Taking some quiet time to remember the best of George
By Adrian Russell
Friday, December 03, 2010
HUGH McILVANNEY, the great Scottish sportswriter, sketched a scene for his readers of a Saturday afternoon in an Old Trafford press box which coughed out cigarette smoke.
The number 11 in red unfurled an outrageous piece of skill in front of the visiting reporters. After drilling the ball into the roof of the net with "a fierce simplicity", he wheeled away with his hand raised in familiar celebration.
"What was the time for that Best goal?" a cub reporter asked a wily veteran at his elbow.
The old-timer tugged on a Woodbine, gazed into the middle distance and answered: "Never mind the time, son. Just write down the date."
It was five years ago today that Belfast buried George Best. There’s been enough ink spilled — in enough cramped media centres — in the attempt to encapsulate the United legend’s life and death. I’m certainly not going to manage it here.
As my train steamed over a wrinkled sheet of snow towards Dublin this week, I instead re-read that old piece that McIlvanney tap-tap-tapped out all those years ago.
He and a grey-bearded Best, we’re told, meet in a pub off Chelsea’s Fulham Road one Saturday lunchtime.
Unsurprisingly they have a pint — or two — and then head for a Man United away game at White Hart Lane.
McIlvanney — who once admitted that writing a note to the milkman is a quiet torture — penned an absolute love-letter of a feature on the aging Best.
The Scot described how Spurs fans, young and old, queued to touch Bestie’s hem in the players’ lounge while Gazza — the day’s big star — remained relatively untroubled in his shadow.
The Sunday Times man couldn’t have then known the twin tracks that those two careers and lives would chug along.
But he certainly had the wit to realise that Best was drowning in drink.
The day Best died, I was part of the team that produces The Last Word programme on Today FM. The late-afternoon cold nipped under the door as news came though that the Northern Ireland hero had died.
It still came as shock, I think, despite the whispered rumours of his demise that marked the weeks previously.
After a life of chaos — fittingly maybe — it was a scramble to line up someone interesting and relevant to join the presenter Matt Cooper, who was already on air in the adjacent studio. We all worked the phones — unsuccessfully for a while. I eventually and luckily got through to an old contemporary of McIlvanney.
The august Brian Glanville picked up the ringing handset somewhere in England’s Home Counties. I imagined him by a roaring fire in a smoking jacket, nursing a generous highball of brandy with an open, well-thumbed copy of Dante’s Inferno on his lap. Glanville hadn’t heard the news before I told him.
He started then, essentially, thinking aloud about days and nights he and Best spent together in London and elsewhere. Good times.
But he remembered the champagne football more fondly than the beery nights up the west end with El Beatle.
For someone who turned to Glanville’s column first in every month’s issue of World Soccer, this was a real treat — but we needed to get on air. I tried to hurry him gently. "Quite right," he said, "Important day."
And he sighed sadly. Just write down the date.
nI spoke this week to someone who’s not quite living his life like the womanising Bestie, but George would certainly be impressed by this lad’s full dance card. Breifne Earley, from Carrick-on-Shannon in lovely Leitrim looked at himself a few months ago — like most of us, I’d imagine — and admits he didn’t particularly like what he saw. But unlike most of us, he decided to change it.
The 29-year-old who works for the Colleges and Universities Association of Ireland is currently on week seven of 52 in which he plans to — deep breath — lose 30kgs weight, go on 50 blind dates, perform in 10 concerts/gigs, save 10% of his salary in savings, swim 400m every week, visit 10 different countries, cycle a total of 50km each week, attend 10 cookery classes, complete 10 10km races, apply for 10 dream jobs.
And exhale.
What the hell motivates someone to do ALL that? "I was grossly overweight, and I wasn’t particularly happy with the way things were," he tells me. "I had been single for over a year and I was sick of the doom and gloom with the recession and wage cuts and all that. So I decided to do something positive and the reaction has been unbelievable. I’ve currently achieved a total of zero of the 10 targets — but that’s the nature of the list. It’ll take time to have 50 blind dates, won’t it? The thing is though it’s forcing me out the door in the evening. I used to just come home from work, watch TV and go to bed.
"Now I have to go and meet a girl I’ve never met before or go to the gym."
Breifne will sit into a rowing boat on Saturday, December 18 to undertake his first athletic challenge at the National Indoor Rowing Championships at DCU. To help him raise money for the Paralympic Council of Ireland visit challengeten.com.
