Denis Law Was A Working-Class Icon And A Man Perfectly In Tune With Our Times

Football forms the backdrop to our lives. The Scot was a comforting presence and a great character

WHEN THE GREATS die, they leave behind a void of sadness, even for those who didn’t know them personally. A lingering mood of reflection accompanies that sorrow.

For many of us, football has been a backdrop to our existence. A changing cast of characters keep coming and going throughout our lives. For me, Denis Law was among the first crop of these footballers, an unforgettable presence during my childhood.

Later, when we met and spoke, he lived up to every expectation of the boy who had long been left behind.

People who knew him better will attest to his infectious personality. Those who watched the Scot regularly can talk about his abilities. I shall leave those subjects to them.

For me, he represents a different age, a different game and a different Britain: a working-class icon playing a working-class game.

He was part of Manchester United’s great trinity: George Best, Law and Bobby Charlton. On the statue outside Old Trafford, they are captured in victory but it does not seem like a particularly happy group. In many ways they weren’t.

Charlton was frustrated by Best’s flamboyance and behaviour. Teenagers were a fairly recent innovation when the trio were in their pomp. Middle age came earlier before the 1960s and – philosophically – Charlton was deep into that phase of his life by the time United won the European Cup in 1968. As early as their late 20s, men like Charlton had the mindset you’d expect in today’s sixtysomethings.

Best was at the other end of the scale, a man surfing the wave of a new age of celebrity and youth. In life, as on the pitch, Best was waiting for the world to catch up with him. The Northern Irishman was nicknamed El Beatle after demolishing Benfica but the newspapers got the wrong group. The boy from Belfast was scarier; he frightened granddads like Mick Jagger scared stockbrokers.

In the middle was Law. The only one of the three who seems to be a perfect product of his own era.

He had more than a pinch of Best’s devilment and a touch of Charlton’s good sense. The two and a half years that separated Charlton and Law felt like more than a decade. The six-year difference from Law to Best was equally cavernous.

Charlton always seemed old – and no wonder, having survived the Munich air disaster when he was 20. Best was a self-destructive Peter Pan. Law was always a man of his time.

And what a time it was. In right-wing fantasies, Britain was a better, whiter, safer place. It wasn’t.

Watch any TV series set in the 1970s and 1980s – like The Sweeney or The Professionals. The streets are filthy. Living conditions are archaic. Violence, despite what the media would have you believe, was much more common. People sorted problems with their fists.

You could imagine the United greats as characters in these TV shows: Charlton living in a spick-and-span semi with gnomes in the garden; Best in the Playboy Club, living it large; and Law in a smoky pub, holding court at the bar, the sort of fella whose company you’d like to be in.

And the game in Law’s era was equally rough-and-ready. We are lucky that these players were in their prime at the beginning of the televisual age. It would be nice to have more footage of Law but there’s barely any of Tom Finney, Stanley Matthews, Nat Lofthouse or Duncan Edwards, the giants of the previous decade.

We should not think too fondly of the death-trap stadiums, the ploughed-field pitches and the anarchy on the terraces but the lack of commercialism, the cheapness of admission and the sense of freedom and community that came with football back then are seductive.

Part of me wishes we could review every spit and cough of Law’s peak years, in the way a modern superstar’s career is chronicled. Almost every kick of Lionel Messi’s playing time will one day be compiled for the game’s historians to study. We do not have that luxury with the greats of the past. But perhaps that’s a good thing; memory and imagination make even the prosaic moments poetic.

How many times did I see Law play? I can only recall once. In 1971, United came to Anfield and were 2-0 down to Liverpool at half time. Best produced a masterclass after the break, firing in a powerful cross for Law to score at the back post. Then the winger set up the equaliser, feeding Charlton to shoot from just inside the area.

Law, in all white with a haircut that was trending towards Rod Stewart chic, turned away from the Kop with one arm raised in celebration. The memory stuck in the mind of this 10-year-old.

After retiring, he remained in sync with the times, becoming a TV pundit and presenter, his warm, infectious character worked beautifully on the small screen. By then, this boy had grown older and meaner and had been sucked into the increasing hatred between Liverpool and United. But Law transcended that rivalry.

Some players, even those recently retired, become anachronisms very quickly. Law never did. Until he developed Alzheimer’s and dementia, he had a rare energy and, unlike many of his contemporaries, did not appear to resent the huge wages of the modern footballer.

His generation were products of conflict and hardship. Their triumph was a working class parable. Law, in particular, was a comforting presence in a discomforting, changing world.

You hope men like Denis will be with us for ever. In many ways, they will. Thank you, football.