Catch A Falling Star (12 page)

Nevertheless we managed to keep our concentration and produced another classic performance against Spurs to win 3-1 and as we trouped off the field we felt mighty proud of ourselves. The pitch was nice and greasy, so it was ideal for us to play our slick passing game and we knew we had four or five players who could score a goal or win the game by themselves so we knew we were capable of winning. By this stage of the season we had no fear.

This all meant that with one fixture left we were top of the league with United in their rightful place, second. This was it, it was now or never. We had a tough game at St James’ Park while United had a relatively easy fixture at home to already
relegated
Sunderland
.

We took around 20,000 fans to
Newcastle
which was unheard of in those days. Close on half the crowd were our supporters. I’ve often considered whether it was an advantage that we were away from home. If the game had been at

In the event we knew that if we won we were champions, no buts, ifs or maybes, so we didn’t have to worry about what was happening at Old Trafford – it was all down to us. Win that game and we could take the trophy home, so in my eyes, it didn’t matter if we were home or away, the target was the same.

Besides, we’d just been down to

I thought about how far I’d come in the build-up to that game. For all of us it was the biggest game of our lives. I was told by a certain person that everybody is good at something no matter what they do. In life we all excel at one particular thing. Well, with me it just so happened to be football and everything in my life seemed to have built up to this chance to reach the pinnacle.

Every since I was five or six years old I only ever wanted to play football for my favourite team,
Manchester
City
. Looking back I feel so fortunate because I got the chance to prove myself at the highest level and I had a very good career. Not only did I help City win the championship but I was the club’s leading scorer in the 1967-68
season
with nineteen league goals and twenty-two in all competitions. The last two of that season came in this game.

We kicked off a little later than United, so we had the advantage of knowing what they had done whilst we’d still be playing. The game flew by in all honesty but I can recall taking my goals really well. I made it 2-1 with a volley from the edge of the area – it sat up nicely for me and I powered it home. Half time came with the score 2-2 but we were unconcerned. Then we heard United were losing at Old Trafford, which gave us a real boost. Joe and Malcolm re-iterated just to keep playing the way we had been and we’d go on to win the game. Soon after I scored my second and City’s third from an acute angle – it was a great finish even if I do say so myself.

I suppose the hardest part of that game was the last few minutes. We were so close, we just wanted the referee to blow that whistle. We knew we were champions but we still to play out the game. Hats and scarves started flying through the
air,
there was an air of celebration. The fans listening on their portable radios knew that United had lost and it had filtered through to all the players. Yet we had to keep playing out time and working hard but I just wanted the game to end. It was a really strange sensation.

As if to prove the point that we’d lost concentration, we let in a late goal to make it 4-3, all of which meant that we had to get stuck in for just a while longer. When the final whistle blew, it was sheer elation. The crowd swarmed onto the pitch and we escaped down the tunnel. Funnily enough in the immediate aftermath, rather than whoops of delight and screams of joy, we sat there knackered for two to three minutes. We were happy, tired and trying to let it all sink in. It was a real feeling of satisfaction for us. Just think, eleven English lads winning the league title. What odds are there on that ever happening again?

Then there was a knock on our dressing room door and it was the great Jackie Milburn. When people talk about great players, they should always think about ‘
Wor
Jackie’ an out-and-out legend in the north east and a hero of mine ever since I read of his exploits in Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly. Indeed he was so revered in the North East that 100,000 people lined the streets for his funeral when he died.

Back in 1968 he was working for the local newspaper, the Newcastle Post and he wanted to do a brief interview with me. I was honoured. He said that my first goal was unstoppable. In a way it was but it happened so quickly. I turned to him and said: “Jackie, I think I should be interviewing you here, not you interviewing me!” We both laughed. What a nice bloke he was.

After all that we got showered and changed and managed to board the team bus, which is where the fun really started. About a hundred of our supporters surrounded the bus with some lying down before it, refusing to move. This went on for so long that we missed our train home from
Newcastle
and we had to go by coach to
York
station to catch a train home.

Peter Gardner from the Manchester Evening News was also with us. We brought a few cans of beer with us onto the coach but the train was ‘dry’ so by the time we finally approached
Manchester
, at about
11 o’clock
, we were all exceptionally thirsty and geared up for a night on the tiles.

Even then the crowds at the station when we arrived back were fantastic. Everybody was waving a scarf, everybody wanted to shake your hand. I bet that supporter in Row A, Seat 3 wasn’t there! From there we went to the Cabaret Club, well about eight of us did anyway. It was on the opposite side of

God knows what time we got back in the morning. I think I must have gone in as the paper boy was doing his deliveries but how could anything compare with that? I had a hangover for days.

The next day there was a press conference at

I remain very proud indeed because those goals and that achievement happened while I was playing for my club – not any old club but
Manchester
City
, my team.

After the celebration of the
Newcastle
clincher we went as a team to the 1968 FA Cup Final between Everton and
West Brom
. Even then, when you’d think it was all about relaxation and enjoying the occasion, Malcolm was playing mind games, whetting our appetites.

“Look at this lot here playing in the Cup Final,” he said. “We’re better than these. We should be here next season.” He was sowing the seeds in our heads already.

6. Every Schoolboy’s Dream

After the title success we went on a six-week tour of
America
. I think it was the club’s idea to promote City’s name over there. However a lot of things went wrong on that tour and the fact we never really had a pre-season break probably backfired on us the following season. We were out of the title race by October and soon out of
Europe
and at one stage things got so bad that we were staring at relegation.

From my point of view, the
US
trip went from bad to worse. As an example, almost as soon as we’d arrived we were all sat down for dinner when news filtered in from home. News that meant none of us could finish our evening meal. United had won the European Cup. We were all gutted. Okay, we knew the
United
players socially and we recognised how good some of them were but we weren’t pleased for them in the slightest. In fact it’s one of the few times that I can recall Malcolm being quiet for five minutes.

For a true Blue such as
myself
it was a nightmare because we had just spent so long fighting to come out of United’s shadow. We murdered them 3-1 in
Stretford
and then took the title off them, so we were all thinking we were the Kings of Manchester and we were at their level. Then they won the European Cup which meant they’d gone one better than us. What we wanted more than ever was to shut their big red mouths up, to be top dogs in
Manchester
and I think we took it out on them in the subsequent derbies. Having said that I’d have preferred a couple more championship wins rather than the usual four points off United, however welcome that might have been.

My room-mate for this trip was big George
Heslop
. For the length of the flight to
New York
I kept telling George about a certain posh restaurant we had to try out once we got there. It was called
Tarantinos
– Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra were said to be regulars and I must have bored George senseless for six hours about it. The mother-in-law’s brother owned it and she’d given me a note to pass onto him when I arrived to seal the deal, so to speak.

So one night we got dressed up very smart and arrived at the restaurant but when we arrived a man in top hat and tails refused us entry unless we gave him a few dollars! He was unimpressed that we played for
Manchester
City
so in the end we had to pay him. Inside we asked to speak to the manager, who wasn’t there. We kicked up a fuss and were eventually thrown out. After eating humble pie for a few days back in
England
, I went to see the wife’s mother, who wrote a letter to her brother in
New York
.

He was so apologetic for what had happened while he was away that he sacked the manager for the poor service and said to get back in touch if we were ever back in town. Later I found out the guy was arrested at the Swiss/Italian border trying to smuggle a million dollars into his homeland. But he did send us a picture of himself and Frank Sinatra in his restaurant together with a cookery book which he’d written himself. Mind you, it would have cost a fortune to cook some of the dishes that were in it!

Despite that incident, we used to get a fine reception wherever we played in the States. The players would be introduced individually onto the pitch, just as in American Football, and one player who was guaranteed a tumultuous reception was our very own Bobby Kennedy. Well don’t forget he had the same name as the former president’s brother who was running for office that year!