George Best’s five-night stand with Bournemouth
The “wall of fame” outside Dean Court is testimony to one of English football’s great rags-to-riches stories. It includes some famous names — Ted MacDougall, Harry Redknapp, Luther Blissett — but Bournemouth’s modern success story has been built more on perspiration than inspiration. The real crowd-pleasers down the years have been men like Eddie Howe, Neil Young and Steve Fletcher, who shed blood, sweat and tears for the club.
In this company, George Best’s portrait looks incongruous. It might prompt a double-take from the Manchester United supporters who walk past it tomorrow lunchtime. Best is some way past his prime in the picture — still handsome, but at 36 much thicker-set than he is remembered at Old Trafford. He is almost on his knees, as if something is just out of reach, something that, despite his almost unrivalled genius with a ball at his feet, had gone, never to return.
Best’s brief spell with Bournemouth, at the end of the 1982-83 season, was less a marriage of convenience than a five-night stand. Tommy Heffernan, the team’s Irish hard-man, and Nigel Spackman, who went on to play for Chelsea and Liverpool, freely describe it as a “publicity stunt” and even Neil Vacher, the club’s historian, uses the word “gimmick”. Redknapp, who was player-coach, cannot recall a stand-out moment on the pitch but looks back fondly on the experience. “It was a really eventful six weeks,” Don Megson, who was manager, says with a smile.
Nine years had passed since Best walked out on United for good in January 1974 — nine years living it up while drifting in and out of clubs as varied as Dunstable Town, Stockport County, Fulham and Hibernian and, further afield, Jewish Guild, Los Angeles Aztecs, Fort Lauderdale Strikers and San Jose Earthquakes. He had not played competitively since August 1981, but San Jose still held his registration. He had been declared bankrupt in late 1982 and his struggles with alcohol were well-known.
One evening in March 1983, Anton Johnson, the flamboyant head of a consortium that had just agreed to buy Bournemouth, was at Tramp, the West End nightclub, with Terry Venables when they were joined at their table by Best and his girlfriend Mary Stavin, also known as Miss World 1977. As the evening went on, Johnson proposed a scenario whereby Bournemouth would pay Best handsomely for playing in their final six home games of the season and helping to boost the attendances. To Johnson’s surprise, Best said he liked the idea of one final hurrah in the Football League, but feared that San Jose would not give up his registration.
Within days, a deal had been done. As long as Best was there on Fridays to train with the team, he would be considered for selection. “One morning Don came in and said: ‘We’ve made a new signing and he’s warming up outside, so I want you all to make him welcome,” Spackman says. “We went out onto the council pitches or wherever we were training that day and there he was — this guy with a beard and skinny legs, doing these little side-foot volleys. ‘Oh my god, it’s George Best.’ We all went over and tried to train as normal, but, as a young player, who had queued up at The Dell to watch him play against Southampton for Manchester United when I was a kid, I couldn’t believe it.”
Best told the handful of reporters present that “this is not a gimmick”. It was, though, and his team-mates were happy to go along with it as the crowds and television cameras arrived for his debut against Newport County. “There was a real buzz of excitement,” Vacher says. “The attendance [9,121] was more than double the usual, purely because of George Best.”
The match was an anticlimax as Bournemouth lost 1-0. “I couldn’t sit here and say he was anything like the George Best of old,” Redknapp says. “He was a strolling player by then. He wouldn’t pick the ball up and glide past three or four people like in his heyday.”
“It was difficult to give him instructions,” Megson says. “He went where he wanted when he wanted. I told the other lads: ‘Any time he wants the ball, give it to him.’ They went along with that. They loved him to pieces. He used to bring them shampoo, you know.”
“One day he asked me asked me if I fancied going to the races in Salisbury after training,” Redknapp says. “ ‘Of course, George.’ ‘Right, pick me up from the East Anglia Hotel.’ So I get to the hotel. George comes out with Mary Stavin. ‘Could you drop Mary at the station please, Harry?’ ‘Of course, George.’ Mary gets in, looking rather well. ‘Hello Mary. Pleased to meet you.’ We drop her off. George says: ‘Thank god for that.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘We went to the cinema last night and she kept trying to kiss me.’ ‘Oh, poor you, George. Miss World all over you . . .’ He says: ‘Yes, but I was trying to watch the film.’
“We had a great day at the races. As we set off home, we saw two guys trudging along, looking like they’d done their money. George says: ‘Harry, let’s give them a lift.’ So we offer them a lift. They get in and they can’t believe it’s George Best. They’ve done their money at the races, but they look like they’ve won the pools. He talked to them all the way home. He loved people, George.”
Best’s human touch was again in evidence when Bournemouth hosted a junior football tournament during the Easter holidays. “All the kids wanted to play with George,” Megson said. “So George made sure he played with every single team, five minutes with each, so that all the kids could say they had played with George Best.”
On the pitch, the picture was less rosy. For the home game against Orient, Best did not return in time from Manchester, where he had been attending a funeral. Tiler felt compelled to put up a sign outside the ground warning supporters that “George Best won’t be playing today”. After defeat by Reading at Elm Park two days later, Megson stated that “George wasn’t satisfied with his fitness and neither were we. I will feel let down if he doesn’t show up next time.”
It was reported when Best signed for Bournemouth that he had not touched alcohol for eight months. Redknapp remembers Best abstaining at a personal appearance at a casino — “They offered him £500 just for turning up,” Megson says — but the former Sunday Times football writer Joe Lovejoy recalls one post-match encounter at Dean Court where Best’s orange juice (an encouraging choice at first glance) was found to be very heavily laced with vodka. “It was a problem all his life,” Megson says.
Best limped off in the next home game against Chesterfield. He was said to be suffering with blisters, but he later hinted it was a ruse so that he could watch the Grand National on television. That was the first of four consecutive appearances, including a trip to Southend United and even a testimonial match at Salisbury City. “He wanted to play at Southend so that his son [Calum, who was two] could see him play,” Megson says. “Great for Southend, great for Salisbury, but he counted those two games towards his six, which wasn’t the original plan.”
Things came to a head the day before an away match against Bradford City. Best had been offered a bonus payment to play, prompting Bradford to print fliers advertising his appearance in anticipation of a big crowd. When the team bus headed north on Friday afternoon, though Best was not on it. “He had sort of gone AWOL,” Heffernan says.
“Brian went to London to track George down,” Redknapp says. “He went to George’s usual pubs and found him. George says: ‘OK, I’ll come. Just wait here while I go to the toilet.’ Ten minutes later, Brian’s still waiting. He goes to the toilet. ‘George?’ And George has disappeared out of the window. Every time Brian tracked him down, George disappeared.”
Best was driven back to Bournemouth by his ex-wife Angie a couple of days later. He could not play against Doncaster Rovers due to what was described as a heavy chill, so again the “George Best won’t be playing today” sign was out. He made one final appearance in a 2-1 victory over Wigan Athletic, but again his touch proved elusive. An attendance of just 4,523 — almost down to pre-Best levels — made it an inglorious conclusion to his Football League career.
He played four games for Brisbane Lions that summer, but he was back at Dean Court the following January, working for the BBC at Bournemouth’s FA Cup tie against United. Bournemouth’s 2-0 win is still one of the greatest days in the club’s history, but a more poignant memory for Redknapp is of Best “coming into the boardroom and selling a canteen of cutlery to one of the vice-presidents. “I think he needed a few quid,” Redknapp says. “To me, that was very sad.”
Even mention of Best’s struggles, though, evokes the famous story of the waiter delivering champagne to his hotel room, where he was cavorting with Miss World, with several thousands of pounds of gambling winnings on the bed next to them, and the waiter asking him: “Where did it all go wrong, George?”
The sincere answer is that it went wrong for Best many years earlier when loneliness in Manchester, combined with superstardom and temptation, took him down the path to alcoholism and, ultimately, towards his death at the age of 59. “He was quite open about it,” Spackman says. “He said the fame and fortune had come so quickly for him. He found it very hard to say no to people and that was the root of his struggles. He was a lovely guy. I ended up working with him on TV years later. I asked him about his time at Bournemouth. He said: ‘The old legs had gone by then, hadn’t they?’ But he had enjoyed it.”
So did the supporters, whatever the sense of anticlimax. “To be able to watch George Best play for Bournemouth, in the old third division, was amazing,” Vacher says. “It did boost the coffers and the commercial department were very happy when they had Mary Stavin to do the half-time draw. It must have been the most glamorous thing that had ever happened to the club.”
Even Megson, who occasionally had reason to despair, looks back fondly. “What a player he was in his heyday, when I used to kick him when I was playing for Sheffield Wednesday,” Megson says. “He was a long way past that at Bournemouth, but what a gem of a man. I will never hear a word said against him.”
www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/sport/george-bests-five-night-stand-with-bournemouth-8w505jjhb
