"I survived because my wife, Cathy, was downstairs when she heard all the shoes come clattering out of the shoe rack on to the wooden floor above. If she hadn’t been there, the Referee in the Sky might have blown the final whistle for me." "The reception I received from those in the crowd at Old Trafford that day meant more to me than anything I have ever experienced — more than being in Aberdeen after we won the European Cup Winners’ Cup, more than during the various ticker-tape parades while I managed United, more than at the end of the last game of my career. I felt I was being greeted as if I had returned from the dead, which, in a way, was true, because so many of the stories that were printed after the news spread of my brain injury had read like premature obituaries." "It was an extraordinary feeling — one that I had never previously experienced in all the years that had taken me from the tenements of Govan to Buckingham Palace. It signalled that I hadn’t been forgotten, which I imagine is the fear of many retirees. I know that sounds daft, when my name is plastered on one of the stands at Old Trafford and there is a statue of me and a street that bears my name outside the ground. But, when you are lying by yourself in a hospital bed, it’s all too easy to think that the rest of the world never knew you existed." "I didn’t know at the time, but people had been asked to be in their seats 15 minutes before the start of the game, which meant there weren’t the normal splashes of empty red plastic seats dotted around the stadium. When I got into the directors’ box, after Alan Keegan had announced my return over the PA system, everyone across the stadium began to clap and cheer. I didn’t know what to do — whether to bow or clap with them. But it didn’t matter."   submitted by   /u/Sparky-moon [link]   [comments]