Catch A Falling Star (15 page)

Then you have your lap of honour around the pitch and you never want to leave. People were throwing you hats and scarves. It really meant something to me to be able to celebrate with our supporters. Then it was back to the dressing room where everyone had a bottle of champagne in their hands. I think Malcolm was brought up on champagne!

That strike against
Leicester
was my sixteenth goal of the season. Perhaps if I hadn’t been so generous to my team-mates, if I’d been a touch more selfish in front of goal, I might have got
  into
the England World Cup squad. Having said all that though, I used to take nearly as much pleasure in making goals as taking them.

We celebrated at the Café Royal in
London
that evening and the next day we had the celebration in

*

You may well think that having scored twice in City’s title clincher and the winner in the FA Cup Final, lucrative sponsorships and plenty of advertising opportunities would come my way. You couldn’t be more wrong!

There were no agents in those days and so there was no way to cash in. The only extra bit of money I received was for an interview when we’d just won the Cup. Mike
Summerbee
and I were being interviewed and they gave us a cold bottle of milk each to drink. Then at the end of the interview, someone from the Milk Marketing Board gave us £50 each in a brown paper envelope! £50! The funny thing was I ended up being a milkman later on so I must have liked the taste of it!

My fan mail went through the roof at this point. We opened all our own mail and to be honest, the wife started to get a little jealous over some of the comments being written for my attention. The other thing about letters was, Joe Mercer used to receive notes from crackpots saying: “We saw Neil Young drunk as a skunk at 3am outside
Chorlton
Street Bus Station,” when he knew full well I was either tucked up in bed or perhaps at a player’s house enjoying a buffet. Joe used to laugh it off – but what sort of person would take the trouble to write in with such lies? Probably that berk who used to boo me from Row
A
, Seat 3 in the Main Stand! I’ll never forget you if you’re reading this!

By the summer of 1969 I was a well known footballer, a celebrity if you like, certainly in
Manchester
and the
North West
. This meant of course that I took part in a lot of charity work, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

One such event was when City and United put out a joint team to play the models from Blinkers Nightclub at
White
City
. It was a big charity event and it attracted a huge crowd. The game ended about 6-6, you’d let the girls push you over and have a good laugh with them. We stopped short at swapping shirts and getting in the showers with them though!

Another function which was a pleasure to be associated with was for the Variety Club of Great Britain. They used to have schemes in pubs where they used to pile pennies on top of each other, up to three feet high sometimes and I would be asked to knock them down with the proceeds going to underprivileged kids. Once a month I’d attend these functions and the press would be there taking photos. It was all for charity and it would always be great fun. Most of the pubs would advertise that a City player was doing the honours and you’d find the place would be full of Blues. Then I would sign books and programmes for them all, which they appreciated and we would talk football all night long.

Perhaps I think that maybe I used to underestimate myself. Don
Revie
, when he was the
Leeds
manager, once said something that made me very proud. We were all sat in the hotel watching Grandstand and Don said: “We’re not choosing the line-up until we know if Neil Young is playing or not,” and all the City lads went “
whoooooh
!”

So people in the game obviously rated me. Then again he might have been thinking of the English two-a-side head tennis tournament at
Leeds
. The place was naturally full of
Leeds
fans, there were twenty-four teams of two taking part and Mike Doyle and I walked it. We played
Revie’s
 
Leeds
in the final and their players were Johnny Giles and Allan Clarke. We won
both sets
, 21-6 and 21-7 which won us a holiday for two in
Menorca
, but I had to give it away to some friends because I had club commitments.

7. Goodnight
Vienna
!

After the cup victory we went to 
Australia
for a six-week tour. Along the way we had to stop over for two nights in
Singapore
and one night we were in the lounge of the hotel feeling quite bored when Malcolm, Tony Coleman and I decided to go for a late night curry. We were staying in the Hilton and right opposite
was
a market where you could buy anything and everything.  We’d had a few beers and stumbled across a curry emporium there where they sold curries for just £2 – we found out why they were so cheap the next day!

I think the curry was made out of dog food because throughout the next day we were spewing our guts up and going to the toilet non-stop. They had told us not to eat out when we’d arrived and when we saw the restaurant in daylight we couldn’t believe the filth and the mess that was strewn about. It had looked so good at night with all the lanterns on. The other lads couldn’t believe it though! We paid for our adventurousness for the next couple of days.

When we finally arrived in
Perth
, all the local press were there snapping their cameras. Malcolm and Joe said we were there to enjoy ourselves after all the hard work we’d put in back in England: “You can do whatever you wish,” they said, “but no one is to get into any trouble!”

With that they gave us £7 each spending money. Well, a few days went by and Harry Dowd was driving us all mad with his new video camera.  So we decided to play a trick on him. We were invited to a party held by the Australian FA, which as it happened was held beside a lovely swimming pool. They put the music on and we’d all had a couple of drinks.

Now Dowdy, who was my room-mate on this tour, asked a waitress to dance. Meanwhile the lads were challenging me to get his camera from our room and film him. So I sneaked upstairs, got the camera and by the time I returned all the team were egging Harry on with this girl while I filmed them. Then Harry slipped and knocked the waitress into the pool. Well, there were howls of laughter all around. Before Harry came back to sit down I’d been back up to the room to put his camera away.

The very next day we played a Perth XI at the stadium and drew 1-1. The newspaper reporter following us, an ex-pat called David Jack, slated us because we’d had a few late nights and hadn’t trained for six days.

Nothing was said about his comments until the last game when we faced the Australian national team. Up until then all the games had been much of a
muchness
to us but on this occasion Malcolm put his foot down: “Nobody can have a drink three days before the match. We will show these cocky bastards how to play the game.”  So nobody drank, we trained hard to ensure that this David Jack would eat a large slice of humble pie. On the pitch we wiped the floor with them, to the tune of 4-1 and this David Jack or ‘
Jacko
’ as we called him was conspicuous by his absence at the reception after the game.

So we left
Australia
on a high and on the way back we stopped over in
New York
and then flew back to
Manchester
. Harry Dowd was still filming at this point. I’m sure he must have thought he was Alfred Hitchcock or something.

Then, a few days after our return to
England
, Harry phoned me and said: “Neil, I’m having a bit of a party, about four of the lads and their wives are coming, so please come along. We’re going to see how the filming came out.”

So we all gathered in his lounge and we couldn’t wait because we knew what was coming next. So picture the scene, we’d all had a few drinks and then came the big moment where Harry is dancing with this waitress and all hell breaks loose. His wife Rita, who is a lovely woman, gave Harry a right hook that Ricky Hatton would have been proud of! In the meantime we were all rolling about on the floor howling with laughter. We had to calm Rita down saying there was nothing in it but I don’t think Harry used his camera much after that!

Another memory of that Aussie trip was when we all split into little groups to play golf. I played with Joe Mercer and Tommy Booth at the Royal Melbourne Golf Club. Before we teed off the club pro gave us a warning: “When your ball goes into the rough please do not go looking for it because you might come across a few snakes.” You can imagine our reaction to that! Tommy and I played golf off 14 and Joe said he played off 24 so we gave him six shots. We played for a golf ball and the worst player would have to buy a round in the bar afterwards.

Joe was a little bandit, bless him. Tommy and I would be blasting away with all our might but Joe would calmly stroke the ball about 150 yards straight as a die right down the middle of the fairway. It might have taken him a little longer to reach the green but you know he was magic around the greens, every hole he would two
putt
, the only chance we had of beating him was on the par threes which he couldn’t reach in one shot.

It was an education in how to play a round of golf because he never tried to hit the ball too hard, instead he played to his strengths – steadiness and accuracy. Naturally he beat us but as I say, it was a lesson for Tommy and
I
that day because deep down Joe still wanted to win.

The moral of the story is if you want to do things right then do them well. I think this was why Joe was a success in his life because everything he attempted to do, he did well. He was a successful footballer and a great manager. He also managed
England
and had a very successful marriage to his dear wife Norah.

*

Some of the best tours I went on with the club didn’t go quite as far
afield
as
Australia
. We used to have some great trips to
Blackpool
and
Southport
where we would relax, play golf and train. On one particular visit to
Southport
we went to a club to watch the entertainer Lance Percival. It turned out to be a magical night. It was the last night of his show and they were all having a party at Lance’s house at about
midnight
. We had the number of the house so we set off in taxis and arrived there and knocked on the door but there was no answer.

After a while Franny Lee got impatient and, noticing that a side window was open, he climbed in. Then all hell broke loose. For some reason he had climbed into a bedroom at the wrong house. Well, it was mayhem. We tried to explain and eventually everything was okay again – it turned out the party was three doors down and wasn’t due to start for another half an hour anyway.

Another trip I remember fondly was a friendly with the great Dutch side Ajax Amsterdam. They had superb players like
Cruyff
,
Neeskens
and
Krol
at the time and this team would go on to be undisputed champions of
Europe
, winning the European Cup three times in a row in the early 70s. It was supposed to be a friendly but it turned out more like a cup-tie. It finished 3-3 and I scored a hat-trick. After that game Malcolm told us we were ready for
Europe
– a claim proved correct by us winning the European Cup Winners’ Cup that season.