'Tommy Docherty didn’t make the news. He was the news' (2024)

To a generation of Manchester United followers, Selhurst Park will be forever remembered as the venue of Eric Cantona’s notorious kung-fu kick on abusive fan in 1995. To an older generation, Selhurst Park is remembered as the scene of an act of comparable violence 23 years earlier. That day, in December 1972, United lost 5-0 to Crystal Palace and in the boardroom at half-time Matt Busby spoke to then Scotland manager Tommy Docherty, who just happened to be there. By full time, Docherty had been offered the job at Old Trafford on a three-year contract.

The man Docherty was to replace, Frank O’Farrell, was still in the dugout, literally. Docherty, a close friend of O’Farrell, agreed to take the job nonetheless. Docherty knew professional football could be a brutal business. A few years later he was to understand that all the more.

Docherty, who has died aged 92, had been a charismatic mover and shaker inside the game for almost 25 years at that point. He had gone from being a player good enough to captain Scotland and play at the 1954 World Cup, to an innovative young manager at Chelsea, to national figure at United. As a maverick personality, “the Doc” was known for quips and slips and, ultimately, for a career-wrecking moral scandal that said as much about the hypocrisy of the world around him as it did of Docherty himself.

“I fell in love, I never did anything,” Docherty said of his affair with Mary Brown, wife of the United physiotherapist Laurie Brown.

The relationship became public in May 1977, the day after United had cemented their return to glory with a 2-1 win over Liverpool in the FA Cup final on one of those atmospheric sunny afternoons at Wembley. It was United’s first major trophy since the 1968 European Cup and Docherty, along with many others at the club, felt the Busby era and its troubled end, had finally been left behind.

Then came the revelation of Docherty’s affair in the Sunday People, the newspaper for whom Docherty had been a columnist. He was paid to give his side of the story. He was 49 and had a public profile similar to Brian Clough, a natural, thoughtful manager with a tongue that could be cruel as well as kind. So Docherty’s affair was on the front pages. As Busby once said: “Tommy Docherty didn’t make the news. He was the news.”

This sensational news was to have back-page repercussions, with United initially standing by Docherty, then back-tracking, apparently when Laurie Brown confronted the board with some tales of other folk at Old Trafford. Docherty was dismissed, just when he and the club thought they were on the cusp of taking on Liverpool once more.

Docherty’s love for Mary Brown was sincere and they remained together until Docherty’s death, but he could not complain too much about the harshness of football — he had been at Selhurst Park after all. Besides, as Bill Shankly once said: “I wouldn’t have minded four or five Tommy Dochertys in my team. He was worth his weight in gold, a hard boy who had a big heart.”

There were some within football — within the United dressing room — who would agree with the “hard boy” part of that assessment. With his quick wit and dapper demeanour, Docherty was seen as a loveable rogue. Some of those who came into close contact with the Glaswegian would omit loveable, however. The Scotland and United winger Willie Morgan, for example, ended up in court with Docherty. It was a brief trial that centred on Docherty’s character, and Morgan won.

Docherty managed major clubs such as Derby County, QPR and Wolves after Old Trafford. At Molineux he said: “I just opened the trophy cabinet and two Japanese prisoners of war came out.” He had two years working in Australia. But he was not viewed in the same way after United and was once assaulted at Stockport train station.

There was also a short stint in 1981 at Preston North End. Deepdale was where Docherty had entered English football, moving south from Celtic in 1949 aged 21. He had been born a mile from Parkhead and supported Celtic as a boy. He lost his father at nine and went to work at 14. He did National Service in Palestine and witnessed an atrocity in Jerusalem that killed 91 people.

Docherty arrived at Preston just as Shankly was leaving and Docherty inherited Shankly’s wing-half position. The two men would be in touch for decades. Preston were about to finish sixth in the old Second Division. But they won it the next season — 1950-51 — and in 1953 Preston were runners-up to Arsenal. The Lillywhites were third in 1957 and second again in 1958. Docherty knew what it was to face the Busby Babes and to play at Old Trafford. Preston also reached the FA Cup final in 1954, losing to West Brom. He was an essential part of a team that had Tom Finney as its gold star.

Docherty won the bulk of his 25 Scotland caps while at Deepdale and he also went to the 1958 World Cup, though he did not play in Sweden. He departed Preston that summer, aged 30, for Arsenal. He was at Highbury for three seasons before being lured across London and into player-management by Chelsea, at first as a player-coach to the legendary Ted Drake. Drake had led Chelsea to their first-ever league title in 1955, but by 1962 the team had waned and Docherty was moved up to manager that September.

Jimmy Greaves was no longer at Stamford Bridge and Chelsea were bound for relegation, but Docherty took Chelsea back up at the first attempt, in 1962-63, and they finished fifth in the top-flight in 1964. The following year they won the League Cup, beating Leicester in the two-legged final. It was the club’s first trophy since the league title under Drake and Docherty was causing a stir. Or a “whirlwind” as one at the club put it.

Chelsea, keen to be modern and swing with the Sixties, sent Docherty to watch Real Madrid train. “I picked up their tactic of players overlapping in attack,” Docherty said. “At Real it was only the forwards that did it. I extended it at Chelsea to the backs and half-backs.”

Chelsea had won the Youth Cup in 1960 and 1961 and Docherty had young talents such as Bobby Tambling and Terry Venables to call on. They became known as “Docherty’s Little Diamonds” and in April 1965, with four games to go, Chelsea were top of the league. Then eight players broke a curfew in Blackpool and Docherty sent them home. Chelsea came third.

But Docherty’s Chelsea were being noticed for their playing style as much as for their young manager’s vocal mixture of toughness and bonhomie. And they were admired, to the extent that, before the 1966 World Cup, West Germany asked to play them. Twice.

“You play like a South American team,” the German manager Helmut Schoen told Docherty (as Docherty says in Chelsea’s Official Biography). “You don’t play like an English team at all. Your full-backs are like wingers. We haven’t seen this before.”

Chelsea went into Europe and reached the FA Cup final in 1967, losing to Tottenham. But Docherty resigned, or was forced to, following “an incident” on tour in Bermuda. A combustible dynamo, he could talk himself out of jobs as well as into them. He raced through Rotherham United, QPR (29 days), Aston Villa and FC Porto in three years before becoming Scotland manager. “When one door opens, another one smashes you in the face,” as he put it.

Then he turned up at Selhurst Park just before Christmas 1972, ostensibly scouting for Scotland. O’Farrell, a former Preston teammate — and godfather to one of Docherty’s sons — was trying to stem the decline of a club that had won the European Cup four years earlier and which still contained George Best, Denis Law and Bobby Charlton. O’Farrell, today 93 and living in Torquay, was ushered out publicly and unpleasantly. Docherty strode in noisily.

But he could not halt United’s fall. United’s Holy Trinity — Law, Best and Charlton — all played their last United game in Docherty’s tenure. He would later refer to them as “the remnants”. Law was given a free transfer to Manchester City without being informed by his new manager. He would return to haunt both United and Docherty and help send them to relegation in 1974, for the first time since 1937.

As he did at Chelsea, Docherty brought the club straight back up. As he did at Chelsea, Docherty brought a verve to the team. There were over 60,000 at Old Trafford to watch a second-tier match against Sunderland. This was no longer the doomed United, this was Steve Coppell on one wing and Gordon Hill on the other. Manchester United were back and going places. They beat Liverpool at Wembley. “That day was the highlight in my management career,” Docherty said.

Then love intervened. In an interview with Andy Mitten in 2011, Docherty said he disliked the term “affair”, saying: “It was a loving partnership that is still going strong to this day and has produced children who’ve had grandchildren.” But Docherty’s children from his first marriage were understandably aggrieved and on one occasion Laurie Brown saw Docherty and punched him.

Given that marital infidelity was hardly novel at Manchester United or at any other club, Docherty was entitled to his opinion that those who sacked him were hypocrites and that a dismissal based on form or results was how it should have been. But then he knew how hard professional football can be. Whatever else people said about Tommy Docherty’s character, that he fought his way up and through it — at Preston, Chelsea and Manchester United — and made a difference, required ability and knowledge as well as fierce determination.

(Photo: Nick Potts/PA Images via Getty Images)