Denis Law

by Alex Gordon

  The memories are cascading back now as he points to another tenement. ‘That’s where my friend George Geddis lived, at No. 4. You know, he gave me the money for my first pair of football boots. It was much appreciated, believe me. The next pair of boots I got were from my mother and she got them on tick.’ He looks quizzically at the camera. ‘You know what that means? On the drip? I think they were a Christmas present when I was about 15.’

  George Yule, a friend from childhood, was also on hand to tell viewers, ‘We played five-a-sides, seven-a-sides, 11-a-sides, oh, anything-a-sides. Everybody got a game and you had to fight for every scrap. I’m sure that came out in Denis when he was on the football pitch. I’m convinced of that.’

  Before moving on, Law looks round once more and then faces the camera. ‘We seemed to be happier back then. Kids get everything these days without doing anything. I don’t know if there is the same enjoyment. When you have had to work for it, you appreciated it more and you really looked after it.’ He laughs and adds, with a big smile, ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m getting old and grumpy.’

  He passed his 11-plus exams to allow him to go to grammar school. That presented a massive problem; unlike his first two schools, Hilton Primary and Kittybrewster, football was not played at the upmarket school, with rugby and cricket the favoured sports. The education authorities expected a young Denis to enrol at the grammar school, as was his right. He didn’t want to go. No football, no Denis. His mother fought his corner and, after persuading officials that the family couldn’t possibly afford cricket or rugby gear for their son, the authorities eventually relented. Denis would go to Powis Junior Secondary where they had several very good football teams. In fact, a huge debt of gratitude is due to a Mr Bill Durno who ran the school teams. He switched Law from full-back – ‘where I had generally played at the time’ – to inside-left. Would this have been a significantly different tale if it hadn’t been for Mr Durno’s intervention? It’s not worth thinking about, is it?

  On the MUTV tape, there is a scene when Law strides towards a large, solid building. ‘I’m back at my old school. It was called Powis Junior Secondary back then but, as you can see, it is now St Machar Academy. I remember it was a fantastic school.’ He waves his hand, ‘And they had those magnificent playing fields. They were right on our doorstep. It was a lovely time.’

  Inside the school, Denis walks briskly along a corridor, past a framed Scotland international shirt and a stacked trophy cabinet before reaching a door marked ‘PRIVATE’. Like a naughty school kid, he whispers, ‘I’ve been summoned to see the headmistress.’ He stealthily tip-toes towards the door, pushes it gently and pops his head round. There’s the sound of laughter. He gives headmistress Isabel McIntyre a hug. ‘Good to be back,’ he tells her like he had just popped out last week. She asks him if he realises it is the school’s 70th anniversary. ‘Yes, I met some lovely ladies on my way in and they told me. Seventy years, eh? It’s great the place is still here.’

  Isabel shows him the register that tells him he joined the school in 1952. Law is surprised. ‘I was here when I was 12? I thought I was 11. Maybe they didn’t have a proper register in those days. Maybe they couldn’t afford it.’ Then, the eyes shining, he asks, ‘Does it give my record of being a good pupil? An outstanding pupil? Anything like that?’ He’s laughing. The headmistress tells him, ‘Oh, yes, we know you did well.’ Law grins again, ‘We had a good time here.’ He reminds her, ‘You do know I passed my exams to get to the grammar school, don’t you? They didn’t play football, so I came here.’ The headmistress says, ‘You made the right choice.’ ‘Exactly.’ Later on, Law is taken to a big, open indoor area where ex-pupils are mingling. On a wall there is a photograph with the heading: ‘ARE YOU IN DENIS LAW’S CLASS?’ There are rows of youngsters posing for the camera – a team photo taken before term with everyone in their finery – and right at the back there is the cheeky image of a smiling youngster with round-rimmed glasses. Law moves closer to inspect the picture and fishes out his spectacles. ‘I was a young boy then. Oh, dear. What about the glasses? That’s a great picture, isn’t it?’

  As the day settles down, Isabel McIntyre thanks Denis for coming along to the 70th anniversary. ‘He is the most famous former pupil by a country mile,’ she tells the assembled company. Amid the applause, Denis is motioned to step forward and he plants a kiss on her cheek. ‘If only I was 40 years younger,’ he laughs. ‘Oh, I’ve gone all red-faced now,’ replies the flustered headmistress. Once she regains her composure, she goes on camera to say, ‘He’s thoroughly down-to-earth. He’s not like someone famous at all. That’s a sign of a great man.’

  Back in the forties, Denis recalled, he and his friends used to play with tatty old tennis balls or tin cans if they didn’t have a football. He would kick them against anything solid, collect the rebound and fire it back all the way to Hilton Primary, Kittybrewster or Powis. He would have a packed and bulky schoolbag slung over his shoulder making movement somewhat awkward. He admitted, ‘It was good practice for control and balance.’ The family radio was situated in the kitchen, along with a sink, cooker and a big drum where his mother used to do the washing. Everything was contained in an area of about three feet square. Particular radio favourites were Dick Barton Special Agent and Appointment With Fear. Another programme that was listened to avidly was Quatermass, a science fiction series. The only other source of indoor entertainment was provided by a ball of wool dangling from the pulley which was suspended from the ceiling and where the clothes used to hang out to dry. Denis would swing the makeshift ball around to make sure it didn’t bounce off anything breakable in the kitchen. That done, he would jump up and head it for hours on end. His sister, Georgina, said, ‘He would keep it at the same height for about an hour. Then he would shorten it and start again. After another hour he would shorten it again. By the end of the night the ball of wool was practically on the ceiling.’

  It’s difficult to comprehend that such a promising youth somehow slipped through the net of every Scottish football club and was allowed to be whisked south to sign for unfashionable Huddersfield Town. Aberdeen, in particular, must have been kicking themselves. Stories abound that the Pittodrie club were keen to make a move, but Law is adamant no such offer took place. Remarkably, not one Scottish club showed genuine interest in this precocious footballing talent. That’s a fact. Maybe it would have been different if Law had played for Scotland Schoolboys but, for some unaccountable reason, that never materialised, either. The nearest he got to achieving that status was when he was taken with the schoolboy squad to Northern Ireland. ‘The first time I had been outside Scotland,’ said Law. But he never got a kick at the ball. Luckily for Denis, Archie Beattie, brother of Huddersfield’s Scottish manager Andy, did a bit of scouting for the club and lived not far from the Law household. There were precious few talent scouts around at the time; it was far too expensive for clubs to even consider setting up such sophisticated networks. A lot of the recommendations were word of mouth and, eventually, Beattie took in a junior game and had his first look at Law. ‘I used to score a lot of goals and I suppose that’s what got me noticed,’ said Law later. Beattie was suitably impressed and got in touch with his brother.

  Andy Beattie wasn’t quite in the same positive frame of mind when he first saw a five-foot three-inch Law, dwarfed while standing between his elder brothers George and John. He is quoted as saying to his brother, ‘The boy’s a freak. Anyone less like a footballer I have never seen. He’s weak, puny and bespectacled.’ So much for first impressions, then. ‘A miserable bag of bones,’ was Denis’s own summing up of his physique at the time.

  Law recalled that first trip across the border as a ‘huge adventure’. The Aberdeen he had grown up in was a lovely city with nearby beaches and fresh air. Huddersfield, on the other hand, was an industrial town with huge chimneys and woollen mills. He admitted he was immediately homesick. Despite his hardly-inspirational first meeting, Beattie offered the youngster a week’s
trial. He did sufficiently well to be offered a contract as a ground staff apprentice which he duly signed on 3 April 1955. His first weekly wage packet was £4 14s. More than half of that – £2 7s 6d – paid for his board and lodgings. The Huddersfield Town manager later confided to his brother, ‘I thought you were playing a joke on me, but as soon as I saw him kick the ball I realised he had it in him to be truly great.’ He signed professional forms on 25 February 1957. Twenty months later, Law made his debut for Scotland. It was the start of something wonderful.

  Another Scot was to give Law his first-team opportunity at Huddersfield Town. Bill Shankly had replaced Beattie, who quit the post in November 1956. Shankly, who would, of course, go on to become a legend at Liverpool, liked the gutsy, gritty, never-say-die spirit of the young Aberdonian. He admitted, ‘He looked like a waif. I had to give him steak and milk to build him up.’ But he had no hesitation in putting him in against Notts County at Meadow Lane on Christmas Eve 1956. A crowd of 9,165 witnessed Denis Law’s first kick of the ball in senior first-team football. Law wore the No. 8 shirt and Huddersfield won 2-1 with both goals coming from Ron Simpson, wearing the No. 10 jersey, the number Law would wear with such distinction for so many years. Law only wore No. 10 in seven league games in his 81 appearances for Town. Amazingly, only two days after his first outing, Law played against Notts County again and netted his first goal at Leeds Road. His second league goal came in a 2-2 draw with Swansea and he opened his FA Cup account with one in a 3-1 victory over Peterborough.

  Four matches after his debut, Law would come face-to-face for the first time with a man who would become a great teammate at Manchester United and a lifelong personal friend, Harry Gregg. The Northern Ireland goalkeeper was turning out for Doncaster Rovers on 2 February 1957 at Leeds Road. Gregg remembered, ‘I saw him and a more unlikely footballer was difficult to imagine. He was terrifyingly thin, like a leek, but it didn’t take a genius to see that Denis Law was something special.’ Gregg kept Law at bay as Rovers triumphed 1-0 in front of 17,888. In all, Law turned out in 13 league games and five FA Cup-ties during his first campaign.

  Shankly was swiftly beginning to realise he had something special on his playing staff. By now, Law had undergone an operation to rectify the squint and he said, ‘It was great to be able to look people straight in the eye. The confidence I got from that was enormous. That operation changed my life.’ Shankly was suitably impressed by the consistently good displays from Law and said, ‘Although he didn’t look the strongest of boys, he was strong-willed and he had great strength of character. He fought with the heart. And the head, of course. Law was easy to teach. When he was just coming through, he never argued with the referee or the linesmen. He conversed with them in a different manner. In other words, he flannelled them. If a decision was given against him, he would cotton onto a linesman and have a conversation with him. And maybe the next decision went his way. He did the same with referees. He spoke to them politely and they must have thought, “He’s a nice lad.” He didn’t show dissent. Instead of rushing over and telling them what to do, he would say, “Yes, you’re right, ref.” He was a very good actor.’

  Shankly’s influence would have a profound and lasting effect. Law said, ‘The first day I met him I couldn’t believe there could be a man so involved with football 24 hours a day, every day. It was his whole life. There will never be a man like him ever again in football. I’ve never met anyone before or since with the same passion and love for the game. He was obsessed with fitness, he absolutely hated players being injured even to the extent of ignoring those who were. He was an unforgettable man.’ Law would later add, ‘Mind you, he did my brain in sometimes. There are things to talk about other than football.’

  Around the time of Law’s second season, a local reporter noted, ‘Law uses the match officials as props. They don’t realise it, but he knows how to work them. He may be young, but he is learning the game very, very quickly.’ The newspaper also informed us, ‘Most of his goals come from nothing. He enjoys tidying up the penalty area to get goals that look simple. But their creation comes from deep reading, razor-sharp anticipation and, most of all, a willingness to go in where it hurts. Law often chases a lost cause and turns it into a winning one.’

  Bill Shankly was adamant he would never sell Law. Bigger clubs were being alerted to the young, athletic, blond and stylish Huddersfield Town forward, particularly after his excellent first match for Scotland against Wales in October 1958. It seemed only a matter of time before he would move elsewhere. Shankly, who had formerly managed Carlisle United, Grimsby Town and Workington Town, left Huddersfield on 1 December 1959 for Liverpool, where he would spend 15 eventful years. He was 46 years old when he went to Anfield, with the club in the doldrums in the Second Division. His starting salary was £2,500 per year. Phil Taylor made way for Shankly and one of his last games in charge of Liverpool was a 1-0 defeat against a Law-inspired Huddersfield on 28 November that year. (In his video The King, Law thought the score was 5-1 and Shankly, in another book, believed it to be 5-0. The official Huddersfield Town book of history and stats, 99 Years And Counting, gives it as 1-0 and the other league game between the clubs ended 2-2 at Anfield on 19 March.)

  One manager who had taken note of Law’s ability was Matt Busby, who would eventually pay the £115,000 fee to buy him for Manchester United from Torino in July 1962. He remembered, ‘I first saw Denis at Heckmondwike in Yorkshire one night when he was playing for Huddersfield against United in a youth game. When we were losing 2-0 at half-time, I wondered who was taking us apart. Then I realised it was a little will o’ the wisp called Law, who had scored both goals. After the match I offered £10,000 for him, but Huddersfield wouldn’t listen, even though that was a high figure for a young player in those days.’

  Eddie Boot took over from Shankly in a caretaker capacity before accepting the job on a full-time basis on 19 January 1960. Law would play only six games for Boot before being transferred to Manchester City on 15 March for £55,000, a record fee between two British clubs. Law left the Huddersfield fans with smiles on their faces in his last game, a 1-0 win over Hull City at Leeds Road. Alex Massie, another Scot who had been recommended to the club by Archie Beattie, scored the only goal. Law had played 27 games and scored eight goals in his last season. He also turned out five times for his country as a Huddersfield Town player.

  Law, in fact, was informed of his first international call-up in the strangest of circumstances. He was in the city’s town centre where a bloke called Eric sold the local newspaper, the Huddersfield Examiner, at the corner of a street. ‘Hiya, Denis,’ said Eric. ‘Hi, Eric,’ replied Denis. ‘Congratulations, by the way.’ Law looked at Eric. ‘What for?’ ‘Don’t you know? You’ve been selected to play for Scotland – it’s here in the paper.’ It was the first Law had heard of the astounding news. He was on his way. There was no spectacular fanfare of trumpets, but a legend was about to be launched.

  Chapter Three

  ENTER DENIS

  Scotland’s urgent requirement for a consistent goalscorer manifested itself during the turmoil of yet another disastrous campaign in the 1958 World Cup Finals in Sweden. The Scots’ feeble frontline, paraded in front of a global audience, could muster only four goals from their three games as the nation completed their ill-fated campaign anchored, once again embarrassingly, at the foot of their section. Three games, two defeats and a draw. As in Switzerland four years previously, victory at the highest level had eluded them. While the entire Scottish contingent could only conjure up a quartet of strikes, France’s Just Fontaine completed the tournament with 13 goals – two against Scotland – in six games.

  Sadly, the trip to Sweden proved to be a shambolic waste of time, to the torment of the Scottish fans. There had been supreme optimism after the qualifying stages which saw Scotland beat a strong Spain side, fancied by many to win the World Cup. Switzerland, who had reached the quarter-finals of the trophy in their own country, were the other group opponents. The f
irst qualifier was against the Spaniards at Hampden on 8 May 1957. Real Madrid, triumphant in the inaugural European Cup the previous year when they beat French side Reims 4-3, had just won through to their second final where they would meet – and beat – AC Milan. The European masters provided five of the Spanish squad that would travel to Glasgow, including Denis Law’s particular favourite Alfredo di Stefano. The jet-heeled outside-left Francisco Gento was also included. It seemed all they had to do was honour us with their presence at Hampden and the points were as good as theirs.

  Scotland captain George Young, a giant of a man who achieved iconic status with Rangers, was not overawed. He said, ‘If we are to believe all we hear, we are asked to meet a team of supermen. The Spaniards have been described as the greatest team in the world. We are expected to feel inferior when we meet them. They are just 11 men in jerseys. We are as good, if not better, than them. We’ll see on the day.’

  Stirring stuff. Scottish fans were roused and 89,000 turned out for the 6 p.m. kick-off as Hampden still hadn’t installed floodlights. Blackpool’s Jackie Mudie had the fans singing in the 24th minute when he scored with a header, but Ladislao Kubala levelled almost instantly. Hopes soared again when John Hewie’s badly-struck penalty-kick foxed the Spanish goalkeeper, the much-vaunted Antonio Ramallets, whom many reckoned to be even better than the Russian, Lev Yashin. Ramallets got to the ball, but allowed it to squirm over the line. Back came Spain and they equalised again five minutes after the turnaround when Tommy Younger pushed away a drive from di Stefano and it fell perfectly for Luis Suarez to glide the ball in from close range. Was it to be another of those days? It was deadlocked at 2-2 with light beginning to fade when Bobby Collins, at war with his opponents throughout, set up Mudie and his shot dipped over the helplessly-exposed Ramallets. Ten minutes from the conclusion of an entertaining encounter, Collins again played the role of provider as he sent Mudie clear and he made no mistake once again. Scotland 4, Spain 2. The Spaniards were just 11 men in jerseys, after all.