He still came to Old Trafford whenever he could in his later years. With the collars on his raincoat pulled up to his ears. Almost as though he didn’t want anybody to know it was him.
But you could always tell it was Denis. The hair was still distinctive in its fairness. The glint in the eye still strong. Yes, you always knew when Denis was in the building. A footballer and a man who instinctively drew people to him with the same ease he once left opponents in his wake.
Denis Law – who died aged 84 on Friday – was a most natural footballer, a goal scorer who worked desperately hard at what those who knew him testified always came terribly easily. He was a poster boy for sporting glory, a film star footballer dressed in Manchester United red.
There were other clubs as well of course. Manchester City – rather famously – and also Torino and Huddersfield, where he started. Born in Aberdeen, he played 55 times for his beloved Scotland too and never lost a single flick of that beautiful, playful national lilt.
But it is with United that he will forever be associated. He spent eleven years at Old Trafford between 1962 and 1973 and played 404 times, averaging well over a goal every other appearance.
He won the Ballon D’Or in 1964 and his 46 United goals that season remain a club record. In 1968 he won the European Cup and his tally of 237 United goals is bettered only by Sir Bobby Charlton and Wayne Rooney.
Denis Law has passed away at the age of 84, his family and Man United confirmed on Friday
Law would also score 30 times for Scotland – a joint national record – in just 55 appearances
He won the Ballon d’Or in 1964 and is still to date the only Scot to ever have done so
If the game feels simpler back when he played then Law was the perfect salesman for the time. Effortlessly urbane and charming, effortlessly comfortable in his own skin and, most importantly of all, effortlessly effective with a ball at his feet.
There was rarely anything elaborate about things he did on a football field. He possessed an economy of movement and the ability to score goals simply. Ditto his celebration. Usually one arm raised and, if he was very excited, maybe two.
It was never lost on Law that one of his most unorthodox goals was the one he never really wanted to score and even after time dulled the memory, he never took the remotest ounce of pleasure from it.
His backheel in City blue against United on the last day of the 1974 season brought him the goal that people like to say sent his old club down from the top division. The truth is that it didn’t. Other results that day would have relegated United regardless.
Nevertheless, questions about that followed Law around for ever. He never seemed to do an interview without it being brought up and when it was, he would always baulk a little, making a joke or pretending he couldn’t remember. It was his way of moving past the subject. To him it was just a goal, just one of the many he scored since first making his debut for Huddersfield as a 16-year-old with an eye condition on Christmas Eve 1956.
Law was a not a tall man, slight and delicate to look at. On joining Huddersfield, some there thought him too slender. ‘A freak, weak and puny,’ said his first manager Andy Beattie.
But then some people said that about George Best, too, and there they both stand now along with Charlton, cast forever in bronze on the forecourt at Old Trafford.
A statue of United’s Holy Trinity. A hat-trick of sporting genius. A reminder – even in these dark days of Glazer debt and sporting uncertainty – of what it forever should be to be a Manchester United footballer.
His goal sealed a 1-0 win over his old side on April 27, 1974, the day Man United were relegated
Law’s finish gave City a 1-0 win over United – but results elsewhere had not gone their way
Like George Best, Law was not a tall man, and was slight in stature and delicate to look at
Sir Matt Busby wanted Law at United almost immediately but Huddersfield wouldn’t sell. Later Bill Shankly wanted him at Liverpool. But when he did leave it was to City, almost four years on, for a British record fee of £50,000.
An ambition and a core of determination to better himself that had already taken him from the Aberdeen tenements – Law was one of seven children – to the top level of English football when he was barely 20 was to take him to Italy. He stayed in Turin for just one unhappy season and then it was back to Manchester and a union with United that was perhaps overdue.
Much had changed for Law by then but some things remained steadfastly the same and he moved straight back in with the same landlady who had accommodated him when he played for City.
Law’s years at Old Trafford brought him all his major honours. This transpired to be his time. Joining a club still healing in the wake of the Munich disaster four years earlier, Law won two Division One titles, an FA Cup and, of course, that European Cup as Busby’s reborn United completed their valedictory circle of life at Wembley against Benfica. Sadly a knee injury kept him out of the final.
Busby’s United team was not short of glamour. Best was its showbusiness, Charlton its heartbeat, its rampaging soul and its melancholic link to a tragic past. Law was as effective as either player, able to drive forward off either foot and possessing a drop of the shoulder that defenders would anticipate yet still surrender to its deftness. Law was like smoke, like a wisp. Impossible to hold, catch or restrain.
Team-mates loved him not only for his goals but also for his courage and his deference. A simple man simply blessed with extraordinary skills.
His second spell at City was notable only for that goal and he retired at 34 when it became clear first team football at Maine Road would be rare.
To no surprise to those who recognised his ability to talk and disarm people, Law proved himself naturally skilled in front of a TV camera and was a regular analyst for Granada, ITV’s north-west regional arm. It turned out that, after years of playing football so well, he could talk about it too.
Man United’s famous Holy Trinity of Sir Bobby Charlton, Law and George Best at Old Trafford
Law was awarded a CBE in the 2016 New Years Honours for services to football and charity
The Scot is United’s third-highest goalscorer of all-time behind Wayne Rooney and Charlton
Settled just outside Manchester, Law never left. His daughter Diana, one of five children, worked for many years as United’s press officer and remains one of Sir Alex Ferguson’s trusted confidantes. Ferguson to this day calls Law Snr: ‘My hero’.
Having revealed he had prostate cancer in 2003, Law underwent surgery and recovered to become a committed raiser of awareness. When Best succumbed to the rigours of addiction in 2005, Law was by his bed side and subsequently carried his coffin.
More recently, it was revealed that, as he moved into his 80s, Law was suffering from Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia.
To think of Law so diminished was painful simply because it was so at odds with the vibrancy we remember. Law was not only a magnificent footballer but also a magnetic and unbreakable link to what Manchester United should always be about.
Glory, glamour and goals but with a streak of honesty and humility running through the middle. Don’t think of United as they have become. Think of them as what they once were. Dennis Law embodied all that. Today – now that all three have passed – we are more thankful than ever for that beautiful statue. In the days and weeks to come, it will be quite the sight.
