Cockeyed Law

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Now here is a front three:

 

Law was part of United’s Holy Trinity, alongside Charlton and Best

 

THE GAME DAILY | MATT DICKINSON

The King known as ‘Cockeye’ who would have kicked his own granny – celebrating Denis Law

Matt Dickinson

Chief Sports Writer

Wednesday December 16 2020, 12.00pm, The Times

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/sport/the-king-known-as-cockeye-who-would-have-kicked-his-own-granny-celebrating-denis-law-3pl859rpr

 

It was in 1975 that Denis Law was surprised by Eamonn Andrews and his big red book for This Is Your Life. Forty five years later, Law receives the modern-day equivalent of that tribute with a documentary about his stellar career.

There seems a growing appetite for these reminiscences about past legends — Jimmy Greaves and Jack Charlton among others recently — and, in Law’s case, it is not only the chance to relive defining moments but to fill some gaps in knowledge.

I knew of his renown as a great goalscorer but not the fizzing aggression of this pugnaciously proud Scot. Sir Bobby Charlton once described Law “sending sparks and flames up around him” and, still at 80, you can see a mischievous gleam in his eye.

Law talks about glancing around to check where the referee was looking before smacking a big centre half who would have been kicking lumps out of him. “Denis would have kicked his own granny,” Ian Ure says. The former Arsenal defender speaks from bruising experience, having once traded blows with Law, landing them both six-week bans.

 

Courage was high on the many attributes of a footballer whom Sir Alex Ferguson hails, without equivocation, as “The King, the greatest Scottish footballer of all time”.

The fireworks are all the more remarkable for the fact that there was never a less likely looking teenage prodigy. When Law moved from Aberdeen down to Huddersfield Town at 15, never having heard of that Yorkshire town, this son of a fisherman was scrawny and wearing thick round NHS glasses to hide a squint which earned him the nickname “cockeye”.

An operation transformed his vision and it was on a remarkably clear-sighted eye for goal that Law built an extraordinary career in which he was the British record transfer three times as he moved between Huddersfield Town, two spells at Manchester City, a year in Torino and, of course, the glories at Manchester United.

The first of United’s “Holy Trinity” — Charlton, Law and George Best — to be awarded the Ballon d’Or in 1964 thanks to the 46 goals in a season which remains a club record, he combined predatory skills with panache.

It was not just that Law scored 237 goals in 404 United appearances — plus 30 in only 55 games for Scotland, a record he still holds with Kenny Dalglish, who won 102 caps — but that he had such style about him with the shock of blond hair, twinkling eyes, the hands tucked in the cuffs and that raised-digit salute in which he remains immortalised in bronze outside Old Trafford.

Law was integral to the glories of United in the Sixties, though there would be two grave disappointments to his time at Old Trafford. He was stuck in a hospital bed for knee surgery drinking from a crate of beers on the night when the European Cup was lifted at Wembley in 1968. When time was called on his United career by Tommy Docherty, Law was less than amused to find out by reading it in a newspaper.

Of course, it is impossible to escape that backheel flick in May 1974 which, according to legend, sent United into the old Second Division. The legend is slightly wrong — United would be relegated in any case — but Law was not to know that as he scored, almost as if he could not help himself given such a gift, and reacted almost apologetically.

I had forgotten that Law walked straight off the field after what would be his last kick in English football. He went to sit, sombre, in the United dressing room.

Aside from one appearance for Scotland on creaking knees at the 1974 World Cup finals a few weeks later, that was the end for a footballer whom Hugh McIlvanney, the great sports writer, once noted would have a chance to get into any team in the world, a finisher of the highest class inside the box and “brave as a lion”. A man, according to Ferguson, who “could separate himself from the fame quite easily, and I think that is a great quality”.

At 80, Law still looks wiry, and certainly twinkly-eyed, even after battles with a few illnesses, including prostate cancer: still with that charisma which made him, for so many fans, the favourite of that special attacking trinity at United.

 

The Lawman will be shown on Sky Documentaries on Friday at 9pm

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At today's crackpot prices adding in the agents fees I doubt if you would get much change from one billion if you purchased all three .