Stand and Deliver: Looking for Eric

The movie tipped a big nod to FC United of Manchester with a couple of the blokes who worked as postmen on the screen being followers of the breakaway side who visit Craik Park this weekend.

Loach explored themes of manhood, comradeship, unity…and the one steadying influence of the great French number ten who appeared as the lead character was having a mental breakdown.

When I worked on the post with Les Scott at Morpeth’s Oldgate office. Cantona often put in an appearance there too; from behind the fittings in the glow of the strip-lights at 5.30am, as you sipped a plastic cup of coffee dispensed from a machine, you might catch a glimpse of his red shirt.

When blokes tipped bags of mail into large tubs and wheeled post around on yorks, maybe you’d see him grinning with his dark hair and big eyebrows, spouting about seagulls and trawlers… or was that Geordie Mason?

Anyway, football was the chat as you threw letters and big envelopes into the green slots and piled up packets on top of the frame. Talking about the game was a topic of common interest for us all in there as the Eagles and other easy listening numbers played low out of the radio.

That’s what made Looking for Eric something that we could all feel an infinity with, whoever we support. Cantona, the self-appointed commissioner of football, the maverick, the up-turned collar, the flicks and deft touches. The kind of player that can add a splash of colour to a drab and often monotonous early morning at graft.

Eric, who said his greatest moment was a pass. The man who took off his Cantona face mask and revealed himself underneath in the back of an FC United supporter’s bus as he punched the air in defiance.

And we all did too.

I can almost hear the famous strains ringing in my head right now: “Ooh ahh, Cantona!”