REFEREE (ERIC ARMISTEAD): What we are about to witness is known as a football match – not the beginning of World War Three, not the destruction of the human race; a football match. In it, each team will attempt to score more goals than the other. That will be done by trying to kick the ball in the net, as opposed to kicking other people in the crotch.
Another Sunday and Sweet FA (Jack Rosenthal;
Granada Television, 1972)
THE REFEREES were the only ones aware of the ticking timebomb in their top pockets; the memo they’d received after the first weekend of the 1971-72 season. A day after the postman came calling, the first midweek fixtures of the new term marked the beginning of what the media quickly labelled ‘The Refs’ Revolution’. In an attempt to offer some protection to the ball players in danger of being kicked out of the game, match officials booked 32 players in 15 Tuesday night games – a ludicrously modest number by 21st-century standards, but enough to create talk of apocalypse at the time.
At Portman Road, six were cautioned in Ipswich Town’s 3-1 win over Coventry City. ‘The game won’t continue if they keep booking people like this,’ said Ipswich manager Bobby Robson. Wednesday night saw seven players booked as Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle United drew 0-0 at White Hart Lane, after which Newcastle captain Bobby Moncur commented, ‘We will be going out there with handbags soon. The referees are turning it into a game for cissies.’ Elsewhere that night, three players were sent off and 38 more booked. Under a back-page headline that read, ‘Soccer on the brink of revolt,’ the Daily Mirror asked, ‘What is football trying to do to itself?’ and blamed the ‘lunatic decision to operate football to the letter of the law’.
Spurs manager Bill Nicholson insisted, ‘It is time we were told what was going on. It seems the Football League are giving the referees books and pencils and trying to get them to frighten the players. We have been told nothing.’
It was that which angered so many. There had been no warning from the Football League, no sharing the intention to apply laws more rigidly or any collective discussion of how all could operate more effectively within the new environment of ‘zero tolerance’. The League’s approach, well intentioned as it might have been, was akin to the police waiting on a blind corner with their radar guns without having published a new speed limit. All the clubs could find when they looked back through official correspondence was an apparently innocuous pre-season reminder from the FA about fair play and bookable offences, which they had been urged to pin on changing-room walls. Yet Football League secretary Alan Hardaker offered the justification that ‘the impact on the game was far greater than if the directive had been announced months earlier and then watered down and conditioned by argument and criticism’.129
Newspaper headlines on the first Saturday of the season had warned of a desire to curb tackles from behind, the offence highlighted most often when referees had been canvassed during the summer. Hardaker had warned of a ‘campaign’ to come and there had been enough of a sense that something was afoot for renowned Liverpool hard man Tommy Smith to be asked for his opinion. ‘If you’re going to let forwards use their assets – speed and ball control – you must let defenders use theirs, hard tackling and strength,’ he stated. ‘If I started playing like a fairy – not tackling and showing off the old ball control – the Liverpool fans would soon have a go at me.’130 No forward had endured greater physical punishment over the previous five years than World Cup winner Geoff Hurst, who felt that referees ‘must show a greater awareness of the criminal tactics employed by some defenders’.131
The ‘clean-up’ operation, as it became known, took shape on that first Sunday when match officials were summoned to meetings all over the country and told to expect further instruction. It arrived 24 hours later when a memorandum, dated 16 August, dropped on the doormat of every referee and linesman. Along with guidelines on how to interpret offsides, offences against the goalkeeper and time-wasting, there were the following significant sections:
DELIBERATE HANDLING OR CATCHING THE BALL
If a player deliberately catches or handles the ball to prevent an opponent gaining an advantage which, in the referee’s opinion, would reasonably have occurred in the normal pattern of play, then the referee shall deem it to be ungentlemanly conduct. And in addition to the direct free-kick… he shall caution the offending player.
DELIBERATE OBSTRUCTION
If a player deliberately interposes his body to prevent an opponent gaining an advantage… then the referee should deem it to be ungentlemanly conduct and he shall caution the offending player.
DELIBERATE TRIPPING
If a player deliberately trips an opponent to prevent him gaining an advantage… then the referee shall deem it to be ungentlemanly conduct and in addition to the direct free-kick (or penalty) which he shall award for the offence, he will caution the offending player. The above three offences are examples of what are being termed ‘professional fouls.’
The memorandum highlighted a perceived tendency to favour the caution of players for dissent ahead of punishing them for acts of foul play, such as contact with the man when tackling with a raised foot or with both feet together. There was also a specific section on the tackle from behind:
If the ball is played without the player first touching an opponent’s legs, this is allowed. If the opponent’s legs are touched first, a direct free-kick will be awarded… If there is no clear intention to play the ball, a direct free-kick will be awarded if the player is tripped. (Note: It is suggested that it is almost impossible to tackle fairly from behind through a player’s legs). For this offence (d), a referee shall caution the player in addition to awarding the free-kick.
The measures were clearly intended to address the win-at-all-costs approach pervading the English game, although Norman Burtenshaw, who had refereed the latest FA Cup Final, felt it was games involving teams striving for the top level where intervention was most urgently required. ‘The games I hated refereeing were those involving the top four clubs in the Second Division,’ he said. ‘Often those would be kicking matches.’ And he was not afraid to cite culprits. ‘I used to shudder when I saw big fellows like Duncan Forbes, the Norwich centre-half, go into tackles from behind. Most central defenders were at it. Bobby Bell when he was at Ipswich; Derek Jefferson, Ipswich and later Wolves; John McGrath of Southampton; John Roberts, Arsenal and later Birmingham; Denis Smith of Stoke. You couldn’t blame them. They were doing their job.’ He also praised Leeds left-back Terry Cooper and Peter Rodrigues of Sheffield Wednesday as men ‘who could tackle from the side and pluck the ball away without first touching the players’ legs’.132
Burtenshaw, who had reported the entire Benfica team for dissent during their 6-2 defeat at Arsenal in a pre-season challenge match, was sorry the referees had not initiated the new measures themselves, while Jack Taylor, the Wolverhampton butcher who would referee the 1974 World Cup Final, said the campaign was necessary ‘not only to stop the bully and the cheat, but also to restore the referee as a meaningful representative of authority’. He admitted, ‘Matches were getting out of hand. The clever players were being kicked to death and referees nailed to the wall every week.’133
Given his reluctance to brandish his notebook in the 1970 FA Cup Final, it was no surprise that the retired Eric Jennings was an opponent of the new methods. ‘I am disgusted at the militant approach which League referees are being forced to adopt this season,’ he said. ‘I would never have carried out the present instructions.’134
By the middle of December, more than 1,000 players had been booked. When Brian Daniels failed to take a name in a Fulham– QPR match a fan sent him a ‘Get Well’ card. It was, suggested football historian David Russell, a reflection of a moral conversation that extended beyond the playing field. ‘In an age in which many commentators demanded clear public displays of discipline in all public areas and where, in the football world, links between violence on and off the pitch were always likely to be made, officials were forced to make a more “formal” approach.’135
Such rigidity, however, was not welcomed by those who feared the erosion of the crunching tackle – a defining English characteristic that technically-advanced nations such as Holland and West Germany would have mocked. ‘It seems to me that the game is rapidly becoming foreign to all we’ve ever known,’ said Bobby Charlton. ‘Physical contact is what makes our game the tremendous spectacle it is.’136 Crystal Palace chairman Arthur Wait called for the resignation of Hardaker and the Football League management committee, arguing, ‘If the people responsible for this policy want to watch continental stuff they should go there. I know some of the country’s players, when you see the length of their hair, look like girls, but don’t make them play like it.’
More modern thinkers suggested that the complaints were loudest from those with most to lose. ‘It’s the player who goes out to intimidate an opponent who will suffer,’ said England forward Francis Lee, who would end the season as the First Division’s leading scorer. ‘I believe only the isolated few are moaning about it.’137
And Goal columnist Ken Jones, a former professional player turned journalist, noted, ‘There are one or two who aren’t capable of doing anything apart from kicking lumps off others. I think we all know who they are. It will be interesting to see how long they survive.’138 Some of those players resorted to fighting against suspensions caused by the referees’ new instructions, forcing Vernon Stokes, chairman of the FA’s disciplinary commission, to promise, ‘We will work through the night if necessary to get through all the appeals.’
Sheffield United’s Trevor Hockey – once described by Goal as having ‘Castro’s beard, Geronimo’s headband, McCartney’s hair and Popeye’s muscles’ – would break ranks with the grievances of the hard men when he stated, ‘You are still allowed to tackle – now you have to time your tackle accurately or get booked. This is a frightening thing and can inhibit players.’139
The refereeing debate at least served to divert the sporting public’s attention away from the England cricket team’s first-ever defeat on home soil by India and Virginia Wade’s failure to win a vital match in tennis’s Wightman Cup against a 16-year-old American schoolgirl called Chris Evert. And less than a week after the newspapers’ hysterical response to the start of the referees’ campaign, the Daily Mirror reported on an evening where seven games produced only four bookings by suggesting ‘players have learned not to back-chat the referee, nor to trip up their fellow workers’.
It was a premature conclusion. On the last day of August, Wolves centre-forward and PFA chairman Derek Dougan reacted to having his name taken against Crystal Palace by saying, ‘If this continues, we will have 85 minutes of stoppages and five minutes of football. It is imperative that we get around the table and talk with the League and FA as soon as possible.’ Several weeks into the season it was, however, becoming clear that, like it or not, English football was a safer environment. As Brian James would write in Rothmans Football Yearbook’s summation of the season, ‘It is impossible to doubt that a saner, more just, style of football began to evolve.’
The experience of West Bromwich Albion centre-forward Jeff Astle was that teams were simply packing the penalty area instead of kicking forwards, thus making goal-scoring even more difficult. But the majority view was reflected by Leeds United forward Peter Lorimer, who believed that 90 per cent of strikers had benefitted, and West Ham United’s Trevor Brooking, who noticed defenders hesitating before trying to take the ball from him.
Watford manager George Kirby went as far as trying to entice Jimmy Greaves out of premature retirement. ‘Jimmy’s decision to retire was forced on him by the sort of tackling that was going on and the defensive tactics,’ he said – although not entirely accurately. While Greaves would remain outside the game, battling far more serious personal problems than a boot up the backside as he slid into the grip of alcoholism, former England team-mate George Eastham, the slender midfielder, was enticed back to Stoke City from South Africa, where he had been player-manager of Hellenic.
Overall, there appeared to be acceptance that the aims of the clampdown were valid. Even Cliff Lloyd, secretary of the PFA, admitted that ‘the game can only be better for the removal of the tackle from behind’. Most remained miffed, however, that they had not been party to the campaign from day one.
Meanwhile, some felt that the referees were milking their moment in the spotlight. The advent of regularly televised football had helped create personalities of the leading match officials, whose decisions were now debated on screen as well as in the pub. Arthur Ellis, the former referee now officiating BBC’s It’s A Knockout, was no longer the only instantly recognisable member of his profession. Viewers were familiar with characters such as the stout and balding Roger Kirkpatrick – frequently likened to Dickens’s Mr Pickwick – who would sprint on to the field, usually to great cheers, and was prone to exaggerated mimicking of players’ fouls when awarding free-kicks. A director in a women’s hosiery and fashion business, another trademark was his burst of running backwards as fast as his little legs would carry him. On one such occasion Chelsea midfielder Alan Birchenall couldn’t resist sticking out a foot to send him crashing to the ground. ‘Managers have got to succeed, players have got to succeed,’ Kirkpatrick said. ‘The referee is caught in the cauldron. I believe a referee’s job is to get the game going in the best possible atmosphere.’140
Then there was the irritatingly flashy Clive ‘The Book’ Thomas; and Gordon Hill, renowned as the players’ favourite – mostly, it seemed, because he swore at them as much as they did at him. Hill’s preference for industrial language over the taking of names didn’t always endear him to those running the game. Hardaker said that ‘Hill’s style was fine so far as his own matches were concerned, but he made life difficult for others who refereed according to the book’.141 Thomas and Hill, along with Burtenshaw, Taylor and Pat Partridge were among the first referees to discover that their fame created a market for their autobiographies.
According to Eamon Dunphy, in his 1973-74 diary Only a Game?, ‘It is one thing that everyone in the game agrees on – the inefficiency of the referees.’ He believed that his fellow professionals shared a frustration that after all their hard work and preparation ‘some man can come along and on some whim he just destroys everything’. Dunphy concluded, ‘You have no respect for the man, you know he doesn’t know the game, that he is basically not equipped technically to do the job he is doing.’142
The 108 referees on the Football League list for the controversial 1971-72 season included a wide range of mostly white-collar professionals, with an abundance of teachers, salesmen and engineers of various descriptions. Calls for these men to become full-time, and the recruitment of former players to join them, became loudly discussed themes. Alan Ball had said before the season, ‘I wouldn’t mind becoming a referee just as long as it was a professional occupation. Until that happens, I can’t see professional footballers ever thinking of becoming referees.’143
Tommy Smith was among those who felt that ‘we would have better understanding from ex-professionals’.144 The trouble, he said, was that ‘they’re not part of this exclusive club of football players … they seem to want to treat you like kids.’145 Peter Osgood, whose lengthy suspension early in 1971 prompted him to say that ‘some referees are diabolical’, offered a similar opinion. ‘The trouble with referees today is they don’t see enough of the game.’146
Jimmy Hill believed that events had ‘brought into sharp relief the referees who can’t control a game’ because they were ‘lacking leadership and personality’. His suggestion to the Football League was to ‘recruit ex-professional players under the age of 40 and put them immediately on a refereeing course’.147 Yet recently-retired official Jim Finney argued that the introduction of full-time referees would rob the role of those who ran their own businesses or enjoyed successful careers that they were not inclined to relinquish. It would result in diminishing standards, he said.
Ironically, an advocate for former players becoming full-time referees was Stoke City manager Tony Waddington, whose team would suffer when ex-Bolton Wanderers player Bob Mathewson was responsible for one of 1971-72’s most disputed decisions. Stoke were drawing their FA Cup semi-final replay against Arsenal 1-1 at Goodison Park when Charlie George looked suspiciously offside in delivering a cross for John Radford to score the winner. The truth, according to Stoke fans, was that linesman Mathewson, who would go on to referee the infamous 1974 FA Charity Shield, mistook the white coat of a programme seller for a white-shirted Stoke defender. It was still being disputed in 2014, when the Stoke Sentinel said, ‘There is conjecture on this claim, however. The bloke in the white coat might have been selling peanuts or ice cream.’ Hardaker reckoned that Waddington never again pestered him about converting ex-players into match officials.
Few people ever bothered to ask the current referees what they wanted. It was not until 1974 that a magazine survey of four top officials – Taylor, Mathewson, Ken Burns and Gordon Kew – found unanimous opposition to becoming full-time professionals. And Mathewson said, ‘I don’t think [former players] necessarily make better referees. There is no substitute for experience at junior level.’148
The light at the end of autumn 1971’s tunnel of threats and rhetoric appeared when FA secretary Denis Follows announced a summit meeting on 7 October. PFA representatives gathered in London with officials of the FA and Football League, the Association of Football League Referees and Linesmen and the Secretaries and Managers Association. It was only the second time in 108 years of organised football in England that members of all those bodies had been brought together. A statement issued after two and a half hours of talks said there had been unanimous agreement that the bodies ‘should consider a suggestion for a committee of study – without executive power – to examine such matters put forward for discussions by the parties concerned.’ Not exactly the most stirring action plan. Meanwhile, players were denied the amnesty they had sought for their early-season bookings. But the meeting was harmonious enough to provoke a vast change in the attitude of Dougan, who described it as ‘a marvellous step forward’ and foresaw ‘more understanding between players and referees’.
Hardaker remarked that the game had been given a much-needed cold shower, trumpeting, ‘Somewhere, sometime the people who believe have got to stand up and be counted.’ And, in the achievement of 35-year-old Eastham in the final of that season’s League Cup, he would be offered the most perfect vindication of his stance.
The introduction of the League Cup had been one of the defining elements of Hardaker’s 15 years in his post. A former Hull City reserve, he had worked as a mayoral secretary in Hull and Portsmouth, either side of a wartime spent as a naval officer, before he joined the Football League in 1951. Having been led to believe that the position of secretary would be his within six months, he had to wait until the early days of 1957 to move into the office previously occupied by Fred Howarth. He remained football’s most dominant administrative figure throughout the 1970s, a man with a reputation for getting his own way and little regard for whom he fought to get it. Lord William Westwood, who became Football League president in 1974, described him as ‘forthright, honest and sometimes blunt’, but insisted, ‘He is not a dictator.’149
Speaking in his own defence, Hardaker said, ‘There are many people in football who do not like me but who still believe I am honest.’ Describing himself as ‘a paid servant’ of the game, he admitted, ‘It has never been part of my brief to please people.’150
Despite resistance, he had forced the League Cup into existence in 1960, partly to meet clubs’ increasing demands to play floodlit football and also to compensate for what he and then-League president Joe Richards forecast would be a reduction in fixtures as part of their ‘Pattern for Football’. The plan, which called for five divisions of 20 teams, was eventually voted out at the League’s AGM in 1963.
The closing rounds of the 1971-72 competition would produce a thrilling series of matches that reflected perfectly the kind of football envisaged when the referees’ memo was typed up in the Football League’s art deco headquarters in Lytham St Annes, down the Fylde coast from Eastham’s hometown of Blackpool. The semi-finalists were perhaps the four First Division teams who best embodied the ‘spirit of the game’ that administrators yearned for – which might have explained why none were serious title contenders.
Stoke were drawn to face West Ham United, teams whose respective managers, Waddington and Ron Greenwood, shared a philosophy that emphasised attack and aesthetics over structure and strategy. Meanwhile, Chelsea, bidding to win a third cup competition in three seasons,* and Tottenham, the League Cup holders, offered the often brilliant, rarely consistent, brand of football that made them more dangerous in one-off games than over the course of an arduous League programme. Between them all they produced an epic series of semi-final matches.
West Ham began what became a marathon series against Stoke by showing the kind of resilience and fortitude for which they were not exactly renowned in coming from behind to win the first leg 2-1 away from home. Such was their resolve that Bobby Moore was cautioned for a deliberate trip. At Upton Park a week later, Stoke centre-forward John Ritchie sent the tie into extra-time. With only four minutes of the night’s two hours of action remaining, Hammers winger Harry Redknapp went down under a challenge from goalkeeper Gordon Banks and referee Keith Walker pointed to the penalty spot. Hurst, as usual, moved towards the ball with fierce intent and smashed it. Banks flung himself to his right, stuck up his left arm like a periscope and found enough strength in his wrist to keep Hurst’s effort out of the net. Were it not for Guadalajara in the summer of 1970, it might have been the save of his career. Greenwood ended up suggesting that perhaps someone other than Hurst, who had beaten Banks with a penalty in the first leg, should have taken this one, to which Hurst countered, ‘No one else could have taken it. As it was, half of them couldn’t find the nerve to watch.’151 That an exciting replay at Hillsborough ended goalless was in no small part due to more Banks brilliance.
The most dramatic action was yet to come. At Old Trafford three weeks later, Moore volunteered to take the goalkeeper’s jersey when Bobby Ferguson was injured after 15 minutes, designated stand-in Clyde Best having told team-mates he could not face it. Moore survived Mike Bernard hitting the post and then had to face up to the same player’s penalty kick. He flopped to his right and parried it, but Bernard netted the rebound. Bonds fired West Ham level from 25 yards and Ferguson ended his 20-minute recuperation by returning to the field. Brooking’s sweeping volley put West Ham 2-1 up, only for Stoke skipper Peter Dobing to equalise before the end of a breathless first half. Five minutes after the break, Terry Conroy converted a cross and Stoke were in sight of the first major trophy in a century of existence.
Chelsea’s progress past Tottenham into the final had been less protracted, but similarly dramatic. A late penalty by John Hollins earned them a 3-2 win at home, but that was nothing compared to the excitement two weeks later at White Hart Lane in a contest that, according to The Times, ‘held a near 53,000 crowd in a hypnotized state of concentration’. Hudson remembered that it ‘made the first encounter look like a reserve match’.152 Chivers scored with a volley, his 30th goal of a season that was barely into January, and Chris Garland levelled with a long-range left-foot strike. Hudson’s handball allowed Spurs to take a 2-1 lead via a Martin Peters penalty, levelling the tie at 4-4 on aggregate. Again, Chelsea scored inside the final seconds, earning a place in the final when Hudson’s free-kick from the left was diverted into his own net by Cyril Knowles.
Enough people appeared sufficiently enraptured with Chelsea’s progress to send their jolly singalong, ‘Blue is The Colour’, to No.5 in the UK charts. But two years on from playing the role of nation’s sweethearts in the FA Cup Final, Chelsea now found themselves cast as villains. Even Osgood had once had a poster of Eastham on his bedroom wall. ‘What sheltered housing they sprung him from I’ll never know,’ he would joke. ‘I didn’t even know he was still alive, let alone still playing.’153
‘Any neutral in the stadium today must want something to happen for George Eastham,’ said ITV commentator Brian Moore after Hardaker, Shipman, Burnley chairman Bob Lord and their overseas guests – each wearing a trilby or bowler hat – had greeted the teams to the field like members of the politburo lined up on the balcony of the Kremlin. More appropriate for the occasion was the way Hudson immediately looked at home on the field – lush and green this time – that he’d missed out on two years earlier.
Yet it was Stoke who took the lead after five minutes via Conroy’s ginger head. Osgood swept the ball in while lying on the ground on the stroke of half-time, but with 17 minutes remaining Ritchie headed down, Jimmy Greenhoff forced a save from Peter Bonetti, and Eastham prodded in from inside the six-yard box. ‘The old man has done it,’ shouted Moore. ‘And if that happens to be the winner it really is a storybook come true.’ Stoke held on for the first trophy in their 108-year history, the game described by The Times as ‘a triumph for emotion rather than justice’. Even Bill Shankly was moved to write, ‘I fancied Chelsea yet was so pleased for Stoke when the result came through. There was a lot of sentiment on their side.’154
For Chelsea, defeat at Wembley one week after a surprising FA Cup exit at Second Division Orient marked the end of their spell as one of the most dangerous and exciting teams in the country. The break-up was on the way. Meanwhile, Rothmans Football Yearbook heralded Stoke’s success as ‘a significant omen of improving times’ for the English game, while those going on holiday with that year’s Shoot! Summer Special in their luggage were able to read that ‘even if the game hasn’t stepped all that far forward, it’s certainly stopped taking disastrous steps back.’
But when the decade moved past its mid-point it was clear that the playing fields of England were not entirely free of the tackle from behind. At regular intervals, there were calls for a return to the unforgiving days of 1971. Early in 1977, Kevin Keegan feared that ‘the curse of English soccer is back – worse than ever’ and demanded ‘a renewal of the campaign’.155
BRIAN’S MUM: He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.
Monty Python’s Life of Brian (HandMade Films, Python
[Monty] Pictures, 1979)
For observers desiring a return to the good old days of carefree football, the prospect in the first half of 1971-72 that Manchester United could be champions once more was exactly the sign they had been seeking. The club might have undergone all kinds of change since their last League title in 1967, but the name alone was enough to excite the romantics – especially with George Best offering a final extended reminder of the young man who took the game by storm through the mid and late 1960s.
Manager Frank O’Farrell, less prone to hysteria than some of his First Division counterparts, had spoken of ‘rampant fear running through dressing-rooms’, in the wake of the referees’ clampdown, but added, ‘There is no manager worth his salt who does not want the very few thugs weeded out and the game kept clean.’ Of course, he possessed the most obvious beneficiary of a stricter approach to the application of the laws, which made it somewhat ironic that the biggest furore in the early days of the purge surrounded the sending off of Best.
On the first Wednesday of the season, Burtenshaw gave the managers of Chelsea and United his usual warning about foul language. ‘Protests (by word or action) against referees will result in a caution,’ the officials’ memorandum had said. There was no dissent when United had an early goal disallowed, but they were not so forgiving when the home side scored in the 41st minute, claiming Osgood had fouled a United defender when setting up Tommy Baldwin. Willie Morgan protested at length, talking his way into the referee’s book. As Morgan was walking away from the scene of his crime, leaving Burtenshaw standing in front of Stamford Bridge’s main stand, Best approached with the words, ‘You are a fucking disgrace.’ Best’s defence was that he had been talking to Morgan.
‘Best was looking right at me,’ Burtenshaw would argue. ‘Morgan was some distance away, walking in the opposite direction. There was no doubt in my mind that Best was talking to me.’156 Best looked astonished when Burtenshaw ordered him off. He sat down and held his head before being accompanied to the dressing-room by coach Malcolm Musgrave, an image that made the front page of The Times.
After United had achieved a commendable 3-2 win, O’Farrell felt Best’s dismissal ‘underlines the problems facing football’. He said, ‘I’d seen the bruises and swellings on his feet. The fellows who had given Best those bumps and bruises were not booked.’ With a suspended sentence still hanging over him from previous misdemeanours, Best prepared for an appearance before the FA hierarchy, but his possible ban was seen to be damaging to football at a time when it was taking dramatic steps to improve its product. When Best ran rings round the Crystal Palace defence two days before his hearing several weeks later, Palace chairman Arthur Wait pleaded, ‘We cannot afford to have great entertainers like Best sitting on the sidelines. All I know is that we had 15,000 on the gate today. Best put them there.’
Enjoying his best spell of form for at least two years, Best had scored twice and set up another goal in a 3-1 win against West Bromwich Albion to give United three wins and a draw from their first four games. Gerry Harrison observed in The Times that ‘such are the fruits of new leadership, the new referees’ policy and the old George Best’.
‘No one is getting the flags out yet,’ warned O’Farrell. ‘Our enthusiasm is tempered by the sobering thought that the knife which was thrown on to the pitch, causing Old Trafford to be closed, has cost the club £20,000.’ Ordered by the League to play their first two home games at neutral venues because of that incident at the end of the previous season, United not only had to pay Liverpool and Stoke City to use their grounds, they had to compensate Everton because the Goodison Park crowd on the day after United beat Arsenal at Anfield fell below a pre-agreed figure of 46,000. ‘It seems a bit harsh that clubs can be punished to this extent for the despicable act of some unknown idiot,’ continued O’Farrell.
An articulate Irishman, strong-principled, honest and firm, O’Farrell had just masterminded Leicester City’s Second Division title triumph when he was summoned to Old Trafford. He had been at Filbert Street since December 1968, having previously been in charge at Torquay United and, before that, Southern League Weymouth. At Leicester, he inherited a team that had won only four out of 22 League games, but by tightening up the defence he led them to the FA Cup Final. Avoiding relegation, however, proved beyond him. Their return to the First Division reaffirmed his credentials and he was appointed by United after a six-month spell in which Busby had taken over team affairs once more following the demotion of Wilf McGuinness.
McGuinness had been promoted from youth-team coach at the end of the 1968-69 season, at the age of 31. Busby, with his 60th birthday approaching, had chosen to ‘move upstairs’ after finding that administrative matters were taking him away from the club’s training ground at The Cliff. No more was he able to rush though his paperwork by 11am and change into his tracksuit. At one point during their season as European champions, United had even been in danger of descending into a relegation struggle. Such a plight would have been unthinkable earlier in the club’s 24 years under the genial son of a Scottish miner, a man who won five League Championships and made ‘Manchester United’ the two best-known words in the English language in some parts of the world.
Burnley’s Jimmy Adamson, Celtic’s Jock Stein and even Don Revie were touted for the United job before McGuinness was appointed, receiving confirmation of his new role only two hours before the scheduled media announcement. McGuinness had been at the club since signing as a 15-year-old schoolboy wing-half and had won two England caps before his career was ended by a broken leg. But most thought United would go for a personality to match the stature of the club, someone undaunted by the mighty trinity of Charlton, Best and Law.
McGuinness was never sure exactly where the demarcation line was drawn between the training ground and the office of general manager Busby, particularly in the area of transfers and player contracts. Nor was it always obvious to the fans who was in charge. When visitors to Old Trafford opened their match programmes, it was ‘Sir Matt’s Column’ that greeted them. McGuinness had no voice in the publication.
McGuinness’s first season brought a disappointing League position and semi-final defeats in both domestic cup competitions. United’s FA Cup run featured a revenge victory over Manchester City, their conquerors in the League Cup, and an 8-2 victory over Northampton Town in the fifth round in which Best, in his first game back from a month’s suspension after knocking the ball out of referee Jack Taylor’s hands, scored six times.
There were signs of ambition leaking out of the club once the European Cup had been won. Instead of marking the beginning of a great new era, as would Liverpool’s triumph in the competition nine years later, United’s realisation of Busby’s dream precipitated a slump. An injection of new players would have helped. World Cup hero Alan Ball and Wales centre-half Mike England might have ended up at Old Trafford rather than Everton and Spurs had United been more aggressive in the transfer market. Instead, the old guard of Busby’s side, notably defenders like Bill Foulkes, Shay Brennan and Tony Dunne, saw their places going to untested youngsters like Paul Edwards and Steve James and former Arsenal centre-back Ian Ure, signed for £80,000. ‘They were buying a pup,’ admitted Ure, who was ‘taking pills like sweeties’ for an injured knee. ‘You didn’t advertise it if you weren’t right, but Arsenal must have known and they kept quiet.’157 The only significant signing in that period was Burnley winger Morgan, a talented player saddled forever with comparisons to Best.
McGuinness attempted to assign specific roles to players, rather than adopting the free-and-easy approach that had been the hallmark of Busby’s teams. It was, of course, the modern way, but McGuinness’s diagrams on blackboards proved less effective than Busby’s ability to inspire players to give their best effort. At least he could not be accused of lacking bravery, dropping Charlton, Law and Foulkes three games into his reign. ‘He dropped everybody,’ recalled Morgan, ‘to make a point. He was infantile in his approach. If you got caught with your hands in your pockets you had to do ten press-ups.’ According to Morgan, it even applied to Charlton, dressed in a suit on a cold, muddy day. ‘I think Wilf got sacked the day after.’158
By Boxing Day 1970, after a 4-4 draw against Derby County, United decided they had slipped far enough. McGuinness was informed that Busby was taking charge once more and the team duly climbed the table to finish eighth. As results improved, goalkeeper Alex Stepney, restored to the team after McGuinness had preferred Jimmy Rimmer, explained, ‘The lads have so much respect for the boss that once he took over they had to pull out that bit extra.’
Such comments did not portend well for O’Farrell, who accepted the United position after Busby attempted to pay him less than the £15,000 per year chairman Louis Edwards confirmed was on offer. Admitting to being taken aback by the sheer size of Old Trafford, O’Farrell took a significant stand that McGuinness had never dared. Having shown O’Farrell to a small office at United’s training ground at The Cliff, Busby announced that he was retaining the manager’s office. ‘Matt, that’s not right and it’s not going to look right,’ O’Farrell fired back. ‘The press have been speculating that nobody will come here while you are hanging on to the manager’s office.’
‘OK,’ a reluctant Busby replied. ‘I’ll move my stuff out.’159
Yet O’Farrell was no tough guy. Stepney suggested, ‘There were people who knew Frank well who felt that he was more cut out for the priesthood than for a career in football … Frank was a very proper, circumspect man.’160
If the deeply religious O’Farrell needed divine assistance as he tackled his task, he received it in the play of Best. Collectively, United were performing better than for some time, but they had not suddenly gone from also-rans to the 1968 team re-born. Best’s form was the big difference. Either side of United’s defeat at Everton – their only loss in the first 13 League games – Best scored their only goals against Wolverhampton Wanderers and Ipswich Town and then came the game in which he tore Palace apart.
On 13 September, the FA disciplinary commission sat at the Great Western Hotel near Paddington and watched witnesses placing Subbuteo players on a field to indicate the positions of the relevant parties in the Stamford Bridge incident. ‘The commission, after hearing all of the evidence, are not satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt that George Best directed the words complained of to the referee,’ was the verdict. ‘But they were contrary to Rule 12 and would call for severe punishment in view of the pre-match talk given by the referee.’ The sending off was justified, they ruled, but no further punishment was required. A furious Burtenshaw felt the League had missed a chance to emphasise its commitment to better conduct. One unnamed referee was quoted as saying, ‘The FA have let us down completely. It makes us look like complete mugs.’
Best promised to control his temper and returned to wreaking havoc on First Division defences. He celebrated his reprieve with a hat-trick against West Ham United, completing it with an emphatic finish after dummying and shimmying his way across the box. At one point, ITV commentator Gerald Sinstadt noted, ‘George Best, these days without a defender stood on his heels, [is] really looking the player we have always known him to be and so rarely had the chance to see him being.’
Two weeks later, Old Trafford witnessed another much-replayed moment of Best genius in the home game against leaders Sheffield United, who had taken the First Division by storm by winning eight and drawing two of their first ten games after promotion.† A beneficiary of the referees’ protection, Blades midfielder Tony Currie was not optimistic that ‘a new attacking trend’ was about to become permanent in English football. ‘Sadly, I don’t think it ever will,’ he said. ‘There are only three or four clubs who attempt real attacking football.’161
With many thousands locked outside the ground, Norman Fox of The Times noted of the surprise pacesetters, ‘Any well-prepared team can be turned to stony inability when Best casts a sudden, hypnotic spell on a defence.’ And with the home team a goal up inside the final ten minutes, Best gathered the ball just inside his opponents’ half, turned to face downfield and began making tentative forward progress. The first hint of a challenge prompted him to accelerate, embarking on a diagonal run past two challengers and then between two others to drive into the right of the penalty area. Just when it looked as though his momentum would carry him into harmless territory, he clipped an impossibly angled shot from close to the corner of the six-yard box beyond keeper John Hope and in off the far post. His look skyward and broad grin suggested that he had managed to impress even himself. ‘Television showed it three times,’ gasped The Times, referring to Match of the Day later that night. That such an occurrence was deemed worthy of mention demonstrates that this was still the era of reluctance to over-analyse in the studio.
Best scored in the next three United games, all victories. His performance in the third of those games, at Newcastle, was even more remarkable given that he had received an anonymous threat that he would be killed if he played. After the run of wins ended in defeat at Leeds, Best scored another hat-trick at Southampton in the final game of November, a 5-2 victory. The residue of goodwill that existed towards Manchester United might be unfamiliar to a younger public used to the cynicism of non-believers who grew up during the all-conquering Alex Ferguson era. Yet United’s revival under O’Farrell was generally seized upon as good for the game. For example, The Times was already set to crown new champions, gushing, ‘United have developed a new, exciting form of attacking football that seems destined to take them back to the top in England, if not in Europe, again.’
When United defeated Nottingham Forest on the first weekend of December they were five points clear of Derby County, Manchester City and Leeds with 20 games played. And then they didn’t win another match until the middle of March – 12 games later – when Best opened the scoring against Huddersfield Town. It was his first League goal since The Dell more than three months earlier and would be followed by only one more First Division goal from open play, although he did add two penalties and totalled five in United’s run to the FA Cup quarter-finals. Despite finishing with 26 goals in all competitions, Best’s form ‘dissipated’ in the second half of the season, according to Rothmans, as United slipped to eighth place, ten points off the lead.
That United should fall off the same cliff as Best’s performance was no real surprise. Morgan might have said, ‘It’s not just an individual revival, it’s a collective revival,’162 but their First Division lead had been achieved almost exclusively because Best dragged his team-mates by the winged collars on their new shirts to heights that they had no reason to expect. He was fooling few people when he said, ‘I’m as sick as anyone when I get the lion’s share of the credit and know full well that there are other players who contributed more.’163 As Pat Crerand observed, ‘George had one of these subliminal four months or whatever and was banging them in left, right and centre and destroying everybody. He had a golden period in that time under Frank and then George just fell off the wagon, didn’t he?’164
The modest talent O’Farrell had at his disposal is evidenced by the men he fielded during those early months. Of those who had not played in the European Cup Final, it is hard to argue that anyone other than Law, injured on the big night, and Morgan might have got into that team. Even Morgan would have struggled to match the magnificent career-defining performance that John Aston gave on the wing at Wembley. The likes of defenders Tom O’Neil, Francis Burns, James and Edwards were journeymen, while Sammy McIlroy was still a wet-behind-the-ears prodigy, despite a goal-scoring debut in the Manchester derby.
When, in February, Best confided in John Roberts, his ghostwriter at the Daily Express, that he was tempted to ask for a transfer, he cited on-field problems as the biggest motivation. ‘I’ve got nothing against the management,’ he said in a conversation that never made it into the newspaper. ‘It’s the team. It’s just not good enough. It’s just not going anywhere. I could go right through the team and find things wrong. People knock me when I’m not doing it, but when I’m not doing it, who is?’165
The ease of Best’s pathway through the playing fields of the First Division appeared destined to be undermined by the chaotic diversions of his private life. By the middle of the season, a man who had once spoken of his envy at Law’s ability to go home to his wife and children after training was growing weary of the people eager to write to O’Farrell whenever he was seen out with a drink in his hand or a girl on his arm.
Early in January, he missed two days of training and was dropped for the home defeat against Wolves. On the Monday, the club announced a fine of two weeks’ wages, ordered extra training with the youth team, barred him from having days off for five weeks and told him to leave his custom-built luxury house and move back into digs with his original landlady, Mary Fullaway. The latter sanction was for show only and never seriously considered something to which Best would adhere.
As the season drew towards its disappointing close, Best continued to skip training. O’Farrell felt that Best would ‘opt out’ of facing up to any problems and used to send Crerand searching for him. But the Scot admitted, ‘I knew every bolthole in Manchester, but I still couldn’t find George.’166
Having played in 40 of United’s 42 League games, Best reached the summer with his mind made up – for now. He’d had enough. According to Roberts, in his account of those turbulent months, Fall of a Superstar, Best had told O’Farrell that in order to stay at United he wanted £1,000 per week and for the club to buy his unloved house from him. Despite Best’s belief that O’Farrell would ask the board for acceptance of such terms, United informed him that they did not want him on their summer trip to Majorca, telling him to join up with Northern Ireland for the Home Internationals instead.
Best had no such intention, instead boarding a flight to Marbella in southern Spain. ‘My mind is made up about football,’ he told the throng of reporters who took the first available flight after him. Posing for pictures juggling a football in a pink vest and brightly-patterned swimming shorts, he said, ‘I’m sorry. It’s all over.’
Except, as anyone with a passing familiarity with Best’s story knows, it wasn’t. A few weeks later, another beach (Majorca) and another announcement. ‘A short time ago I went away to make a decision and now I realise it was the wrong decision. I would like to go back and play for Manchester United.’ This time, United’s welcome-back punishment was to move him in with Crerand – followed by another return to Mary Fullaway – and a two-week suspension. All the while, players such as Charlton and Kidd were growing increasingly frustrated, both with Best’s behaviour and United’s apparent indulgence of him. ‘That was the dilemma,’ O’Farrell explained. ‘The team wasn’t good enough without him.’167
Perhaps inevitably, Best would not see the end of 1972 at Old Trafford. More missed training sessions, more omissions from the team, more fines. By the beginning of December, he would be permanently absent without leave and on the transfer list for a sum of £300,000. And, by then, he would not even be top of the list of United’s problems.