I handed in my transfer request. The news made the front page of the Scottish Daily Express at a time when football stories were rare on the front pages. ‘Crerand Shock: Transfer Plea,’ said the headline.
Noreen, by this time my fiancée, was quoted in this article saying, ‘I was surprised when Pat told me that he had asked for a transfer – but I was even more surprised when he was dropped for the game against Falkirk on Monday night. This will make no difference to our wedding plans. If Pat does move, then I will go wherever he wants me to go. I don’t see much point in him staying at Parkhead if he is not happy.’
After 120 appearances and five goals, I would never play for Celtic again. Unbeknown to me, Bob Kelly and Matt Busby at Manchester United had an agreement that Matt would have first refusal on me if I ever left Celtic.
I came home from mass on Sunday and found Jim Rodger, a journalist from the Daily Record, waiting at the door. He knew everything about Scottish football and was big pals with Matt Busby, and, in later years, Alex Ferguson. He told me that I was going to Manchester United and explained that Matt Busby and a delegation from United had been in Manchester discussing my transfer with Celtic. I didn’t play any part in discussions about my future. My mother started crying.
The journalist told me that I was going to Manchester the following day to meet Matt Busby. My initial thought was that Noreen and I had both had family ties in Glasgow and were reluctant to leave. Noreen had never even been to England before.
I went to Celtic Park for training the following morning and trained as normal. Nobody said anything to me and I assumed that Jim Rodger was wrong. Then, after training Jimmy McGrory asked for a word. He told me that there had been talks between Celtic and Manchester United and that a fee had been agreed for me to move to England.
‘That’s what I’ve been told to tell you Pat,’ he said, as if it was nothing to do with him. Jimmy, despite being manager, wouldn’t have had a choice whether I was sold or not as he would have been acting on Bob Kelly’s orders. There was no room for negotiation, I was going to Manchester and that was that.
I went for something to eat with Mick Jackson. My head was spinning. He convinced me to go to Old Trafford. He wasn’t to know it, but two months later he would be on his way from Parkhead, too, deemed to be ‘disruptive’ by Bob Kelly. Another good friend, a bookmaker Tony Queen who was also a great pal of Jock Stein, agreed. ‘Go to Manchester, Pat. Celtic are going nowhere.’ Deep down, I knew he was right.
The Celtic fans were up in arms when they found out I was going. I got loads of letters telling me not to go and the newspapers were full of the same thing but what could I do?
Looking back now I realize that my doubts had set in during 1960/61, another unspectacular season as we could only finish fourth in the league. We did better in the Scottish Cup, reaching the final, only to be beaten in the replay. I left the Hampden pitch that night with tears in my eyes. It was bad enough to be beaten. What made it unbearable was the fact that Jock Stein was the Dunfermline manager and it angered me to think that he had been allowed to leave Parkhead in 1960. He had transformed them into a team good enough to win the Scottish Cup. I don’t think that Celtic realized his coaching talents when they let him leave, but the young players who had played under him, players like myself and Billy McNeill, did.
That Dunfermline game brought home to me what a shambles Celtic was. Bertie Peacock was the captain of the team and the most experienced player. After recovering from injury, it was assumed he would go straight back into the team for the final. The inexperienced John Clark was picked instead for both the final and the replay. Bertie was not even considered for the replay and Celtic even gave him permission to turn out for Northern Ireland against Italy the day before. Northern Ireland had asked Jock Stein to release their full-back Willie Cunningham. There was no way Jock would let him go.
The bizarre decisions continued after I left Celtic. The team went on to reach the Scottish Cup final in 1963 against Rangers. After doing well to get a draw, Celtic dropped Jimmy Johnstone, who was the best player in the first game, and replaced him with veteran Bobby Craig, who put in a poor performance. Rangers won 3–0 and I was later told by my former team-mates that they were livid with the constant tinkering by a man who was not even manager.
It was heartbreaking for me to see the state of the club I had supported all my life. The training schedule, for example, was so bad that you were never put in any situations where you were under pressure. Training amounted to a long jog followed by a game of five-a-side. There was never any tactical talk, feedback from previous games or information about our opponents. I maintain to this day that fans should just support their team and their manager rather than trying to find out what is happening behind the scenes, because they won’t like what they see.
Celtic would only change when Jock Stein took charge in 1965 when he won nine league titles in succession and took them to become the first British European Cup winners in 1967. I doubt that I would have ever left Celtic if Jock Stein had been in charge, but then I might not have got in the team that won the European Cup with Bobby Murdoch there.
Even though I was disgruntled with Celtic, I still felt that I was pushed out of Parkhead because the club knew that they could get money for me. I had an opinion and usually answered back which didn’t go down well with Kelly. Maybe sometimes I had too much of an opinion, but I wanted what was best for Celtic and what I saw was a disorganized rabble.
On the morning of 6 February 1963, myself, Noreen and a journalist called John McPhail flew down to Manchester airport, which was little more than a house. John wrote for the Daily Record. He was an ex-Celtic centre forward and a great fella.
Matt Busby was waiting at the airport with Denis Law and his wife Diana. United were cute as anything. I had never met Matt Busby before, but Diana Law took Noreen shopping in Manchester and made sure that she was looked after. Some photographers followed them and there was a picture in the paper the next day of the pair of them looking at shoes.
I went to Old Trafford to negotiate my contract. I was a nervous 23-year-old, completely in awe of Matt Busby. He said that he was building a strong team and that United had been ambitious enough to sign Denis Law who joined from Torino in 1962. He said that he needed somebody to play the ball up to the forwards and that player would be me. He could have told me anything and I would have agreed. I didn’t so much as negotiate as listen to what United were saying. They offered me £45 a week – more than twice what I was on at Celtic – plus crowd bonuses. We would get £1 extra if the crowd was over 35,000, £2 if it was over 40,000 and £3 if it was over 45,000. That was quite a lot of money when you consider that the maximum wage of £20 a week had only been abolished in 1961. United agreed a fee of £43,000 – not the £57,000 often reported – the most ever by an English club for a Scottish player and £3,000 more than Manchester City had paid Kilmarnock for wing-half Bobby Kennedy.
Bad weather meant we couldn’t fly back to Glasgow that night and Noreen got the sack from her job at Singer’s. She had taken a day off work to travel to Manchester with me and not explained why, but the story of me going to United was plastered all over the papers and her bosses were not impressed.
I signed for Manchester United on 6 February 1963, five years to the day since the Munich air disaster, as part of Busby’s plans to build another great side.
The winter of 1963 was savage. It was the coldest on record with an average temperature of zero degrees across Britain. All you ever saw on the news were stories about the big freeze, cattle being stranded and pictures of snow being piled up against front doors.
No trophies had been won at Manchester United since the Munich air disaster. Matt Busby was rebuilding, but the fans didn’t see it that way. United had finished a very creditable second in 1958/59, the first full season after the disaster, but then slipped to seventh a year later and