The Purist Meets Denis's Girl
Denis Law scored 30 goals for his country in 55 appearances. The Scotsman wrote off a car and scored 10 goals in a 27-game stint at Torino, 28 from 33 for Manchester United in Europe and 262 in 527 domestic English appearances, during which he represented Huddersfield Town and both Manchester clubs.
This
European footballer of the year 1965, born within a week of Jimmy Greaves,
would like to forget having played at Wembley in Scotland's 9-3 defeat
but went on to expunge the memory anyway by helping topple the reigning
world champions in their own back yard six years later.
It's 2001 and the only daughter of Old Trafford's original king is getting pelters (or stick, in football-speak) from her boss, but in the nicest, most tuneful way.
For Di Law, in her third year at Manchester United as press officer, broke the eleventh commandment and was caught spectating at Maine Road... not only home to the enemy, but to the team that still claims to have relegated the Reds courtesy of a certain Denis Law's last kick in league football.
Though it was actually defeat at the hands of Everton that sealed United's fate back in '74, the prospect of an all-new urban myth looms large and Di - but six months old when her old man scored that goal - wants to nip this one in the bud.
Rather than join her investigation into who exactly ‘outed' her, however, Alex Ferguson appears more than happy to taunt his own idol's flesh and blood by crooning Blue Moon every time she walks through his door, which is often.
His idol? That's right. Ferguson arrived in Manchester in 1986 professing equal awe for Matt Busby and the Law Man (though the latter has since put this down to a sad attempt by the Govan knight to appear younger than he actually is).
The Law Woman attempts to put the case for her defence: "Apart from the fact that no one has questioned the allegiances of whoever it was that spotted me," she complains, "Fergie knows only too well why I was watching City and that there's no truth in these rumours of my being a blue, however persistent they may be!"
Yes, it's a quiet week at fortress Carrington, coincidentally a stone's throw from Kevin Keegan's own weekday HQ, but then, if you'll excuse the pun, a quiet week round here is always going to be a ‘relative' term.
For while the majority of United's polyglot squad may have scattered far and wide on national service, Old Trafford is playing host to the big one by anyone English's standards this weekend: Greece, and the pursuit of the points necessary for automatic World Cup qualification. And that means United's old training ground in Salford is in use... by England.
The soft Cheshire accent may disguise her Scottish roots, but the possibility
of another play-off brings back plenty of painful memories for this chip
off the old block.
"I was at Hampden with my boyfriend when England made Euro 2000 thanks
to Scholesy.
"I wore one of Dad's long-sleeved Scotland shirts for luck,
for all the use that was!
"It worked in the second game, though, and I'll never forget
being kissed by this guy wearing a kilt in the freezing Wembley cold after
Don Hutchison scored the only goal of the game."
Drafted in via Liverpool University and MUTV to be officially ordained, according to her voicemail, as the first port of call for all presumptive interviewers, Denis's girl is enjoying a roller coaster season that at one stage threatened a PR Vietnam over Jaap Stam's abrupt exit.
Di herself was conscripted for MUFC's July tour of Thailand, Malaysia and Hong Kong, and while the club came under as intense a scrutiny as ever over the objectives of the trip, she chuckles as she recalls the spectacle of her dapper boss sat mute in a Bangkok beauty salon.
The reason?
At UNICEF's instigation, the tour took in the Kredtrakarn Centre,
home to 300 female fugitives from the sex trade, some of whom elected
to trim the Fergie tresses, plus Glorious Island, where one girl, having
been found destitute in a bus shelter, unwittingly turned the tables on
visitors Solskjaer, Becks, Giggs and Brown by signing David Beckham's
shirt.
"All the lads were genuinely affected by that visit," Di recounts,
as if freed from the party line.
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"Becks was far more concerned with getting away from the tourist thing, which is impossible over there anyway. But it was as valuable for the players personally as it was for the cause itself, and that meant raising awareness of the different kinds of programmes UNICEF are involved in out there."
The England skipper certainly wasn't going to let Fergie's crimpers loose on his own scalp, nor succumb to the photo op afforded by the golden likeness of himself in a nearby temple.
No one need remind Di Law that we're slap, bang in the middle of football's customer charter era. Global patronage and plunder, if not ambassadorial duties, may have been beyond the ken of the dozen or so people that ran MUFC when her father was signed in 1962, but she displays all his youthful deftness as she ghosts past the questioner on the inside by referring him to the relevant department suits presiding over the numbers, targets and graphs.
Suffice to say, summer raids designed to make inroads into hitherto wild west-style copyright piracy out East had the desired effect, while United's UNICEF tie-up should yield £1m to the good over three years, as a formula consisting of open days, coaching clinics and other such initiatives is sustained to counter the critics.
Accusations of avarice will surely persist given a turnover to rival even non-sporting brands, but the club, which neglected to even register its badge before Di was out of the infants, will continue to literally press the flesh of both existing and potential disciples throughout the Americas as well as Australasia.
Di must dovetail her work with the demands of the dedicated TV channel, its studio located conveniently next to her office, and the strategy laid down by Patrick Harverson.
The former Financial Times reporter, recruited two years ago as Communications
Director, is the man charged with delivering a supporter-friendly strategy
via a regular forum that defies the widely predicted lip service.
"It is the passion the club arouses that I identify with," she
says, "though it's obvious that I can't help but feel a
connection with the tradition, too." Her riposte to the inevitable
cries of nepotism may well be time-honoured, but nonetheless pretty much
covers it:
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"I think whatever it is that gets you a chance, you still have to
be able to do what the job entails, or you're no use to anybody!"
And with that she opened up on a home life that left her and her siblings
with a firm grasp of their own identity: "Dad just keeps himself
to himself. He never used to bring his work home with him as a player
and he certainly doesn't try out his after-dinner speeches on us
now!
"My own interest in football came far more from having four older
brothers, to be honest, and I was always a tom boy at heart."
Her Aberdonian father famously played a round of golf out in the leafy
suburbs - now instantly recognisable in Di's soft Cheshire tones
- rather than watch England face the Germans on TV in 1966.
OK, even if supporting Scotland got her foot in the door, her task seems
less and less enviable with each daily swipe at Fergie and his methods
during this valedictory season. It's all she can do to rein in his inclination
to say yes to most, and moderate the incessant demands on his and his
players' time:
"We've decided if anything has to give it's the lifestyle,
magazine-type stuff," she says.
"I don't know where he finds the patience as it is, but what
we want to get away from is every question starting with how this season
is the be-all and end-all!"
With Hampden Park, venue of the 2002 Champions Cup Final, having prematurely exercised the imagination of so many headline writers already, the inspirationally challenged - both pro and anti - were perhaps always going to have a field day as Ferguson called time on a period of unprecedented acclaim.
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But after that, with a new man no doubt swiftly installed in the United hot seat, what are her plans?
"No, I won't be going to City," she deadpans, "But you can never say for sure what's going to happen, can you?!"