When I look back on a life that was too brief, too troubled – whatever bright light George attempted to shine on it at times – I share that sense of wonder, sometimes disbelief when I think of how good he was and all those improbable things he achieved under such immense pressure. Rightly the goal he scored against Chelsea – as he ignored scything tackles from some of the toughest, most ruthless ever to play the game – is seen as the embodiment of so much of his ability. It showed courage, resilience and a skill that simply could not be tamed. That was the hard side of him, the one that could see him clouted so hard he wobbled but refused to go down; but then there was also all the delicacy which came out when, say, he chipped the ball over a goalkeeper, exhibiting sublime execution gauged to the very inch.
He set a standard that people talk about even now, and I suspect this will always be so, as long as there is film of him, because what they see is something that, for all the talented players of today, they do believe is no longer available. They don’t see anyone who is quite like George Best. I spent quite a large part of my life explaining how it was to play with Duncan Edwards, and now it is the same with George. One day, of course, there may be another Duncan, another George, but the bar was raised so high by those players, that when someone like a young Ryan Giggs or Rooney or Ronaldo steps forward, unfavourable comparisons are invariably made, and those who remember George, and the dwindling number who recall Duncan, are quick to defend their idea of what they think of as football perfection.
I carried all those memories of glory and sadness when I walked into the hospital room with Denis. I thought of my perhaps naive belief that George might have been kindling thoughts of a different, more stable life that night I made a mess of the scampi. I smiled, for a moment, at the time I yelled at him repeatedly to give me the ball when he weaved across the field in a match against Nottingham Forest. I remembered how I called him a ‘selfish little bugger’ as he hogged the ball – and was then obliged to shrug my shoulders and shout, ‘Great goal,’ when he finally stroked it into the net, a grinning, cocky, defiant matador of a footballer, once again delivering a sword stroke that could not be parried. I thought of all the controversy that had surrounded the last years of George’s life, of how some had complained that because of his lifestyle, his repeated failures to stay on the wagon despite the most serious possible warnings from leading doctors, he did not deserve the transplanted liver he was given that might have gone to someone who had not so relentlessly imperilled his own health. But then I thought that life creates extreme cases, and did anyone in football know anybody whose experiences of joy and sadness, and the ability to create such emotions in other people, had been quite so profound?
I had spoken to him a few times when he was drinking in the early days, but even then I wondered if there was really much I could say which might have any effect. Later, when we met at functions, I asked him about his health, and on several occasions I told him how many people wanted him to come out all right. ‘George,’ I said, ‘You wouldn’t believe how many people out there want you to get better.’ But even as I said it, I suspected that he really wasn’t on the same wavelength. In the end it didn’t matter how many good wishes he received, how many prayers were said on his behalf, there was only one person who could make him better. I’m sure there were times when he did try – when he got the hard warnings, and when at one point he had pellets inserted into his stomach that would make him nauseous when he had a drink – but maybe there was something inside him that in the end made it impossible.
In the hospital I saw the pain on the faces of George’s family, but I also saw how proud they were of the son and brother whose life was ebbing away. After he died and a memorial was held at Old Trafford before a game (poignantly it was against West Bromwich Albion, his first opponents), I was asked to say something. It was not a time for a long speech; you couldn’t trust your emotions beyond a few words, and what I said in the stadium filled with admirers, many of whom had only seen a film version of his brilliance, reflected the essence of my feelings. It was that through all the pain and, to be perfectly honest, a certain sense of waste, we were left with one simple statement of our feelings. It was to offer thanks that we had known him and been spellbound by the brilliance of his football. That was his great legacy, a picture of genius that would surely never die.
When I heard that the club had commissioned a bronze statue of George, Denis and me, to stand outside the ground on Sir Matt Busby Way, I told George’s father Dickie that nothing could fill me – and I was sure the same was true of Denis – with more pride. For just a little while, there in the hospital room in London, the
