Partizan scored early in the second half, taking a quick throw-in which we claimed was ours, and we were never able to get back in the game. Denis Law drew a fine save from the goalkeeper, and then hit the bar, but that was the extent of our chances. We lost 2–0, and if it was the kind of deficit that had been swept aside in the past, with the Stretford End willing their visitors to defeat, there was perhaps now a sense that a team from Belgrade, for one reason or another, might never be party to our happiness. This feeling was evident not least in the eyes of Matt Busby. He made the usual pronouncements, in the bowels of the stadium after the game and at Old Trafford a week later, but maybe the word Belgrade and the thought of once again confronting a Serbian team had provoked an old dread.
At first the theory looked vulnerable enough as we swarmed all over them in the second leg, but Partizan defended as though they were manning tank traps. Paddy Crerand and a Belgrade player were sent off for fighting, which was to our disadvantage in that we missed the bite of his long passing. Nobby Stiles scored in the seventy-third minute, but it was no good: the curse of Belgrade could not be lifted.
A few days later we lost yet another semi-final, to Everton at Bolton in the FA Cup.
For the Old Man it was revisiting old disappointment, old pain. He knew the team was strong and talented, and more competitive than it had been at any time since Munich, but after Lisbon he had been convinced that it was finally his time to win the prize in which he had invested so much more than mere football ambition. Defeat by Everton was a blow, but it was the one by Partizan which hurt down to his bones. In the dressing room he sighed, and submitted to a wave of doubt and depression. ‘We will never win the European Cup now,’ he said.
Very soon, Nobby and I would be celebrating our part in winning the World Cup for England – but it did not disguise the fact that we were left with some unfinished business. There was one last burden placed on our ambitions. It was, of course, to prove the Old Man wrong.
18
FORGING TEAM SPIRIT
OLD TRAFFORD, 18 March 1967: it should have been a day to cherish, one of those you remember warmly when you look back on a campaign that ended in success. We beat Leicester City 5–2, George Best made some wonderful runs, I scored with a low shot, Denis Law chipped over my World Cup team-mate Gordon Banks quite beautifully, and the new blood of substitute David Sadler flowed strongly as he headed in the fifth.
Yet not even the news that Burnley, leaping out of the pack as their days of power began to ebb, had ambushed Liverpool and helped strengthen our place at the top of the league could drive the chill out of the dressing room.
The wider picture might come into focus somewhere along the line of the twenty undefeated games which would carry us to another title – and open up Europe once again – but for the moment all any of us could see was David Herd lying on the pitch seriously injured.
David, as he so often did, had given us the perfect start against Leicester in a match vital to our long-term prospects. He scored inside two minutes. It was a routine reward for his hard running and powerful shot. Then he broke his leg. You could see it was a bad break by the way he went down and then the look on his face.
I had seen it happen to John Doherty, Wilf McGuinness, and now David Herd. Inevitably, there are two reactions. You are first reminded of your own good luck, then of how brittle the football life, like the human body, can be. It means that you are obliged to take every day, every game, as it comes, and be grateful that it has passed, if not successfully, at least safely.
Such thoughts dominated the dressing room as we showered and reflected on how easily it could have been any one of us in David’s place at the hospital as a doctor examined the damage and offered the most hopeful words he could muster for a man who, so soon after the exhilaration of scoring in front of a vast crowd, was suddenly looking into a future which offered not a single guarantee.
Like so many of the other victims down the years, David said he would fight his fate. He did that, as you would have expected of such a committed professional, but his courage could only take him so far.
He never made it back into the team. He missed the most glorious passage of a side he had done so much to make strong and confident, and what might have been a superb climax to a fine career became a losing fight against the heaviest odds. He went, briefly, to Stoke City, and then played for Waterford in the League of Ireland. Finally, and just for a year, he managed Lincoln City.
David Sadler, who had substituted for David Herd after he was carried off, again took Herd’s place in the next match, the one at Anfield that everyone said could well decide the championship. Liverpool had their strongest side: Lawrence, Lawler, Hughes, Smith, Yeats, Stevenson, Callaghan, Hunt, St John, Strong and Thompson. This – with the possible exception of the Leeds United of John Giles, Billy Bremner and Norman Hunter – was the most relentless team in England, and you could see on their faces that Bill Shankly had not been in one of his more whimsical moods when he gave the pre-match
