This was no gradual re-introduction to the more competitive edge of the European Cup. We were back in the middle of the type of battle we had lost in Belgrade two years earlier, but this time we headed off the ambush. There were no goals, only the prospect of another highly physical collision at Old Trafford. No one was disappointed.
The Bosnians, if anything, were even harder when the bell rang a second time. Three Sarajevo players were booked and the midfielder Prljaca was sent off for chopping down George Best, a fate that could also have befallen the victim when he lashed out at the goalkeeper, Muftik. Fortunately for us, George escaped – and proceeded to send us through, putting in a cross that could only be pushed to the feet of John Aston who scored, then scoring himself in the sixty-third minute.
It said everything about the Sarajevo effort that they refused to accept that their massive and, it has to be said, unscrupulous application had failed, Delalic scoring with just two minutes to go. In the dressing room we all agreed we were relieved to have survived tackling which the Old Man described as ‘the most disgraceful I have ever seen’ – and also any disciplinary action following some scuffling in the tunnel, when some of the emotions of two fierce games came surging to the surface.
It was rarely easy fighting on Europe’s Eastern front, and the draw committed us to another exercise in survival. Katowice, home of Gornik Zabrze in the Silesian coalfields of Poland, was the next challenging venue. It was said, correctly, that even in March the wind there could feel as though it had blown all the way from Siberia.
Only once before had we known such demanding conditions in European action – at the start of our last campaign, against Vorwaerts in East Berlin. That was a Denis Law night. He scored one, brilliantly, and made another for John Connelly. It had been bleak going through Checkpoint Charlie, Frank McGhee, the Daily Mirror sportswriter, lightening the mood only briefly when he signed an entry form at the border in the name of James Bond, but it scarcely prepared us for the conditions over which Denis prevailed so memorably at the Walter Ulbrecht stadium.
He was missing, however, in Poland where we had to defend a 2–0 lead given to us at Old Trafford by a Gornik own goal and one from Brian Kidd just a minute from the end. This might not sound like the toughest of challenges, but we carried a lot of apprehension into the tough industrial city of Katowice, which is invariably the location for key Polish international matches because of the frenzied support supplied by the coal miners. In winter they warmed themselves on heated vodka.
No one felt the edge of tension more than the Old Man. He had always been superb at disguising his deepest feelings when he knew the world was looking at him, but the tension he carried visibly was probably inevitable. He was just three matches away from his great goal, a European Cup final that would be played, so helpfully for us, at Wembley. This was a fact which made it all the more unthinkable that we should stumble at this rugged outpost of the game – but of course we did think about it, and it didn’t help when we looked out of the window of the bus carrying us from the airport and saw huddled figures in ice-bound streets.
We also knew that Kidd’s late goal had given us a flattering win in the first leg. The Gornik defence had played with great resolution, and if George’s shot hadn’t flown in off a Polish body after an hour our increasingly desperate assaults on their goal might well have been contained. There was no question the Poles could play with bite and skill, and in Włodzimierz Lubanski they had one of the world game’s most celebrated forwards. At Old Trafford he had been a brooding threat; in front of his adoring public, we feared he might well produce more.
The concern of some of the lads stretched to the food that would be offered at the hotel. They had brought little stoves to warm up cans of soup, a decision which proved embarrassing when we were fed perfectly adequately in the big dining room. However, there was no doubting the chief menace to our progress into the semi-finals – the cold that froze the thought processes as well as the limbs, plus a pitch surface that made almost every basic move a kind of Polish roulette.
We were shocked when we saw the pitch on the eve of the game. The snow had been crushed flat and into a hard pack. Matt Busby agonised over whether to press for a postponement, but the view of some players – which was expressed most strongly by Paddy Crerand and had my agreement – was that if conditions were indeed extremely difficult they would probably suit us better than Gornik. It was they who had to force the issue, get the ball into our net at least twice, and when you tested the pitch you realised immediately that it was a virtually hopeless task, even for a player of Lubanski’s skills.
In the cruel wind, that view was soon confirmed. Moving the ball from one end of the pitch to the other took an age, and almost invariably moves broke down as one forward after another fell or slid out of control when challenged by a defender.
Lubanski became increasingly frustrated as the fans cheered hopefully whenever he touched the ball, but for him all contact was brief and fruitless. With Bill Foulkes missing, much was expected of David Sadler when he moved back alongside Nobby Stiles, and he met the challenge superbly – as did all of a defence in
