Sherry was the least of my needs when I boarded the bus for the Charlton game. I wanted to be calm. I wanted to remember all that I had been taught by Tanner and Jimmy Murphy and apply it to a game which I knew, even after allowing for the problems of the opposition, would be faster and harder than anything I had experienced before. Most of all, I wanted to score – and last the full ninety minutes.
In fact I should have scored a hat-trick after we recovered, in just a minute, from the shock of Charlton going into the lead midway through the first half. Johnny Berry equalised and then I scored twice, in the thirty-second and thirty-seventh minutes. It was as though I’d never heard such cheers. The first came when I got the ball on my right foot, turned inside and, following Murphy’s maxim, battered it in the general direction of the goal. It flew in, and though my foot hurt a little it was a modest price to pay for the sweetest of moments.
I felt a predictable twinge of pain when I hit the second, but there had been no doubt in my mind when I approached the ball. It cried out for the volley and it was simply not a day when such an option could be declined. In the second half I missed an easy chance, but by then I knew that the fears that had come to me in the night had been without real foundation. I could play in the First Division, I could score – and I could feel at home.
More than anything, I suppose, I felt relief. I had come in, I had scored two goals – which was then the measure of my impact because I was seen as a strike player – and the great divide which had existed between me and men I had got to know well, friends like Eddie Colman, Duncan Edwards and David Pegg was suddenly crossed. I had moved into the inner circle; I had played for the first team.
That was the overriding feeling I had as I headed for the dressing room and the shower. I acknowledged some applause, but really I was overwhelmed by my own thoughts – and especially one: ‘You’ve played for Manchester United, you’ve done what you were there to do, you’ve scored goals – no one can ever take that away.’
The Old Man – I would never be able to call him Matt, even, many years later, after he had made a point of telling me I should do so – confirmed the meaning of the day as soon as I arrived in the dressing room. He told me a taxi was waiting to take me into the BBC studios in the city centre. I was pleased, but also a little overawed and maybe Busby saw that in my face. He said, ‘Bobby, lad, these are things you will now have to do. It is what happens when you’re a football star.’ It was another way of saying, I suppose, that I had taken my first steps to fame.
When the headmaster of my primary school had sent me into the classroom in the crimson shirt he had hummed the theme tune of Sports Report. Now I was part of the real thing and it was all a little scary. The interviewer asked me how it felt to play in the first team, and to have scored two goals. On the taxi ride into town I had tried a few rehearsals of this moment, but each time they were swept away as I replayed the game. Now I sat nervously in front of the big microphone. What could I say? How could I show that I was ready to be famous? I blurted out the truth. ‘Well,’ I told the nation, ‘it’s just unbelievable.’
7
NO INSTANT CORONATION
WHEN I TOOK my first hero’s salute and then walked on air into that primitive BBC studio, I tried not to forget one fact of Manchester United life – that they did not stage instant coronations at Old Trafford, not unless you happened to be Duncan Edwards. My high had been on the field and the Sports Report airwaves; I came back to earth the moment I reminded myself of the resources at Matt Busby’s disposal. I knew I had to see my performance against Charlton as a statement about the future rather than some overwhelming claim on the rest of the season.
I had to be satisfied with making a mark – and be determined to repeat it at every opportunity. I did that well enough. In the FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough I scored a quite spectacular goal against Birmingham City, the hard-tackling team who had lost to Don Revie’s Manchester City at Wembley in the previous spring. ‘Charlton Special Sees Reds Through’ declared one headline that may have helped to ensure I kept my place against Aston Villa in the final at Wembley. Most significantly of all, I was catapulted into the second leg of the European Cup semi-final with Real Madrid at Old Trafford. When the issue was already decided against us, I scored a late goal, but what mattered to me more was that I had been trusted to go on the field in the presence of men like Alfredo di Stefano and Raymond Kopa.
Though it would be a year after my debut before I could contemplate a first-team place by right, and my fight for recognition had entered its most demanding stage, there was no
