THAT LEGENDARY LAWMAN

“The Ultimate Goalscorer” — that’s just one of the many complimentary nicknames given to the great Scotsman who graced the game of football at Manchester’s legendary two top clubs — Manchester City and Manchester United. I feel proud and privileged to have both seen him play, and met him in person. There was a big gap between the two meetings.
I was a teenager in January 1961 and was in the crowd at Luton’s ground for the FA Cup tie between Luton and Manchester City. It was a typical rainy Saturday, grey, cold and wet. Denis Law was astonishing. His flair, spirit, and love for the game lit up the winter afternoon. It was easy to see why he was known as The King.
That was the occasion he went down in history as the man who scored six goals in an FA Cup tie — and still lost! Here’s how that happened:
City were 6 – 2 up at rain-lashed Luton when the referee abandoned the game. Then what did Luton do but go on and win the re-arranged match, 3 – 1!
Two years later, by which time he was with Manchester United, Denis won his only FA Cup medal when he scored the first goal in a 3 – 1 win over Leicester City.
The following year, at the peak of his game, he became the only Scotsman to have won the Ballon d’Or. It had been won in 1963 by Lev Yashin, and 1965’s winner would be Eusebio (a.k.a. “Eess-ah-by-o”!).
At Manchester United Law played for Sir Matt Busby, like him, Scottish — but it was another Scot, Andy Beattie, a fellow Aberdonian, who had brought the frail, skinny, 15-year-old-south. Beattie was managing Huddersfield then, a job Bill Shankly eventually took over from him.
“Twenty pounds a week was the wages we were getting when we got in the Huddersfield team,” Law remembered. “And I had to send most of that back to my mum and dad.”
His dad was an Aberdeen fisherman, and Denis had grown up playing street football. He’d go on to become the only man to have two statues dedicated to him at Old Trafford — one at the Stretford End, the other as part of the United Trinity Statue. In that he is immortalised alongside George Best and Bobby Charlton.
I met the legendary Lawman at a Manchester United dinner celebrating the club’s 25th anniversary of winning the European Cup. We had a pleasant chat, and I reminded him of that rain-drenched day in Luton. He raised his eyes to heaven in mock horror, then grinned and said, “But I did get the match ball.”
Denis hadn’t made that cup final — he was in hospital in Manchester recovering from a knee operation. But Matt Busby visited him in hospital the day after the final, and brought the cup into the ward!