Free Catch A Falling Star by Neil Young, Dante Friend Page B

another three years would have taken me up to ten years’ service.
    Yet, when I think back to when I signed that contract I should have asked Joe to put a clause in my contract for a Testimonial game at the end of my playing days at City. Well it’s easy to think of that with hindsight but that sort of thing was unheard of in my day.
    I went to sign a new contract and I was very nervous because this was all new to me. Remember players didn’t have agents back in those days. I went down to Joe’s office and I didn’t really know what to say or what to ask for. Joe, in his polite manner, said: “You’re on £20 a week now, I’ll give you £45 a week!” I thought: “Bloody fantastic!” I leapt up and headed for the open door and he said: “Come back, I’ve not finished with you yet!” I thought: “Oh no, now what?”
    He said: “What about your signing-on bonus?” Now I did not know what that was and looked appropriately nonplussed.
    “I’ll give you £2,000 signing-on bonus,” Joe informed me, “but that is taxed so you’ll get about £1,200 in your hand.” Well I was over the moon because I would have signed an extension whatever they’d have offered me.
    Like I say, I was still the kid next door. I never quite got the opportunities that a player transferred in would have received. By that I mean that the club appeared to value some players more highly than others, especially if they’d fought tooth and nail in the transfer market for their signature. A signed player would also get a handsome share of the transfer money when they signed – something that someone who signs from apprentice just doesn’t get.
    *

    At about this time City were like one big happy family. From the tea lady to the chairman it seemed that we all had one aim in mind, to further the cause of Manchester City and have a good laugh while we were doing it. A case in point came during the pre-season press day, when the papers send down their photographers to get snaps of the players to use throughout the season. There were individual shots and then a team photo.
    Without fail, whenever Peter Blakey , our physio, got to hear that it was photo time he would rush from his treatment room – it didn’t matter who was on the table or how injured they were, he wasn’t going to miss his moment of glory – and who could blame him?
    What we did once, just as the photographers were about to take the team photo, we all dropped our shorts at the same time. Everything was dangling in the wind! We all got a copy but because one player was a very big lad we decided not to publish it. Can you guess who that was?
    We had some good laughs. You meet some great people and personalities when you are in the world of football. Whenever we visited
Luton
, Eric Morecambe would come in and have a joke with us. That zany character Freddie Starr used to come to City all the time and he’d always do his Elvis and Tarzan act before we went out to play a match! The broadcaster Stuart Hall used to try and train with us but we would lock him in the sauna. If you saw him the way we saw him when he’d just come out of the sauna, you’d think how on earth could this bloke get a job in television? One of the funniest guys was Eddie Large, I played golf with him a few times but it would be almost impossible to hit the ball because he’d have you in stitches all the time. He is a true Blue.
    I remember once I filled in a questionnaire for an article in the Charles Buchan Monthly I used to read as a kid. One of the questions was: “Who is your favourite artiste or pop group?” and I answered Johnny Mathis. Later on, much to my surprise, he came to watch us because he was a City fan and he was appearing at the Free Trade Hall in town. He actually left me two tickets to go and watch him, but we had a match that night so Mike Summerbee , who was injured, went along instead. I was pig sick at that!
    5. Kings Of
England

    Of all the most important moments in my