Catch A Falling Star

CATCH A FALLIING STAR

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF NEIL YOUNG

With Dante Friend

*

To My Brother Chris, My Mother Alice & My Wife Carmen

Preface

The word ‘legend’ is over-used in football but legend is the only word that does justice to the great Neil Young. The scorer of the winner in the 1969 FA Cup Final victory over Leicester, another in the European Cup Winners’ Cup Final in Vienna a year later and of course, City’s two-goal hero up at Newcastle in the thrilling championship decider of 1968. These are feats that no future
Manchester
City
player is ever likely to repeat.

For many years now friends, family, supporters and colleagues of Neil have asked him about his story. Why did we hear so little of him after he left the club in the early 70s? What has his life been like since? Few I think are quite prepared for the reality Neil writes about here.

Nevertheless, a huge number of City fans care passionately for Neil’s wellbeing. We’ve all heard stories on the grapevine that he wasn’t too well or that his life was heading down a rocky road and at last Neil has put pen to paper to give his side of an often traumatic story.

Of all the people he could have asked to help him write this book, I’m honoured that he asked me, someone who was born long after City showed Neil the door. Yet while I never saw him play I was brought up with the Neil Young legend and, having got to know him in recent times, I can tell you I couldn’t wish to find better personal friends than Neil and his amazing wife, Carmen. He’s a true gentleman but he’s also very funny with a good sense of humour and an infectious laugh. I’m truly honoured to have helped make all this happen.

I had feared that if Neil didn’t think seriously about writing his memoirs, not only would he live to regret it but future generations of City supporters would miss out on his life story. I’m glad to say that his story can now be told.

The name of the book, Catch
A
Falling Star, is also the title of one of Neil’s favourite songs. As you’ll discover shortly, Neil enjoyed the highlife in his pomp, he sampled the nightclubs and he loved being appreciated by the City fans because he was one of them himself - to this day he has the club in his heart. There have been some desperately sad times too and only now does Neil feel the time is right to lift the lid on some of these periods in his life.

The history of
Manchester
City
would have been all the poorer had it not been for the contribution of Neil Young. So take a bow sir, take a bow. You deserve the highest recognition.

Dante Friend

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this book to three people.
My mum, my brother Chris and my wife Carmen.
Firstly, my brother who taught me most things about this great game called football. Secondly my mum for showing me endless love throughout my life and finally, my wife Carmen for being there for me when I was very ill and wanting love and attention for nearly the last two decades of my life.

I could not have achieved the things I’ve done and I probably wouldn’t even be here today without these three lovely people. I hope you will find my life story interesting and trust you enjoy reading about a true blue and a player who loved the club he played for at the
peak
of
Manchester
City’s finest years. Because for nearly a decade we were the best team in
Manchester
and City supporters were truly proud to say they supported City.

Neil Young

Foreword by Fred Eyre

It should have been a formality for the all conquering

To say that Neil Young played us on his own that day would probably be a little unkind to his team-mates but that is how it seemed to me as we fought an honourable 2-2 draw and from that day Neil and I became the best of friends.

From our respective school teams we progressed together to play for
Manchester
schoolboys until chief scout Harry Godwin signed us as ground staff lads for
Manchester
City
at the age of fifteen.

Life was wonderful as a young apprentice at

We dreamed one day of winning the FA Cup, the first division and of course a European trophy. Unlikely but who knows… maybe? But for now there was the small problem of buckling down and trying to win a regular place in the club’s ‘B’ team!

For a couple of seasons, everything went according to plan for us both, lots of games for the junior teams, exciting times in the FA Youth Cup, lots of goals… for Neil!! And then our careers took off in totally different directions. Neil’s rocketing skywards, mine the complete opposite.

From the moment Mercer and Allison joined the club, handed Neil the number ten jersey and encouraged him to play to his strengths, everything clicked nicely into place for him.

There are great goal scorers and there are scorers of great goals. One or two players in
Manchester
City
’s glorious history have scored more goals than Neil Young but nobody has scored more great goals, more stunning goals, or more important goals than he has.

I saw most of them, even helped him with a pass or two for a few of the least important ones so it was no surprise to me when that trusty left foot scored the most memorable of them all at Wembley in 1969 to win the FA Cup for Manchester City and make one of his dreams come true.

I was so thrilled for him that day. If it couldn’t have been me then I am glad it was him, my lifelong pal, because I can honestly say that of all the players I have ever played alongside, Neil Young is my absolute favourite…

1.
Alice
In
Wonderland

My childhood, much like my later life, might be described as a rollercoaster ride. Before I had turned sixteen I had witnessed the abuse of my mother by my father and seen death at close quarters, enough one might think to send anyone round the bend. Yet, looking back on those years I regard my childhood as a great time of innocent fun and one all-consuming passion – football. Life, for all that was going on in the background, was simpler then – if I had a ball at my feet I was happy.

I suppose the story starts back on 
February 17th 1944
when my mother, Alice Bradshaw, gave birth to a bouncing baby boy. I weighed just 4lb 2oz and I was premature. I’d spent the past few months kicking her belly from the inside with my left foot so she must have known there and then I would play for City! I spent the whole of my first year in Booth Hall Children’s Hospital, only leaving two days after my first birthday. Is it any wonder then that once I finally got out of hospital all I wanted to do was stay outside and have a kick-about!

To this day I don’t know what was wrong with me. I was a yellowy jaundice colour for a while though. Eventually I made it home to the family residence -

My mother came from a sporting background. One of her relations had played rugby league for
Salford
and I suppose sport was in my blood. I always think back to when I first discovered the game of football, certainly at school we were all football barmy.

Autumn, winter and spring I’d play football at my school, Wilbraham Juniors. In summertime it would be football and cricket. Funnily enough, although I kick with my left foot, my right was not too bad. I write with my right hand and bowl with my right hand at cricket. I bat left-handed though and play golf left-handed. Good mixture, don’t you think!

I was sport mad and I got into sport at an early age. I remember being about four or five when I got my first-ever pair of football boots as a Christmas present. My mum always made me take them off and clean them before I could go into the house. I suppose that’s why I took it quite well later on when I had to clean thirty-five pairs of boots at City including Bert
Trautmann’s
! I had the discipline required to go all the way, installed inside me from an early age. Saturday afternoon would be spent listening intently to the radio. That’s when City
were
away of course.
Five o’clock
meant the results on Sports Report on the old Light Programme.

My first view of City in the flesh came at the age of five, when my older brother Chris took me along to

To a wide-eyed youngster the stadium took your breath away. The pitch was immaculate and the size of the crowd was enormous. I felt something truly special walking into

I’d pretend to be Don
Revie
or Bobby Johnstone. Don
Revie
and Johnny Hart would later come to watch me play football when I was still at school because I’d be playing within a few yards of the City team and they noticed me.

I don’t actually know who the opposition were when I first set foot inside Maine Road, but we were on the
Kippax
side of the ground and it was a good turnout and for me, a five or six year old, gazing up at the stands in amazement, I felt this really was a special shrine indeed – a place I must return to over and over again. It was a second home for me, a home from home – all 500 yards away from my bedroom window.

One of my earliest football memories was watching Bert
Trautmann
making an unbelievable save. It was a little like Gordon
Banks’s
save against
Brazil
, where he twisted in mid-air and got down to his post and scooped it away. Little did I know that just over a decade later I’d be in the same dressing room as him, making my debut at
Villa
Park
.
Little did I know that I’d be cleaning his boots as an
apprentice.
What an honour, looking back, for me to have cleaned the great man’s boots!