I spoke to Norma, and she confirmed what I already knew when she said, ‘Bobby, only you can really decide. You know better than anyone else how you truly feel.’
I went to Tommy Docherty and told him I had reached a decision. I said he was the first to know, and as this was something I had never done before, I didn’t quite know how to go about it. He said he would inform the board. At no time did he attempt to persuade me to stay on. Maybe he thought that the club were heading for days which demanded a fresh start and a new team with new influences, and that at this stage of my career I was just too strongly associated with the old days. Whatever his reasons, it didn’t matter, because in certain situations I can be decisive, and this was one of them. Deep down I was perturbed, even a little scared about what awaited me, but I also knew that, like every player before me, I had a duty to represent only the best of myself on and off the field. If I felt something vital had gone out of my game, and my feelings for it, I had no option but to leave.
Inevitably, the news got out. This meant that the last weeks of the season amounted to a farewell tour. Everyone was very kind, very generous. Wherever I went, someone seemed to have a present for me. My last home game, against Sheffield United, was inevitably poignant and, unavoidably I suppose, I replayed in my mind some of the warmest, most thrilling days of my football life.
I remembered it all, right back to the nervousness I felt in that first game against Charlton, lining up with men who were demi-gods before they became friends, the thrill of scoring my first goal, the wave of pleasure and satisfaction that came when men like Matt Busby and Jimmy Murphy patted me on the back and said, ‘Well done, son, you’ll be all right.’ I was all right – but the band can’t play for ever, and now the music was drawing to a close.
The memories accompanied every step of the way to that moment I pulled on the red shirt for the last time. It was in Verona on a warm night of early summer. Someone said that it was appropriate I played my last game for United in Shakespeare’s City of Gentlemen. I took pride in that, because, whatever my effect in football, whether I won or lost, I always hoped that I would bring no discredit to the game that had given me my life. Of all the lessons he taught, I always believed that was the most important one delivered by the Old Man. Whatever you did, however well, however desperately, the important thing was that you never damaged the game, never threatened its place in the affections of those who paid their money to see something that took them away from the difficulties and strains of everyday life.
Geoffrey Green added a tribute that was typically poetic, but I liked to think that it did express something of what I had tried to do. He wrote in The Times, ‘Bobby Charlton always possessed an elemental quality, jinking, changing feet and direction, turning gracefully on to the ball or accelerating through a gap surrendered by a confused enemy.’ It was a generous assessment of my work, and perhaps something that I could keep in my heart, to guard against some of the uncertainties of the future.
On that last of my trips with United – for an Anglo-Italian Cup game – we stayed on the shore of beautiful Lake Garda. The accompanying press were most concerned with the shape of Tommy Docherty’s new United, and it was a little strange to read about a future in which I no longer belonged. One story suggested that the manager would follow up his signing of Lou Macari, the forward star of Celtic, with a move for Asa Hartford, another Scot who was drawing a lot of attention as the midfield driving force of West Bromwich. The signing never happened, but the speculation was reasonable. United did, after all, have a vacancy.
As I thought of all the travels of the past, and how all the roads had finally brought me to this beautiful old part of the world, inevitably Nobby Stiles came to mind. I remembered an earlier trip to Italy. We were staying in Florence, killing some time in the hotel lobby, when I said to Nobby, ‘Come on, let’s take a little walk.’ I was looking in a shop window in a little square when I realised that Nobby was no longer with me. I saw a china shop and almost immediately heard a crash. Nobby came running out, straight past me. A few seconds later the owner emerged. When he saw me he said, ‘Mr Charlton, will you please tell Mr Stiles that he didn’t have to run like a thief. We have accidents like this all the time.’
We didn’t win the tournament, that honour went to Newcastle United with Fiorentina as runners-up, but I was able to finish as I began against Charlton in 1956. I scored two goals and played well enough to wonder, if only for a second or two, whether I had made the right decision to retire. It was so hard to think that I would never do this again, and all the emotion intensified in a restaurant later when the players gave me a standing ovation after presenting me with an Italian clock they had clubbed together to buy.
It was a beautiful object, the centrepiece of a statue depicting the four seasons – something that would have been quite beyond my means
