Categories: uncategorized
Date: 29 November 2005 16:10:07
Being a football fan of a certain age I can just about remember the end of George's career. He was not the Greatest Football Player who ever lived but he was up there in the top 10.
Coming from a small footballing country there was never a chance of him playing on the grandest stage, the World or European Cups, and football was not televised to the extent it is today. Yet everyone seemed to have heard of him.
He really was one of the most skillful and talented football players I have ever seen. He could do things that others couldn't, and still can't, do. As a player he was the ideal that many young people looked too.
Balanced against this was George the Playboy & drunkard. He was one of football's first media stars, up there with Booby Moore and Pele. He was seen with models, TV stars, Bunny Girls and various others. If there was a bottle and a beautiful woman in sight George would be there.
Many of the tributes say what a shy and polite man he was. He'd always talk to people and sign autographs. Yet he never seemed to find real happiness. His mother died an alcoholic and now he's gone the same way.
One would have hoped that the liver transplant would have been a wake-up call but in the end the booze was more important to him than his health and life. Even the implantation of anti alcohol pellets didn't seem to do the trick.
In the last few years he went from media darling to a figure of fun and contempt. The people who had built him up turned and either bit him or ignored him.
The thing I also wonder at such times is who helped him? Were there Christian people there who tried to help? Was there someone who tried to talk to him about a better alternative to the life he led?
I hope that there was and that he's now lining up with Booby Moore, Danny Blanchflower, Billy Wright, John Charles and Duncan Edwards and playing the best football ever. I'm sure heaven has the perfect playing surface and stadia for them to perform in.