Before the final we stayed at Great Fosters, a country house hotel in Surrey where the first Queen Elizabeth was supposed to have entertained some of her men friends. It was an interesting place, with secret passageways – ideal for the discreet romantic assignations of a ruling monarch I thought.
Every minute of the day, and quite a bit of the night, was dominated by our thoughts on the game. In our bedroom Shay Brennan and I tried to relax, but every time we opened our mouths we would find ourselves babbling about our chances in the final. On the night before the game, however, there was a diversion. As we lay in our beds, staring at the ceiling and trying, and failing, not to think about the match, we heard a ghostly cry very close by. We knew immediately it was Nobby Stiles, but at first we didn’t realise he had found one of the secret passageways. He had discovered it led to our room and, quite miraculously when you thought about it, he eventually appeared wrapped in a sheet.
When he got over his disappointment that we had recognised him straight away, he was less than flattering about Good Queen Bess’s hideaway. ‘What a bloody place this is,’ he declared while sweeping his hand for dust across the wooden frieze above the fireplace. Naturally, he took out a huge chunk of the history-laden wood. Shay and I reckoned it had previously gone unmolested for about five hundred years. Nobby tried to repair the damage, but we managed to persuade him that it was probably not a good idea.
In the morning we strolled in the countryside, again not very successfully attempting to keep our minds off the game. In the afternoon we watched the Derby on television, along with the millions of people who had decided once again to put their money on Lester Piggott. Even to me, someone who didn’t know much about horse racing, the great jockey seemed to have pulled off a masterpiece of timing on the back of Sir Ivor. We could only hope, on a day that seemed to be lasting forever, that we could touch his levels of professionalism.
We didn’t fear Benfica. We had, after all, beaten them twice when we met in the tournament two years earlier, the second time so momentously in the Estadio da Luz. That alone, we felt, gave us a big edge psychologically – but it was something we couldn’t afford to rest upon. They had some very good players, and one great one in Eusebio. Nobby once again had been given the job of marking him, and he was being asked to reproduce his masterful performance for England in the World Cup semi-final. Rightly, the Old Man reckoned that he was the only man fully equipped to do the job. He was given the usual instructions, which by now he probably knew by heart: shadow him, jockey him, don’t give him the chance of a crack on goal and, as often as you can, keep him on his left foot.
Eusebio was the overwhelming threat, he was so quick and strong and had such a good touch, but Benfica did have other strengths. Jaime Graca and Coluna in midfield were clever, strong players, and there was plenty of pace and skill on the flanks in Jose Augusto and Antonio Simoes. If they were given half a chance, the wingers would look for the tall Jose Torres, who had plenty of goals in him. We went over all this again and again, among ourselves and with the Old Man and Jimmy Murphy, but however many times you felt you had covered the ground, the nearer the game came the more you dwelt on the possibility of things going unaccountably wrong.
It was a sticky day and I hated nothing more than playing in humidity. The certainty of this was playing on my mind a little, and from time to time I found myself saying, ‘Oh God, what if something goes wrong, what if Eusebio gets away from us, what if one of us makes a stupid mistake?’ As captain I felt a heavy responsibility. I had to do everything that was expected of me, and I had to make sure the others didn’t forget their responsibilities for a second. In the end, all you could guarantee was that you would run, on and off the ball, until you were ready to drop. If we ran with their players, if we never left them alone, it would be difficult for them. Perhaps it would be impossible.
The greatest fear was of the unexpected and it was a little worrying that the gangling Torres was such a freakish height and so capable of doing something unpredictable. For Nobby and me, however, there were so many points of reassuring familiarity after the World Cup semi-final victory. We would be playing the same 4–3–3 formation, against the same set of wingers, and the beauty of it for us was the simplicity of tactics which Alf Ramsey had imposed on England and the Old Man now hoped would benefit United. Our three midfielders, John Aston on the left, me, Paddy Crerand on the right, playing behind George Best, Brian Kidd and David Sadler – who was also required to pick up Eusebio when Nobby took up a more withdrawn position – could be forwards or defenders. It depended entirely on who had the ball. It would have been more complicated if Benfica hadn’t played such orthodox wingers.
Beyond tactics, though, there was something that we had to absorb completely – Benfica were not exactly short of motivation themselves. They had been humiliated by us in front of their own people, and this was, they were no doubt telling themselves, the perfect chance to heal the wounds that were still raw after just two years. It was a point we learned later, that my counterpart Coluna, the captain of Portugal and a man of fierce
