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chance. I suppose the writing was on the wall for us to get a result in this game and we raced into a shock 2-0 lead. Denis Law, back from
Torino
and making his derby debut for United, scored twice to make it 2-2 but we nicked a last-minute winner to send our fans home happy.
    Yet by the penultimate game of the season we were struggling, a 1-1 draw with United at
Maine Road
consigning us to second division football. It was a game we had to win, we had led 1-0 and had a perfectly good goal disallowed. Confidence was not one of our strong points in that era however. If we’d been 2-0 up going into the interval we might just have hung on, as it was poor Waggy gave the ball away when he tried a suicidal back pass to our ‘keeper Harry Dowd. A penalty was awarded when Denis Law dived in the box, Quixall scored and we were down.
    I never played with Denis Law at all when he was at City but I would have liked to have done. Just think, if Johnny Aston and Jimmy Murphy had knocked on my door a week earlier I might have done for United – then again, probably not, as that would have involved having to say “Yes” to the dreaded red empire.
    Later on I thoroughly enjoyed my derby matches, usually because I was on the winning side so often. However, early on I found it difficult to enjoy those games because of the tension involved. The 1-1 draw proved to be our last derby for a while.
    With City two full points from safety with one game to play and a much inferior goal difference, we were heading for the drop. There were a lot of jokes and comments flying about and as a young player it wasn’t comfortable to have to put up with that at all.
    When relegation happens it’s not very nice. As City fans, we’ve all become used to that sinking feeling over the years. At the time it was tough to take, yet I didn’t feel particularly responsible for it because I was still a young lad and it was up to the older pros, together with the board and the manager, to shoulder the blame for our demise.
    Les McDowall was an idol to me when I first came though because he gave me that chance. However, later on I realised he had limitations as a manager and George Poyser was even worse. Poyser only got the job because it was promised to him by Les! He let that Cup-winning team grow old together and soon the situation was irretrievable.
    Of course, in those days I started on the right wing and later I was moved over to the left. This helped my game a lot because by the time you get to your second season, managers know about you and whereas in the first season I would go on galloping runs, the second season I knew I would have less time on the ball because their full-backs would be wise to me. However switching to the left gave me more time as an unknown quantity.
    On one occasion we played at
Bolton
and their back two were both well-established veterans. A couple of solid and reliable full-backs in the shape of Banks and Hartle . After the first twenty minutes I felt I was more than holding my own against Roy Hartle . We were having a good battle and I was on top.
    Then Waggy shouted over: “Hey Youngy , get over to this side, this bloke’s an animal!” So I trooped across and played on the left. Five minutes before half time Waggy shouted over again: “Hey Youngy – this one’s even worse!!!” and I went back across to the right.
    After the game Roy Hartle came over to me and shook my hand saying: “Well done young man. You’re good you are!” Which meant a lot coming from a good pro like
Roy
.
    Despite our eventual relegation we had some real characters at the club and some half-decent players too. Alex Harley was in the Wyn Davies mould. Big and strong, he had come from
Scotland
with a lad called Matt Gray. He really thought he was the bee’s knees though. He thought he was the greatest player ever to have walked God’s earth and in the end it was his undoing. One year he was quite prolific, scoring about thirty goals.