I’ve just got to tell this story – I’ve got to come clean, after all these years….’Mike, it was ME!!!!’
It was 1967, I was in the first year at West Hill Boys School in Stalybridge, just after attending my first ever Man City game at Maine road – and I was City mad!
Mike Summerbee was my absolute hero and he was engaged to a lovely lady called Tina Schofield – who’s family, I seem to recall, owned a sports shop in the town. At the time he lived in Mottram Road in Stalybridge, and one of my school chums – Paul Chadwick – lived close by and used to wash Mike’s shiney, dark blue, Jaguar MK 10! I badgered Paul to let me go with him the next time he washed the car – anything, just to be close to my hero!
I arrived, and there he was, Mike Summerbee, in the flesh! You could keep your ‘Roy of the Rovers’ and your Georgie Best, this man, to this scrawny little 11 year old, was a GOD – and I was actually washing his car! So excited was I that I just couldn’t resist scraping off some paint from under the front wheel arch and keeping it in a match box…..!!! Mike, forgive me! It’s taken me 41 years but I’ve owned up at last. You were my hero, you WERE Manchester City, that scraped off smidging of paint was my little piece of belonging to what was – and what still is – the most magical, evocative and awe-inspiring football team in the whole country. I loved the team then, I’ll love the team forever – City ’til I die. Frank Chorley (aged 52 and 3/4’s!!)