Friday, November 25, 2005

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1. When I was about nine years old in the late sixties, I walked with a mate from the Falls to windsor park. N.I. were playing Turkey.We speedied up,to me,an enormous pole to get in. 

   Eventually we were allowed by the Peelers to lie on the track around the pitch.Georgie came to the side line to take a throw in. We couldn’t contain ourselves and jumped up.

   There were howls of abuse from the spectators to get us off and the Peelers obliged. I can’t even remember the score but that memory stays forever.

   Posted by  on Nov 26, 2005 @ 04:46 AM

2. George Best had and utilised the right to express political opinions, and it is not surprising that others should believe they had the right to comment on them. But I note with concern the following passage from the Times obituary:-

   <<He was an able pupil, the only one in his year to pass the 11-plus examination, but he gave up his place at the Grosvenor High Grammar School when, marked out by his uniform as a Protestant, the daily ordeal of passing through sectarian Roman Catholic areas became unbearable. He rejoined his former classmates at the local secondary modern, and put his hopes for the future on being spotted by one of the talent scouts who frequented local matches.>>

   My first reaction to this piece was to inveigh against sectarianism of any kind, and to recommend the immediate abolition of school uniforms, or at least their unification, so that all should wear exactly the same jacket and trousers.

   But a look at the map breeds a certain cynicism. How on earth does one find a “sectarian Roman Catholic area“ on the way from Cregagh to Grosvenor Grammar School? Can someone elucidate? Maybe Belfast was different in those days. But I suspect the Mackerel-snappers are being unfairly blamed.

   Perhaps he was really a victim of anti-Grammar School prejudice, or maybe he left Grosvenor under a cloud. Perhaps, which is only to be expected, he was only interested in sport and not in any academic subject and that led to his relegation.

   But the need to outlaw, or unify school uniforms remains. If it hasn’t already beeen done in NI, it should be. If it has, it should be done in Scotland as well.

   Posted by  on Nov 26, 2005 @ 06:16 AM

3. Paddy Reilly

   Until the early sixties or very late 50s (I cant remember) Grosvenor High School used to be on the Grosvenor Road, West Belfast - hence its name. This is why Bob McCartney went there - he grew up on the Shankill. I went to the one in Cameronian Drive of Castlereagh Road in East Belfast when it moved across town to its current home.

   However I always thought the reason he moved was because it didn’t play football.

   Posted by  on Nov 26, 2005 @ 10:04 AM

4. Being in 1963 and raised a few hundred yards from where he grew up George Best was certainly an icon throughout my life to date. He was probably the only person I would have stopped what I was doing to watch on TV or pick up anything I came across written about him.

   My earliest memories are my older brother and father cheering at the European Champion final in 1968. I don’t know if it was the radio or Live TV (if they had it then) infact I am not even certain if we had a TV then. I was upstairs at the time in bed but that rare excitement of my father and brother sticks with a 4 year old. My brother 4 years older than me became a life long Man U supporter whereas to set myself apart and to reflect the Leeds team of the early seventies I gave my loyalties to Elland Road.

   Throughout the seventies my memory of him is more disappointment - his career finishing early and his international career soemtimes marked by him not being ‘available’ or indeed sometimes not turning up !

   However I remember in 1982 getting fully behind a half baked notion that he could have gone to Spain 82 with NI even at that stage.

   I distinctly remember reading his exploits in the tabloids throughout the Eighties in my 6th Form experience and time at QUB - it was always on my part a mixture of sadness and regret.

   I also remember the Wogan show which my wife and I, pre children, would sit down and watch every night. I will always recall her anguished “he’s pissed” when he walked onto the set.

   After that he still retained my attention but I must admit I often considered him a drunken bollix and disgrace in recent years. However such sentiments never remained long.

   He had an amazing ability to prompt forgiveness - maybe it was his footballing genius combined with charm and vulnerability - but he as one of those people it was difficult to dislike for long.

   I often wonder if he didn’t have the problem with alcoholism what would he be doing now ? Perhaps there would be no Sir Alex Ferguson ?

   Maybe he would have gone into politics - that charm would have gone a long way - although not if he ahd come back here !
   Being no judge of such things myself my wife says his early photographs are film star looks. My father in law who worked in the Shipyard with his dad and said George’s mother was a stunner.

   I read somewhere he had said he had a Mensa IQ - I know he said it but he was only 2 from his Council Estate Primary school to get the 11+ that year. I take my hat off to any kid from working class inner city Belfast, as particularly gifted, who jumps the NI Social Selection System barrier.

   Anyhow I salute a legend.

   I hope his funeral next weeks fully illustrates Belfast’s appreciation of having in its midsts a world class talented footballer.

   I also hope we get our new Stadium - it isnt at the Maze - and it is called The George Best Stadium - a fitting memorial.

   Posted by  on Nov 26, 2005 @ 11:07 AM

5. Back in the old days our primary school team played in red and we all thought we were Geordie Bests, even if we wore Alan Ball white boots.

   The football arguments were over quickly too - all you had to say was - yeah, but we’ve got Geordie Best.

   I feel really priveliged to have been born in the same city and to have seen him play.

   Posted by  on Nov 26, 2005 @ 11:20 AM

6. Sad to see that some on the thread want to highlight George’s “politics” and even more disgracefully so, his illness.

   I was brought up a few hundred yards from where Besty was. I still live close to the family home.

   My first time going to watch George “live” was to Windsor Park in 1971, when he played for Northern Ireland v Cyprus.

   I was 9 years of age at the time, and the butterflies in my stomach were akin to those any young kid has on Christmas Eve.

   Besty scored a hatrick that night in a 5-0 victory for Northern Ireland. Best was magical. One of the goals he scored was direct from a corner.

   He had done the same thing for Manchester United not long previous, and some papers labelled it a fluke.

   I often think that that George was sticking two fingers up to the sceptics that night at Windsor Park...typical of the man!

   macswiney’s post is one I wholly relate to.

   At George Best’s prime, Northern Ireland was tearing itself apart.

   Northern Ireland was known for two things...George Best and terrible civil unrest.

   George Best was a glue that enabled many, many people to hold their head up and be proud of where they came from at a time when there was very little to be proud about.

   For many reasons, I have always had a special place in my heart for George Best.

   Selfishly, I am so proud that he was a “Belfast Boy”.

   The beautiful game has lost the most beautiful player ever to grace it.

   Full backs in heaven will be a little uneasy today.

   God Bless Besty.

   Posted by  on Nov 26, 2005 @ 11:23 AM

7. cas,

   So Northern Ireland fans disagreed with George Best regarding an All Ireland football team...so what?

   I disagree with my missus about most things...doesn’t mean I don’t love her.

   Thanks anyhow for the link...on the site you will see a plethora of glowing tributes, footage of some of Besty’s greatest moments etc.

   Feel free to post your tribute cas...or perhaps your interest only extends to trying to get a cheap shot in at Northern Ireland fans?

   PS: Wonderful gesture by Celtic Football Club this weekend. Instead of holding a minutes silence, fans will applaud for a minute. This has only previously taken place at Parkhead once before...following the death of the great Jock Stein.

   George would have liked that.

   Posted by  on Nov 26, 2005 @ 12:17 PM

8. Sky has reported plans of a tribute game being organised in memory of George.

   An all Ireland team v England sometime next year.

   It would be fitting if everyone could leave their political beliefs aside to honour the life of Besty.

   What better tribute to a man who crossed all the boundries within this society.

   Posted by  on Nov 26, 2005 @ 04:17 PM

9. “Sky has reported plans of a tribute game being organised in memory of George.

   An all Ireland team v England sometime next year.”

   I don’t think $ky should be involved in any sort of tribute - they just can’t seem to help but try and turn everything into a cheap money-making scheme; I’d much sooner entrust it to the likes of the BBC.

   Also, I’m sure George wouldn’t be offended if I point out that England struggled with Northern Ireland, never mind an all-island team ;)

   Posted by beano on Nov 26, 2005 @ 04:51 PM

10. The school stuff is amply recorded in Blessed, his autobiography of 2001. Suffice to say he ends his account by saying the attacks by the local Catholic kids were great for his sprint training.

    Posted by Mick on Nov 26, 2005 @ 04:59 PM

11. Football is a strange career path. If you master it, it gives you everything you want by the age of 19, and then spends the rest of your life taking it all away again.

    Football is altogether a strange business. It simulates war, delivers victories, sometimes accompanied by bloodshed, but nothing is conquered. It is like an election, where only the politicians win, and their supporters feel better, but their lives are just the same. It is a sort of incipient sectarianism, which has not yet gone too far. (Unless it concides with the real thing). There may be fights in the school playground, but they haven’t yet established separate schools.

    George Best could handle a ball better than anyone else in the world. Capitalising on this impressive, but objectively useless talent, he rapidly achieved unbounded fame and considerable, though finite, fortune. These he merely used as a springboard to progress into his preferred metier, which was bedding, on a serial basis, the most beautiful women in England. Sacrificing his vertical career for a horizontal one was a conscious choice, but an expensive one, though most males would do the same, if they had the chance.

    Having supplied seratonin boosts to ten of thousands of men at the same time, he now confined himself to servicing women one, or at most two, at a time. At this point one would expect some diminution in his fanbase. Certainly attention was turned elsewhere. As he put it, “If I had been ugly, you’d never have heard of Pele.”

    But his downfall was not the women, but the clubs in which, and the bottles of champagne he used to woo them. Alcoholism is due to a defective gene and may soon be curable. But many persons who are disposed to it are able, if they have some purpose to their life and something yet to achieve, to keep it at bay by never touching a drop.

    These he lacked. From then on, it was downhill. Bankrupted, he recovered and was given a political column which was about as impressive as a football team manned by journalists. If he helped to sell newspapers, it was as a news-item, not a writer. But by now he had moved onto his third career, which was as a guinea-pig investigating the effects of alcohol poisoning. Alcoholics: what can one say. Anyone who has tried looking after one for any period of time ends up wishing they could be gassed. Calling Best a wife-beater is perhaps unfair. There was no mens rea: I doubt that he was even aware he had struck his wife.

    Bestie did not need your adulation: it was the adulation that did for him. If there hadn’t been quite so many women wanting to sleep with him, if he hadn’t been told he was God when he was 17, he might have had done more with the rest of his life. As Kipling said, <<If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same.>> He couldn’t, I’m afraid.

    Posted by  on Nov 26, 2005 @ 05:00 PM

12. “I don’t think $ky should be involved in any sort of tribute”

    They ‘reported’ that a game was being organised.

    Sky are not organising the game.

    “Also, I’m sure George wouldn’t be offended if I point out that England struggled with Northern Ireland, never mind an all-island team ;)”

    As far as i am aware, it would be a friendly game, so i doubt that it would be hugely competitive fixture, more a chance for players and supporters to show their respect and admiration for George.

    Posted by  on Nov 26, 2005 @ 06:18 PM

13. Lest we forget that this man left his wife with a broken arm and black eye. What other society would give an alcoholic wife beater a “state” funeral? Is George Best an icon this society can be proud of? The answer is an emphatic NO. This Princess Di type hysteria is nauseating.

    Posted by  on Dec 10, 2005 @ 01:01 AM

14. “Lest we forget that this man left his wife with a broken arm and black eye. What other society would give an alcoholic wife beater a “state” funeral? Is George Best an icon this society can be proud of? The answer is an emphatic NO. This Princess Di type hysteria is nauseating.”

    Interesting that both George’s ex wives attended the funeral, and talked of their love for George.

    What was most nauseating was the plethora of self righteous mouthpieces, with absolutely no clue about alcoholism, who denegrated George after his death.

    This wee place will never see the likes of George again on a football pitch. That we will never forget.

    Posted by  on Dec 10, 2005 @ 08:59 AM

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