Nature allowed me to resume training after three weeks, and though the ankle still wasn’t quite right it was something I wasn’t going to admit. I had to push on hard now because enough time had slipped by. When I could get away with it I applied pressure on my foot only gingerly, and when I kicked the ball hard it felt as though I was taking something of a gamble, but when one of the trainers tapped me on the shoulder and said that Matt Busby wanted to see me in his office there was no possibility that I would tell him that the injury was nagging on.
The summons came on Friday morning, every pro’s appointment with destiny. It was not a time of the week devoted to philosophical discussions. It was when you were either dropped and ‘bollocked’ – or put into the first team.
When I went up to Busby’s office he told me to sit down and, in almost the same breath, he asked, ‘How’s your ankle?’ Later, I learned that he had spoken to Dalton and been told that while I wasn’t perfectly fit, there was little risk that I would do any further damage if I played the following day. I told him, ‘My ankle has never felt better. In fact it’s feeling great.’ He paused, gave a small smile, and said, ‘OK, son, I’m playing you tomorrow.’
As I went down the stairs I had two thoughts. One was that at last I was a proper footballer. The other was: will I sleep tonight?
I didn’t. Not a wink. As the night wore on, and I lay in bed wide-eyed, I played the Charlton game in my head, over and over again; I visualised every possibility between glory and shame. I wondered whether (in those days before substitutes) my right foot would stand up to ninety minutes at full stretch, even though Dalton had been reassuring after Busby told me I was playing. ‘You’ll be all right, it won’t get any worse. You may feel a bit of pain, but you’ll get through that.’
When at last I saw through a gap in the curtains streaks of light in the dawn sky, I told myself that this was how it must have been for all the others. Perhaps even Duncan Edwards, who was two years younger than me when he was given a first-team shirt, had had moments of self-doubt. But then, when I thought about the possibility, I found myself shaking my head. Dunc was different. Dunc was beyond doubt. However, as light began to fill the room, I began to feel better. I told myself that this was indeed going to be a great day. I was a young lad, fit and healthy and had devoted everything I had to meeting the challenge that faced me in a few hours’ time. I could afford to miss one night’s sleep.
I suppose it was partly adrenaline that carried me through the rest of the day; that, and the sheer wonder of being part of the pre-game ritual.
I walked to the ground, resisting the temptation to tell everyone I passed that soon I would be playing for Manchester United, and every so often testing my injured foot. At 11.30 the team bus took us to Davyhulme Golf Club for lunch at midday: poached eggs and steak. Then I walked out on to the course and watched the golfers, but only with half an eye. Frequently I looked at my Swiss watch. I was counting not the hours but the minutes until the bus took us back to Old Trafford.
It had been at that golf club that Allenby Chilton, the defensive bulwark of Busby’s great ’48 team, had passed on to me a trade secret that I would hoard well into my twenties.
Chilton was a man of great authority, hard and fearless in the way of the top centre halves. Before he slipped out of the first team, when Busby – who as a young manager had treated him with much deference – announced that it was time to move forward into a new phase of his regime, Chilton was one of the commanding figures of the dressing room. Once, I was told, he had stood up in the middle of a team meeting and told Busby, who was concerned about a run of poor form, that the senior pros would sort things out: Busby was new to the job and the old guys knew what had to be done.
I had learned about the hard side of Allenby Chilton quite painfully, for a sensitive young lad, when I had burst into the first-team dressing room to tell Tommy Taylor, who I knew from sharing digs, that a boy from his part of Barnsley had joined the club. I was unable to get out more than a few words before Chilton rose from the bench and roared, ‘Get out!’ I knew better than to offer any more than a muttered apology and leave even more quickly than I had arrived. I had broken one of the strictest rules of Old Trafford and Chilton, whose aura came partly from the fact that he had survived serious wounds while fighting in Normandy in the Second World War, had jumped on me with great force.
He was, however, a more mellow figure by the time he was out of the first team and playing a few games with the reserves. Before one of them, after lunch at the golf club, I saw him swig back a drink. He told me it was a sherry and he took one before every game he played. ‘You see, son, at
