My own reaction was to shrug my shoulders because it seemed that a day didn’t pass without some lesson being handed down from the Burnley mountaintop. However, I recall an incident some time later, when I happened to be sitting next to Bob Lord at a testimonial dinner. It was when the issue of players’ wages was boiling to the surface and, during the course of a wider conversation on the subject, I couldn’t believe that such a man was involved in negotiations that would affect the prospects and the livings of so many people: young men who loved to play football but also had families to think about. Eventually, I made my contribution to the debate and said, ‘But surely these are matters which have to be discussed in this day and age? We are talking about the rights of men in a free society, and these are issues which are not going to go away. Directors are just a part of football – they don’t own it.’ He turned to me with what seemed to be heavy contempt and said, ‘Come back and see me in five years’ time, sonny.’
Nearly half a century later, I can only speculate on what he might have had to say on the day that Cristiano Ronaldo signed his new contract with United. Neither of us could have anticipated that a twenty-two-year-old, even one possessing the most startling gifts, would be guaranteed around £6 million a year for five years, but no doubt the effect on Mr Lord would have been rather more dramatic than it was on me. Yes, the scale of the rewards being handed to Cristiano were coming from a new world, a new dimension, but if so much money is pouring into football, if the market can stand it, who better to profit than a young player giving so much excitement and pleasure to the people who sit in the stands, or turn on the televisions, and make football so strong? Back at the turn into the sixties Bob Lord just couldn’t believe that footballers would one day have the right to negotiate out of their own value and their own strength.
The signing of Noel Cantwell from West Ham United in November 1960 was one of the club’s more positive and successful moves. He gave us, maybe especially in the light of the kind of charges made by Bob Lord, something that we sorely needed – authority and a deep sense of self-belief, the kind that Roger Byrne had carried so easily.
Noel was a big, handsome man, a natural sportsman who had for some time been the captain of the Republic of Ireland. He filled a gap that maybe we had not clearly realised had existed as we scrambled to recover from the effects of Munich. He came from the West Ham hothouse of tactics and new training ideas which over the years would produce a stream of managers and coaches like Malcolm Allison, Frank O’Farrell, John Bond and Malcolm Musgrove – and would eventually be commanded by Ron Greenwood, one of the game’s most influential figures after his work in cultivating the great World Cup triumvirate of Bobby Moore, Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst.
Noel was impatient with the training methods that existed generally in the game – and at times he made it clear that he thought a club of United’s status should have made greater strides in this area. Yet, however strong his views and however freely he expressed them, he had a knack of getting his points across without causing any lasting offence. Maybe he wasn’t a diplomat in the way of the Old Man, but he certainly had great style. He talked about the game constantly and with much eloquence, and later it was no surprise when his name was mentioned as a future manager of United. That possibility receded when it became clear that Matt Busby had recast the side soundly and had made it competitive again, along with conquering many of his own post-Munich doubts and demons. Cantwell’s career later became somewhat becalmed at Coventry City, but it said a lot for his impact at such a difficult time of transition that so many saw him as a potential leader of the club.
As someone who always tried to keep his nose out of such issues until they sought me out, my appreciation of Noel Cantwell was much more straightforward. I liked him as a man and, if there was such a thing, I thought he was a United type. I also admired him as a player. He suffered from injuries, and eventually the challenge of Tony Dunne, and sometimes the quality of his playing ability was overlooked, but he was a defender of considerable class, strong on the left side and with a very nice touch. When he led us out for the 1963 cup final, I thought, ‘This is good – we have a real captain.’
At that point, when I was in my mid-twenties, I had no ambitions for the armband. I still felt, and to be honest deep down the thought never left me, I had enough to do supervising my own performances. Still, I felt a sense of great pride when, a year or so after Cantwell’s departure, I was taken aside by the Old Man and told it was time for me to take up the leadership of the team. After Munich the role had gone briefly to Dennis Viollet and Bill Foulkes, and then, when their hard-driving successor Maurice Setters lost his place through injury and the rise of Nobby Stiles, Denis Law had a spell of captaincy. Maybe
