The Magnificent Sevens
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Frank Worrall. The Magnificent Sevens
Acknowledgements
Contents
Preface
George Does It Best
Past His Best – George’s Lost Years
The Good, the Bad and the Bubbly
A Man Out of Time
Ferguson and England
Too Much Bottle?
From Caveman to Cavemen
Heaven and Hell
Rebel with a Cause
When Football was King
Zero to Hero
Posh, Dosh and Losing It
The Two Ronnys
The Boy Who Would Be King
The New King
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
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‘Superb insights … and some extraordinary new facts.’
JOHN FITZPATRICK, THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
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Busby then employed something of the Alex Ferguson logic by dropping his protégé for a few matches – or, more accurately, protecting him against himself and an ever curious press. George was put in cotton wool until three days after Boxing Day, when he scored United’s first goal as they steamrollered Burnley 5-1 at Old Trafford. In 1990, when talking to respected journalist Ross Benson, George gave us an inkling of the ‘fix’ he would get from walking out for United. His words offer a useful insight as we try to understand what made this complex, emotional man tick. Much in the same way as Jimmy Greaves would a few years earlier admit that he turned to drink after losing the high of playing football in front of thousands, so George spoke of how he felt delirious that winter’s day in Manchester. ‘I felt marvelous … I remember walking out of the tunnel and hearing the roar of 54,000 people … It is like turning on a radio and turning the volume up … I can still recall the way the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I was numbed. At the same time, I felt exhilarated.’
Yet, without that adrenalin rush when he left the game, George would be lost. He would lose the fix, and search for it in the bottle, in the bedroom, shops … in fact, anywhere he thought he might experience that same temporary, exhilarating high. It would be a journey with only one outcome – the inevitable, tragic finale in London’s Cromwell Hospital in 2005. Greavsie himself would later confirm the ‘black hole’ existence footballers felt after retiring, saying, ‘I look back at George … I look back at myself … same problem as George, same as Gazza … we all had the same problem … but I think it might have been lack of pressure, for want of a better word, why we succumbed. I think we missed it. I missed it. It wasn’t the pressure of playing that made me start drinking heavily, it was probably the emptiness of not playing.’
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