Andy Law: Bygone days recalled as sad goodbye is said

Watching flickering images of players you’d never heard of in distant places on the wooden box of a television with John Motson’s commentary so distant it was as if he was speaking down a bog roll.

The first real European game I recall watching on the TV was Aberdeen’s European Cup Winners’ Cup victory over Real Madrid in Gothenburg in 1983. John Hewitt’s diving header to win it in extra time. Willie Miller and Alex Ferguson with the cup.

Football wasn’t at saturation point then – seeing a full game on the telly was a privilege generally reserved for the World Cup and all day on FA Cup Final Saturday. Our favourite highlights programme was The Big Match, presented by Brian Moore. You can see old re-runs of them now on ITV4.

The players we saw on the TV became the idols that we tried to emulate on the school pitch, or the concrete yard, or in the old bus station. If we didn’t have a ball, we’d crush and kick a can. Anything. Whacking an old caser with the bladder popping out of a panel as the stitching wore away against a kerb and hitting it on the volley while shouting: ‘And…Socrates!’ in our best nasal Motson impressions.

Those games we played in our imaginations as children were so colourful as I look back now. Michel Platini. Jean Tigana. Paolo Rossi. Maldini. Zico.

My old mate Lawsy posted me a picture of the 1986 Denmark team recently on social media with just a comment of ‘some side that.’ We really enjoyed watching the Danes.

Preben Elkjaer was a regular scorer in games on the disused bowling green in the village we grew up in. Brian Laudrup, Jesper Olsen. We’d roll our socks down to look like the hardman Soren Lerby.

Lawsy had grinned when I bought myself one of those iconic candystripe Denmark strips a couple of years ago. I’d always fancied one as a kid so purchased one off the internet.

He knew exactly where my head was at – playing SPOT against a wall, or Subbuteo in our mate’s grandfather’s back room, eating toast made on the naked flame of the Aga with a Jack Russell on the lap.

I’d see him sat in his builder’s van with his sons at local games and we’d go back over the games we played, the wacky bike rides, the adventures on the hill and the laughs that we had.

He will have been looking forward to Newcastle’s upcoming big Champions League nights and the atmosphere that will be generated in the city. The excitement goes up a few notches when you’ve been restricted to just watching other British clubs’ success on TV.

We say a sad goodbye to Lawsy today. Those games and heroes we watched seem so distant a memory now – but then 49 is really no age at all.

Andy Law’s funeral takes place in Rothbury on September 14.