The Best player never to grace a World Cup

The Arrival of George Best at Easter Road, 1979

‘Look, there he is,’ said Sammy
‘Over there by Mortens Rolls’;
Tanned legs, five o’clock stubble
And wearing our green and white
Bukta strip, chevrons on the sleeves,
The first team to wear a sponsors name
On the shirt.

‘Georgie, Georgie, Georgie Best,’ sing the crowd
And we are a crowd, for a wee change,
We’ve turned out in numbers
To see the Belfast Boy,
The footballing genius,
The flawed fire cracker.

‘Georgie Georgie, give us a wave
Give us a wave,
Give us a wave.’

He gave us a wave.

When Hibs pile forward
George just kind of ambles along…
And when we rush back in panic-stricken defence,
He never goes too far back,
In fact, George seems to spend
Quite a lot of time
Perambulating around
The center circle.

He doesn’t run much,
At least not very fast,
But, he takes all the free kicks and corners,
And delivers them all on a plate
To colleagues like the misnamed Ally Brazil
Who do not always anticipate
His speed of thought.

He scores his first goal for the Hibees
But I can’t remember it for the booze,
And the fact that half the east terracing
Jump on top of me,
And I loose my upper dentures
In the ensuing melee.

Even with George,
We get relegated anyway
And some say
That it has all been a stunt, a diversion,
A cabaret.

But I was happy to be diverted
From the winter of discontent
And the coming of Thatcher,
To gaze on a footballing fox
Reynard;Gorgeous George,
Who burst across our emerald firmament
Like a tipsy ballerina on a curtain call
To shine his light on us,
If only for a moment,
But what a precious moment.

Martin Russell