a short pause before one of the directors said, ‘Well, we still want to sell him.’
I told them I was sorry, but I couldn’t operate on those terms. I wasn’t disillusioned as I left Deepdale. I had been around football all my life and I knew what it could do to people. The good and the bad that it could deliver. No, my feelings had mostly to do with what I had learned about myself. Maybe I had been right to be suspicious of my aptitude for the job when I drove with the Old Man to Scotland, and wondered if I was expected to make a case for myself as he pondered over possible successors, but I had enjoyed so much of my time at the club. Most of all I had loved the fact that I was still involved in football.
On the good days I was defying the fears of my family, so deeply embedded in the game, and also the fears that grew in me, as I neared the end of my playing days, that this next stage of my life might be something of a wasteland because, as one of them said, ‘Everyone can’t run a pub.’ But now, maybe, I had to think again. Perhaps I really did have to enter a world which I had never known, the one of work or business which I had been able to escape so easily up to this point. Of course I had a degree of celebrity, people might want me to open a shop or a sports centre, but what would I put at the core of my life which had always been filled by football?
Preston might have been the foundry where I forged the rest of my life, but it had proved not to be so, which of course made for a reflective drive down the motorway and into the leafy lanes of Cheshire. Maybe, if I could have seen into a future where a player not yet twenty could make enough money, if wisely invested, to keep him and his family in luxurious security for the rest of his life, my apprehensions might have been tinged with a certain bitterness, but I doubt it. Whatever happened in the next few months and years, I would always have the great days of my life. I would always have George and Denis in Lisbon, Nobby in Madrid and at Wembley for United and England, and there would always be the image of the Old Man and a time when everything was so fine – and so sure.
One thing I can say for myself is that I have never been prone to jealousy, which is no doubt something from which I cannot take too much pride when I consider the good fortune that has accompanied me ever since I first realised I could play football better than most of my schoolmates. I think this is true of a lot of players of my generation who had some success. They accept that you cannot change history, that you can only get the best of what is available to you in your own day, and for me that was pleasure and pride.
Certainly I was a little sad when I realised how bitter my uncle Jimmy, who played for Bradford and Leeds, had been made by the fact that his career came several generations before what might be described as the football goldrush. He was the uncle I was least close to as a boy, and perhaps it was because of this that, when we met at a family funeral, I was eager for him to join me for a United game. I said we could see a good match and make up for a little lost time. But he wouldn’t hear of it. He tore into the game, saying, ‘Bobby, I wouldn’t go near a bloody football match.’ He was angry about the escalation of wages in the game, the fact that he had missed out on rewards which he believed, when he compared them to those he had received in a long career, were grotesque.
Although my earnings had been modest by the standards of football today, they had been better than those of most of the lads I had grown up with. I had a lovely family, a nice house and a bit of a name. It was not as though I had been thrown in the street after my experience at Preston, and it would have been outrageous to have felt sorry for myself.
My first rescuer was Freddie Pye, a successful businessman who had always been involved with football, and
