We were doing that competently enough to banish all Benfica’s hope. They battled to cover the ground, but it was clear they couldn’t do much more than go through the motions. Then, when I scored again with twenty-one minutes to go, we really began to believe that the game was over. Brian Kidd took the ball past a Benfica defender, skipping over a rash tackle that no doubt was the result of exhaustion, and once again I moved for the near post. Really we were in a comfort zone by this stage, and when Kiddo played the ball to me, rather than send it across the goal I thought, ‘Well, OK, thank you,’ and just helped it into the net, looping it over Jose Henrique. The score was 4–1.
It was a beautiful feeling. It was triumph and deliverance all wrapped into one, but the deepest emotion would take a little time to well up. For the moment we had enough to do in getting to the finish. The contest was over, but we still had to play out the time. We still had to drag our bodies around and forget how much had been drained from us this night.
When the final whistle went my strongest sensation was worry for the Old Man. He really was, I felt, an old man. He had been through so much, and this was unquestionably the pinnacle of his football life. For days he had been reminded of the meaning of the game, the legacy of Munich and how his boys had died in pursuit of this trophy. So many people believed that this night was for him and about him, and it was natural, I suppose, that everyone wanted to touch him at the end of the game.
When I got through to the Old Man, a great crowd of people, including some supporters, were holding on to him. Even though I was so tired, I started to drag them off, one by one. ‘Get off, give him some room!’ I yelled. Later I thought that was maybe a little bit rude because the fans only wanted to express their happiness, but I was concerned that he was being buffeted one way and then another.
Eventually, he got to his players and hugged them. To be perfectly honest, I cannot tell you precisely my feelings at that moment. Fatigue certainly. I do recall what it meant to embrace team-mates like Bill Foulkes, Nobby Stiles and Shay Brennan, who had been involved in this quest for so long – and maybe especially Bill because, like me, he had been on the snowy airfield and seen Matt Busby down and his team, our friends, destroyed.
I know there was an understanding that something was over, something that had dominated our lives for so long. I walked to the dressing room and drank two bottles of beer, downing them in a rush, one after the other.
21
GATHERING STORM CLOUDS
I WOULD HAVE been wiser to seek out the water that had been denied us out on that sweltering field, but when somebody reached out with a bottle and said, ‘Here, Bobby, have a beer,’ I took it gratefully. I thought, ‘Right now I’d drink anything.’ There was an unfortunate consequence, however. As soon as Norma and I got to our room in the Russell Hotel, where the greatest celebration of all my time at Manchester United was about to unfold, I fainted.
It was exactly as it had been in Madrid after the semi-final. Repeatedly, I tried to fight off the effects of dehydration and also, maybe, the huge accumulation of feelings that had built up in me, but each time I thought I had steadied myself, I fainted again.
Finally, I said to Norma, ‘You’ll have to go downstairs, because there are so many people celebrating and it will look strange if I’m not there. I want to be with them so much, but look, I can’t walk to the door. I’ll lie down for five minutes, and as soon as I can I’ll join you.’
Later, Nobby – who eventually went off to Danny La Rue’s club, a favourite place of his, with Shay Brennan – speculated that really my problem was an emotional overload, that maybe I couldn’t trust myself to cope with so many deep private thoughts and memories on such a public occasion, washed in champagne and illuminated by a thousand camera flashes.
When I thought about it, I could understand why Nobby might think that – and it was true he had come to know me very well over the years – but the facts were plain enough. Three times I got off the bed to face the world, three times I went to the door with the best of intentions – and three times I fainted and had to pick myself off the floor. I wasn’t alarmed, however. I just thought this is how it is when you reach the end of something so important to you, and when you are utterly drained physically. Later, Pat Crerand said that he had been much the same. He, too, could hardly trust himself to put one foot in front of the other.
When Norma came back to the room, she said that there were many old United players down there in the big, lushly carpeted room beneath the chandeliers, and added, ‘They were all wanting to see you.’ This made me a little sad, especially when I recalled the saying of Joe Mercer, who declared with a glass of champagne in his hand, ‘Footballers should always celebrate their victories … you never know when the next one is coming.’
Mercer’s philosophical warning was to prove particularly appropriate to me as the next few years confirmed the suspicion that if we were ever going to be crowned champions of Europe, it had to happen in that spring of 1968.
