My Manchester United Years: The Autobiography

that, whenever I was asked to run the line I suggested someone else would be better equipped for the job. It was, however, an insight into how seriously football can affect people, and not always for the better. I viewed it as another part of my preparation for the time when I would play the game at the highest level. We turned out in the middle of the week, in all weather, on all pitches and often with the most rudimentary changing facilities. It was part of what Jimmy Murphy – graduate of the Rhondda, tough professional dressing rooms and the wartime army – believed was an essential process in toughening up.

Soon, with my success in the FA Youth Cup, I was understudying the Busby Babes in the reserve team in the Central League. For Jimmy it was the time for fine tuning towards the moment when he would be able to say to Matt Busby, ‘Now the boy is ready.’ He had to be satisfied that I was gaining strength from my experiences and that I had good understanding of what lay before me if I did graduate to the first team.

As I moved through the ranks, Jimmy’s personal tuition grew more intense and more specialised. If he couldn’t teach me how to tackle, he could tell me how to avoid the close attention of players schooled in the destructive arts, how to take up the right positions to receive the ball and in the process lose a marker – and, so vitally for the profile of my future career, he could also teach me more about how to score goals.

Jimmy was particularly relentless about the need for me to shoot and his philosophy on the subject was best embodied in one of his favourite dictums: ‘You strike the ball well and you hit it hard, but you always have to remember one thing – the public will forgive you if you shoot and miss, they will not forgive you if you have the chance to shoot and you don’t. If you are running into range and you have decided to shoot, don’t look up, just hit it low and as hard as you can in the general direction – if you don’t know where it is going, nor does the goalkeeper.’

It is advice I’ve always passed on to young players, though of course, you have to be controlled in your shooting. You have to get over the ball and keep your balance and let the power flow through your body.

When I consider most of the goals I’ve scored, I see that I was following Murphy’s basic idea. ‘Keep the ball, keep it under the pressure and then shoot,’ he would say. When a shot goes wide, and another player says, ‘Why didn’t you pass the bloody ball?’ there is no point in questioning your decision. You have to remember the times you have scored by delivering the unexpected, all those occasions when you haven’t aimed for the top of the net but seen it finish up there. The basic requirement is to hit through the top of the ball so that it keeps low – and know roughly where the goal is. For me it was the most natural thing in the world.

Jimmy said that you just couldn’t get in enough practice and it is something I recall when I read about the demands that England’s record-breaking rugby kicker Jonny Wilkinson makes on himself. The results confirm the wisdom of every minute he spends in a perfect kicking groove.

One day, Jimmy took me round to the back of Old Trafford and pointed out a big red-brick wall with plenty of empty space in front of it. He said that when no one was around, I should spend all the time I could kicking the ball at it, with my right foot and then my left, and with as much power as I could find. Then, when I felt I was getting better, I should move further back and repeat the whole process. Often I used to go to the ground an hour early, pick up a ball and go round to the wall.

‘Teams will make closing down a player like you one of their main priorities. If you know precisely what you are doing, if you can shoot from various distances with either foot, you will always be able to exploit any chance that comes. Remember, against a good team you might get just one, but you will be equipped to take it – and win the game,’ he said.

Once, before a game against Manchester City, Jimmy talked about the special ability of their goalkeeper Bert Trautmann. ‘He’s brilliant at anticipating what you’re going to try to do. It seems that he reads it in your body language. The only chance you’ve got is if you don’t look and don’t give him any idea which part of the goal the ball is going towards.’ As was so often the case, Jimmy was right. During the match I drove through a crowd of players, but I’d looked to the left before shooting and Trautmann punched the ball away.

One of the great strengths of the teaching was that it was done in the fashion of only the most expensive of schools, it was the ultimate teacher–pupil ratio: one-on-one. Jimmy didn’t spread his wisdom across the group at any one time. He could have said, ‘Come on lads, let’s do a little shooting practice.’ Instead he always wanted to pull you to one side. There was also a harshness to his tuition. Frequently he would stop a practice session and berate you for doing something he considered stupid, an overambitious pass or some showy dwelling on the ball which surrendered possession.

He could be quite cruel in the dressing room after a game, a fact which was recently recalled by Johnny Giles, who was reduced to tears after missing a penalty in a reserve game at Huddersfield. Johnny was eighteen at the