Free Catch A Falling Star by Neil Young, Dante Friend

teams and try to get on the best side. He used to hate getting beaten. I’ve known him to stay in the gym much longer if his team were losing.
    Most players hate pre-season training but I had always been a bit of a runner, a bit of an athlete with Manchester Athletic Club so the training did not bother me one little bit. In fact I couldn’t wait to start after our summer break. Most players would come back a little overweight but I was lucky in that department.
    We did a lot of pre-season work at the Silver Wings club in Altrincham, where they had superb pitches, tennis courts and squash courts. So we would spend mornings and afternoons training there. We would concentrate on stamina and sharpness. The one big difference was that everything was done with a ball which, believe it or not, is more tiring than just running because you have to concentrate more when you have a ball at your feet.
    Afternoons were spent on attack versus defence, free kicks, corners and my favourite which was shooting. I loved that, Franny and I were probably the best at shooting. We used to finish joint scorers many afternoons. Many a time after training we’d crawl back to
Maine Road
and just flop into the bath and many of us would fall asleep in the hot tub. You felt great though when you dried yourself off. Then we’d just go home early ready for the morning session again.
    After about three weeks we would start our friendly matches, usually against the likes of
Southport
,
Chester
, Bolton Wanderers or
Rochdale
to get us match fit. Which was enjoyable enough. Then we would often go abroad for a few days to
Germany
, or
Sweden
to play a couple of warm-up games – just to get us ready for the next season.
    They changed our eating habits. Instead of eating rubbish we would eat steak, chicken or fish before matches with salad. We had to wear a tie when we travelled away, we would have to arrive looking smart and there would be no smoking on the coach.
    They turned us into a professional outfit in more ways than one. We looked good and played well! We trained much harder in shorter periods. Not run, run, run all the time, we had variety in everything we did. They started weight-lifting in the gym at the club two afternoons a week and we became a super-fit team. There was one day when we couldn’t get in the gym because the doors were locked – it turned out Malcolm was ‘entertaining’ Miss
England
! A super team in every way – we were probably the fittest team in
Britain
.
    It showed too, look at our results over that five-year period. We won a great many trophies. We were feared as a team.
Maine Road
became a fortress once again. No visiting team enjoyed coming to
Maine Road
– it was like the
Alamo
for them when they came to our place.
    Also, the crowd loved it – no wonder we had massive gates every week for our home matches because when we were up there with the Uniteds , the Liverpools and the Arsenals we were doing superbly well. Then came our European campaigns and all because our habits had been changed. The food, the training, our appearance, our attitude – all of those things were different now and we had knitted together as a unit. In fact for four or five years the team very nearly picked itself barring injuries. A settled team tends to be a successful team because everyone knows what is expected of everybody else. Everyone was aware of the standard. We became a very solid outfit and were tremendously hard to beat.
    That’s the influence that Joe and Malcolm gave us. They were professional and they made us more professional. They never stopped looking or striving for perfection, a state that I think was reached that night when we played Schalke off the park. City were great that night, even if I say so myself.
    Just as my training routine became almost religious, so my match day routine took on a life of its own. I was up and about by 9am on a Saturday for home games, I’d have a spot of tea and toast, unwind