FROM ONE LEGEND TO ANOTHER – HOW DENIS LAW HELPED FALMOUTH TOWN BOSS

RIP Denis Law, one of the greatest footballers of all time and a lasting reminder of a more sane and quaint sports world.

I read of his death alongside the other big football story of yesterday – Erling Harland’s stratospheric new Manchester City deal that is understood to include a basic salary of around £26 million a year.

 

That’s right - £26 MILLION. I wonder what Denis would have made of such a prospect when he was at the height of his career with Manchester United in the 1960s, earning just a tiny fraction of that dizzy sum.

 

He was still playing for the Reds when I joined the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo newspapers in 1972.

 

A vignette from those days says a little – and yet so much – about how the fields of sport and communications have been transformed since then.

 

I was living across the Mersey in Oxton, a suburb of Birkenhead, and observing from long distance how my beloved Falmouth Town were continuing to sweep all before them in Cornish football.

 

So much so that that the club had decided to organise a testimonial match for its record-breaking manager, Richard Gray.

 

I got involved, to the extent that I found myself persuading a soccer superstar to sign for me – on a souvenir football shirt to be raffled on Richard’s big night.

 

Through Chris James, my colleague then covering the Shankly-led Liverpool team, I got hold of Denis Law’s home phone number. 

 

So off I toddled, one dark winter’s evening, the 300 yards or so from my flat to the nearest public phone box.

 

Cute, eh!  Not only did mobiles belong way, way into the future, but we didn’t even have a land line of our own at home - which was nothing unusual then.

 

I had taken a pocketful of coins with me and I duly began dialling the great man’s home number, in my intrepid bid to land a living legend.

 

All totally “cold” – no advance warning or introduction of any kind, with my identity completely unknown to him, ditto the nature of my call. And it was not even for charity.

 

“Hello, is that Denis Law?”  “Yes, it is.”  “Oh, my name is Mike Truscott, you don’t know me, but . . . blahblah blahblah blahblah . . . and I was just wondering if you might like to sign that shirt.”

 

With no hesitation: “YES, OF COURSE, MIKE; I’D BE DELIGHTED.”

 

Full contact details were exchanged.  I thanked him profusely, he repeated his pleasure to be involved, I exited the call box and shot back home (with a big smile on my face).

 

Now fast-forward 50-odd years and can you imagine any of that happening, in that fashion, today?

 

Leaving aside the quaint notion of the call-box and phone/mobile-free household, what would be the chances of getting straight through so quickly and easily, to one of today’s famous and fabulously wealthy top football stars?

 

Would I – a total stranger seeking a favour – have any chance of getting through at all? There would surely be a veritable phalanx of agents and security types to penetrate first.

 

Then, even if I did conquer all those layers of protection and exploitation, would today’s Mr Superstar agree – never mind so readily – to such a request?

 

And even if he did, he’d probably demand a fee for his scribble, wouldn’t he?! You know, just to top up that £400,000 a week, standard.