There is a photograph that tells you everything about what Manchester United’s supporters thought of Denis Law. It was taken moments after he had scored the goal he always wished he hadn’t at Old Trafford.
The Great Red was in the blue of Manchester City that day, and had just backheeled the ball into the United net. The home team, on the lip of relegation, had to win the game and hope results elsewhere went their way. But Law had put an end to such ambition. He had refused to celebrate his strike. Not in the choreographed fashion of the modern-day player making a performance of maintaining respect, but genuinely.
Indeed he looked, as he trudged back to the halfway line, the City stalwart Mike Doyle slapping him round the face in a bid to extract a smile, as if he had just run over the family cat. As the teams lined up for the restart, elements of the home crowd poured on to the pitch, in the forlorn hope they might get the game abandoned. Three sizeable lads, dressed in the wide-trousered, stack-heeled style of the times, approached Law, the man who, as far as they knew at that moment, had just booted their team into the second division. But they are not there to remonstrate or accuse him of treachery. They just want to shake him by the hand, to say thank you for all he had done for them. Their broad grins show how much they relished just being in close proximity to “The King”.
Because across the generations nobody has matched Law’s standing among United followers. Eric Cantona may have come close, Paul Scholes not far behind, but Law remains the one. And he had some competition, not least in the team he starred in.
Yet, of the Holy Trinity celebrated in a statue outside Old Trafford, for the match-going lad, George Best was a little too showbiz, Sir Bobby Charlton a tad too establishment. It was Law who was lauded by the crowd, it was Law who was anointed the “King of the Stretford End”. When I was growing up, the way he pulled his shirt out of his shorts, the way he gathered the cuffs around his fists, the way he pointed his right forefinger to the sky in celebration of a goal, that was how you did it. His was a fashion copied in every playground in Manchester.
“Tuck your shirt in, boy,” I cannot have been alone in being told by the PE teacher when turning out for the primary school team.
“The Lawman doesn’t, Sir,” was the determined reply.
“The Lawman has style,” was the response. “You, boy, are a scruff.”
And the Lawman had style all right. He was a wisp of a player, balletic and graceful, with a gymnast’s leap and sprinter’s dash, allied to an unflinching determination. The doughty Scotsman who never played a league game in Scotland, was bought from Torino in 1962 by Sir Matt Busby to quicken the reconstruction of the side four years on from the Munich air disaster. At a record fee of £115,000, expensive he may have been, but he fundamentally understood the meaning of the project he was joining. After all, as a young player at Huddersfield, he had paid to stand on the Old Trafford terraces to watch the first game after the crash.
When he arrived, for Law, there was no hanging around. He made his presence felt from the start, scoring in the 1963 Cup final. The following season, ten years before that goal for City, he scored 46 times in all competitions, a club record unlikely to be matched, certainly not in this era of Antony and Rasmus Hojlund. His colleagues came to realise football was a simple game with Denis around: get the ball in the box and he would put it in the net.
And how he repaid their service. The club’s former chairman Martin Edwards reckons that Law’s contribution that season is the finest he ever saw. Because he was simply unstoppable, a magician in the box. Gordon Banks used to tell the story of how once, when playing for England against Scotland, in a melee in the penalty area, he dived into the ruck to gather the ball. When he opened his eyes, he looked up and saw Law, standing over him, smiling.
“Oh, it’s you,” Banks said.
“Aye, son,” replied Law. “And I’ll always be here.”
‘He was a ferocious competitor, first into a scrap, last to leave’
It was that hint of devilment that made him even more appealing to us fans on the terrace as for the next three seasons he kept on scoring. Never shy of getting his retaliation in first, he was a ferocious competitor, first into a scrap, last to leave. He used to claim he would get himself suspended every New Year so he could spend Hogmanay back in his home town of Aberdeen. It was meant as a joke. But it was not far from the truth.
Yet, stylish as he was in his beautifully cut mohair suits and Rod Stewart hair before Rod Stewart had hair like that, off the pitch he demonstrated none of that behaviour. He was a quiet bloke, a devoted family man, preferring to be back home with his wife and five children, with no interest in Best-like cavorting.
His footballing passion, though, was a constant. We loved the way he reacted to England’s 1966 World Cup win, by playing golf instead of watching the game on television and then, when he got back to the clubhouse to discover the Jules Rimet trophy had been won, throwing his bag across the changing room in a rage. Nor was he shy of negotiating for proper reward with the notoriously parsimonious Busby. On one occasion, he threatened to put in a transfer request if he did not get a raise. Fearful of setting a precedent, the manager made him sign a letter saying he would not follow through with such a threat, which was flourished in front of all the other players. But Law always reckoned Busby paid him what he wanted on the quiet.
For the United stalwart, the one disappointment of that grand night in May 1968 when, ten years after Munich, the European Cup was won, was that Law was not playing. That was the night when the Holy Trinity deserved to be in full order. Though if we were disappointed, it was as nothing compared to his dismay that the knee injury that would ultimately curtail his excellence precluded him from being there. The pictures of him in hospital, his leg in traction, trying to force a smile when his team-mates brought the trophy in to show him showed this was a man who cared.
When, after it became clear his abilities had been wholly compromised by his knee problem, he was let go by Tommy Docherty in 1973, the sense of an end among the United following was profound. Sure, he was not who he was, but he was still the greatest. When he rejoined City, the club he had been at before he went to Turin, I remember going to Maine Road to watch him in action, simply because, never mind the shirt colour, if the King was out on the pitch, you wanted to pay homage.
In later life he became a superb radio co-commentator, almost as deft and spritely on air as he was on the pitch. On United’s European trips, you could see Sir Alex Ferguson’s face light up when he realised Law was in the room. Because even the greatest idolised the Lawman. Yet, for all the esteem in which he was held, there was nothing remotely pompous or self-important about him. A delightful colleague on the circuit, he was always funny, always charming, always friendly to everyone and anyone. Unless you asked him about a certain backheeled goal, that is.
“Did I score that day?” he once asked me, a grin spreading across his face. “I don’t remember.”
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