Father to son

I was in Manchester today speaking at a conference. The conference was at Old Trafford.

I passed this statue and it reminded me of my late father.

Dennis Law was his favourite player of all time. I listened to an interview of Law a while back. It was revealing and gave me an insight into the lost world of the professional footballer.

Bobby Charlton, a Geordie from near my neck of the woods. Arguably the greatest English player of all time. I remember going to a celebrity match in the late 70's and his brother Jack playing. That was the first of two times in my life I would be 'up close' to a World Cup winner. The other would be me having lunch with Alan Ball as we compared notes about our fathers. But that's another story.

I do remember Jack saying that Munich changed "our kid."

George Best; a fool and a genius in one. I saw him play for Fulham, right at the end of his career, so I can say "I saw George Best play." I can't say I ever saw him in his pomp.

The thing is I feel an admiration for these players because of the talent they were either gifted with or worked hard to achieve.

My team, NUFC are no MUFC but my love for my team runs far deeper than football. I thought of my Dad when I was looking at this statue. Like me he would love to have beaten teams like MUFC more often and achieved many of the things they did. But both of our loyalties were set and scored into us years back.

That doesn't mean we cannot respect greatness.