The King and I: the day I met Eric Cantona
It’s 20 years ago today since Eric Cantona played his final league game for Manchester United. I was lucky enough to meet him the day before he retired when the mention of Dundalk brought a smile to his face.
It’s commonplace nowadays for kids and teenagers to jump on a plane every weekend and go and watch a Premiership game of their choice.
However, if you were a young United fan growing up in something of Ryanair-less Ireland in the late eighties and mid-nineties, then an opportunity to visit Manchester - the equivalent of spending a few days in paradise — was a rare enough thing.
My love for the club was handed down to me by my uncle, Thomas Gorman, who adored Martin Buchan, captain of Tommy Docherty’s flamboyant side of the seventies. He ensured that I was steeped in United history from the day I was born.
Stories of The Busby Babes, Munich, the European Cup win and the FA Cup final wins of 1977, 1983 and 1985 were all part of my upbringing and I drank in as much information as I could about United.
One of the things that linked all those stories from different eras was The Cliff, United’s hallowed training ground up until they moved to Carrington in 2000. For us, it was just as important to United’s history as Old Trafford.
My only visit came, with my uncle, when I was 14 years of age, right at the end of the 1996–97 season. It was the day after United’s 0–0 draw with Newcastle at Old Trafford and 48 hours before the final game of the season against West Ham.
We stayed in a house on Lower Broughton Road which turned out to be the former digs of some of the players from the magical youth team of 1992. It was freezing cold but I remember thinking that if was good enough for Beckham and co, it was good enough for me.
The next day we walked down to the training ground. A decent crowd had formed behind the railings in the car park and the flash cars started arriving, Andy Cole in a black jaguar, Paul Scholes — to my surprise — in a sports car, and Gary Neville, predictably, in a sensible Audi more suited to a taxi driver.
The players came out to do their warm up and went about their session — about 500 yards away from us — but as time wore on I began to focus on something else.
I noticed a big group of school kids — it turned out they were from Iceland — a couple of years younger than me, gathering together. Suddenly, the barriers parted and they were making their way towards the building which housed the dressing rooms. The promised land.
‘Thomas’, I said, ‘I’m gonna try and get in here with these.’ Before my uncle had a chance to say anything, I was gone, tagging along at the end of the line, expecting to be chucked out by security but nobody, thankfully, batted an eyelid.
The group went on around the outside of the building but I ended up going through the front doors and standing in a room to the left. There were a couple of people milling about but, again, nobody seemed bothered that I was there.
David Beckham appeared from behind a couple of doors. Resplendent in a cracking Adidas tracksuit, I remember being absolutely dumbfounded that he was literally standing right beside me. ‘Alright, Becks’, in my finest Coxes accent, was as good as I could muster.
It was then I realised my predicament. In a pre-mobile phone era, I was in there mixing with the stars but had nothing to prove or record it. Thomas had the camera, the pens, the jersey I wanted signed. He had everything, back up behind the security railings.
Did I try and go back up and get them, without the cover of the Icelandic mob, and risk being turfed out or stay put and hang around? Decisions, decisions, decisions!
I took a chance and it’s safe to say it paid off. I sprinted up to the railings outside and got the camera — a shitty disposable one — a white United away shirt and a black marker. On the way back, Fergie came strolling around the side of the building. Alex Ferguson, walking straight towards me.
‘Alex, can you sign this for me please’, I asked. ‘I’m from Ireland but I pretended I was from Iceland to get in here’, I told him proudly. He didn’t even bat an eyelid, just signed the jersey and walked away! A living God is what I thought then. An ignorant bollocks is what I think now!
The players began popping up everywhere. Andy Cole, Phil Neville, Gary Pallister — a monster of a man — Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt, Jordi Cruyff, Karel Poborsky, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer...they all came out and happily signed my shirt.
One of the people in the area was a fella from Tipperary. The reason I know this is because Denis Irwin appeared and this guy started bullshitting to him cheerily about hurling! Hearing his accent, I asked him to take a picture of me and Irwin. I had my cameraman.
The man from Tip told me that Roy Keane, Peter Schmeichel and Ryan Giggs were already gone but said Cantona was still around. Eric the King. ‘Please, please, please’, I thought.
Minutes later, Eric appeared. An absolute beast of a man. He went to a group in the corner of the room and started talking French. I asked the man from Tipperary if he would take a pic if Eric came over to us. No problem.
Eric walked in my direction. It was an exchange I’ll never ever forget.
‘Eric, can you please sign my shirt?’
‘Yes, no problem, where are you from?’
‘Dundalk.’
‘Dundalk?’
‘Yes, Dundalk in Ireland. I think you might remember it?’
‘Of course I remember it. He made a brilliant save,’ A smile appeared on his face.
The he in question was Eddie Van Boxtel, the Dundalk FC goalkeeper who became the first person to save an Eric Cantona penalty when United toured Ireland in the summer of 1994.
It’s safe to say that things went tits up for ‘The Boxer’ after that. He’s currently behind bars after being caught with over £3.5 million of cannabis.
Eric stood for a picture outside, said his goodbyes and left. Job done, I went back to my uncle with a shirt covered in signatures and a camera full of pictures.
A week or so passed before the pictures were developed. Because some of them were taken inside, a few of the pictures came out very dark — Andy Cole in particular — but the one I really wanted, The King and I, was perfect.
Little did I know, when he stood beside me for that snap, that his mind was made up and he had decided to pack football in altogether. It turned out to be his last ever training session with United.
Never meet your heroes, they say.
Nonsense, I say…
