Another time

Looking for something else, I discovered a bag of old football cards. The sort we used to collect and swap at primary school, or play various games with to try and win them off each other. Like flicking them towards a wall and the card closest to the wall would win the rest. Strange the selection in the bag, with some teams surprisingly well-represented, like Ayr United and Dumbarton, and others surprising to see there at all, like Cowdenbeath. Some cards in the stack are there multiple times - maybe there were lots of them going round. I think I was always a bit half-hearted about the whole collecting and swapping thing. Not surprisingly Leeds are well represented in the bag, with some players featuring in several different cards, notably the 'Ginger Dynamo', Billy Bremner, the only one of the group here no longer alive. In fact he died over fourteen years ago. Can that be right? He died very young. Also in this little set is Denis Law, famously of Manchester United but also of Man City (a back-heeled goal that relegated his former club), Torino and Huddersfield Town. My mother tells the tale of seeing him sitting at the front of the top deck of a bus in Huddersfield, and I think he was one of her favourite players from then on. The rest of this little group was selected for their post-playing days fame, except John Hansen, who has a much more famous brother on TV most weeks. Andy Roxburgh was a successful Scotland manager, Jim Leishman has had a long association with Dunfermline, and the last of the six is probably the most successful club manager of all time, certainly in the UK and quite possibly in the world.