We were making football that apart from winning matches was also lighting up the sky. A glow had come back to the environs of Trafford Park and it had nothing to do with the fire and the smoke and the sulphur of the factories. We had made it clear that once again Manchester United could be a great side.
16
DENIS, GEORGE AND ME
I DO NOT like to think of myself as a boastful person, but sometimes you have to be honest. You have to put aside false modesty. So I have to report that when people started reeling off phrases like ‘the Big Three’, when the names Law, Best and Charlton were linked so frequently and so naturally, it did come to me that I had become part of football history.
This was not something I stepped back to consider later, as a little dust gathered on a shoal of headlines. It was deeply thrilling at the time that it happened, with the excitement of the fans becoming a little more apparent each time we ran on to the field, because for me the records, and the emerging of aristocracy in football, had always been so fascinating from a boyhood watching the great names and keeping company with Wor Jackie Milburn. It was something that would never pall down all the years.
Having put aside the frustrations of playing out on the left wing, where sometimes I used to look at the old clock and swear that it had stopped, I was more confident in my ability than ever before. The results for the team were increasingly solid, and this meant the expectations placed on Denis, George and me had rapidly become more an inspiration than a burden.
We went about our football in contrasting ways, Denis sending sparks and flames up around him, George going on his amazing runs with trickery and courage that just welled out of him, me with my liking for the bold pass and the big, swirling shot. We had one abiding thing in common. We loved to score goals.
About the town and the country you had the growing sense that football fans had a feeling they just had to see us play. If they didn’t, they might miss George finding a full back to his liking, or Denis producing flashes of lightning, or me profiting again from Jimmy Murphy’s advice to hit the ball hard and early when I felt I was in scoring range.
We brought different qualities to the field, separate abilities, but as each game passed they seemed to become a little more complementary. Of course there were times when George disappeared on his own flight of fancy, when somebody like me might scream fruitlessly for him to pass, but then the chances were that when he was in that vein he would do something utterly unforgettable. It is also true, as he claimed from time to time, that I too could be selfish when I had the ball at my feet. It can be a fine dividing line, anyway, between confidence and inspiration and a failure to understand the needs of the team at any particular moment, and for three or four years no doubt the most important point was that all three of us were able to deliver the best of our talent.
What the fans loved most about Denis Law, I believe, was his incredible aggression and self-belief. There were times when he seemed to define urgency on a football field – all that some of his most brilliant interventions lacked were puffs of smoke – and always there was the gleam in his eye, and the courage. They never made a big centre half who could induce in Denis even a flicker of apprehension.
One of the most amazing things I saw was his decision to take on big Ron Yeats – he man described as the ‘New Colossus’ by his Liverpool manager Bill Shankly. Denis scarcely came to the big man’s shoulder, but he was in his face throughout the game, chivvying, needling, always at the point of maximum danger. I remember thinking, ‘This is ridiculous, impossible’, and for anyone else but Denis it certainly would have been. Such a performance would be born of instinct and then, when the physical going became increasingly rough, it would be a point of honour that he stuck to his task. Among his greatest admirers was United’s fierce rival Bill Shankly, who valued all aspects of football talent but held the battling, fighting nature most highly, and it was why he spoke with such reverence of the young, spindly Scot who walked into his life when he was manager of Huddersfield Town. ‘The kid was a phenomenon,’ enthused Shankly.
There was a period around the mid-sixties when Denis was free from injury, and then we saw the full scale of his brilliance. He was an awesome sight as he went into the dangerous places, daring a centre half or a goalkeeper to blink. He got up to incredible heights and when he did so the defenders knew they couldn’t afford half a mistake. The semblance of a slip was all he needed. The ball would be in the back of the net and his arm would be shooting skywards.
One result was that if I ever found some space on the right or the left, I always knew precisely what I had to do. I had to get the ball to the near post; never the back one because Denis would not be there. If I could get the ball to the near post, Denis was guaranteed to sneak half a yard, and when it happened the result was inevitable.
This was a strength, almost an expression of himself as a player, that Denis retained even to the end of his long and painfully injury-prone career. I remember that, at a very late hour for both
