of a British embassy official. It was all part of the great adventure that stretched before us so dazzlingly. The toast, as it always was then, was to the future.

There were a few thick heads in the morning, but no serious casualties. In those days it was not frowned upon if a player took a drink, even if it was more than one or two, and smoking was quite commonplace. It seems bizarre now, but a player was put in charge of himself in such matters, and it was quite a few years later before a combination of my wife and my daughters persuaded me that smoking was not a good idea.

Back then there was a strong feeling that if you did your training, and performed well on the field, you were entitled to live a relatively normal life. There were certain rules of course. If you represented a club like Manchester United you had responsibilities that could never be put down. It was unthinkable to go drinking before a game. If you did that you were letting down your club and your team-mates and, not least, yourself. However, a few drinks and some music were your due after a good performance. If you strived hard enough to win, you were free to celebrate, within reason of course and with prearranged time limits. So there was little remorse among those who had had a drink or two before setting off to Belgrade airport; only the exhilaration that came with the conviction that once again we had put ourselves in a position to claim the greatest prize in Europe.

You looked around the bus and saw one strength piled upon another. If we didn’t have di Stefano or Gento, we had virtuosos of our own: Duncan was touching new levels of authority, Dennis Viollet was playing with tremendous bite and was just irrepressible around the box, and Eddie Colman was producing a little more swagger and a little more confidence with every game. Harry Gregg had brought a lot to the team with his fierce protection of the goal and his fighting spirit.

On top of all this was the extraordinary leadership of Roger Byrne. I was never close to the captain, not as I was with almost every other member of the team, but he always had my immense respect. I saw him as an aloof master in all that he did. I didn’t have the nerve to speak to him freely because he seemed to be operating on another level of life to the rest of us. He seemed so well educated, so cosmopolitan in my eyes, and I marvelled at the fact that he spent most of his free time away from the club working in a hospital, where he was training to be a physiotherapist. I was told that when patients and staff talked to him about football, he was reluctant to get involved. He said that football was just part of his life, and when he was at the hospital he expected to be treated like everybody else. For a lad like me, who had viewed education as a necessity to be suffered before the real business of playing football, it seemed almost unbelievable that someone just a few years older could do so much with his life and make so little fuss along the way.

He didn’t hang around with the lads because he had his own life in Manchester, and was married and not in need of boyish company. It was no surprise to learn that one of his best friends was Brian Statham, the great Lancashire and England fast bowler – no more than it was that he was an accomplished cricketer and rugby player. Indeed, I thought it was typical of him when I heard that when Statham was selected before him for the National Service RAF football team, he made no complaint, no angry protests about his status in the game with Manchester United, preferring instead to immediately offer his services to the rugby coach. He promptly became the team’s star performer. That seemed to be the essence of Roger Byrne: natural confidence and a fierce independence.

On the field Roger would shout his instructions firmly enough, let you know who was in charge of affairs, but generally he was quiet off the field. He had the aura of a true captain. If you did well, scored a good goal, say, you would not expect more than a cursory pat on the back, yet from him it was a gesture you would prize very highly indeed.

Those who saw him as an untouchable force at Old Trafford included the Old Man. After Byrne’s first game for United, when he had joined such giants as Jack Rowley, Johnny Carey and Charlie Mitten, Busby had declared, ‘It is hard to imagine a young player could make a more mature debut. Within a few matches, I think you will see this boy make his case to play for England, and when he gets in the team I think it will be impossible to get him out.’ I was told that Busby had once angered him by leaving him out of the team after a bad defeat. Roger had the feeling that he had been made a scapegoat and his frustration welled up during a training session, when Busby shouted an instruction. Byrne’s response was dismissive and his language was quite rough, and the manager retired to his office with something of a dilemma. Could he accept this challenge to his authority – or did he have to impose some discipline? His decision, before it was quickly revoked, was sensational. He put Roger on the transfer list. But not for long, when he pondered how much the team would miss his style and leadership, which had already made him a fixture in the England team, and how much interest was beating against his door.

Busby had that famous saying, ‘That’s not United,’ when a player’s behaviour was deemed to have fallen

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