Exclusive interview: Manchester City's 1969 FA Cup winner Tony Book on 'the moment that changed my life'

Book with his FA Cup winner's medal and his Footballer of the Year award from 1969
Book with his FA Cup winner's medal and his Footballer of the Year award from 1969 Credit: PAUL COOPER

The image is seared into Tony Book’s memory and, even now, as he sits in his living room 56 years on, he cannot help but raise a chuckle as he recalls the sight of a characteristically suave Malcolm Allison climbing up scaffolding to introduce himself as the new manager of Bath City. “He wasn’t wearing a Fedora at that time but he’s coming up the ladder and I’m thinking, ‘Who’s this flash geezer’,” Book explains. “But that was the moment that changed my life.”

Book was 28 and a full-time bricklayer who turned out at weekends for semi-professional Bath. Within five years of meeting Allison, he was captaining Manchester City to the old First Division title under the watch of “Big Mal” and Joe Mercer and helping to usher in the most successful period in the club’s history prior to the current vintage. It is a story every bit as unlikely as it is uplifting. “It just wouldn’t happen now,” Book says. It is also an opportune moment to relive it.

City will complete an unprecedented domestic treble if they beat Watford in the FA Cup final on Saturday evening and, for Book, who will be at Wembley to cheer them on, it could be a doubly emotional affair. It is 50 years since he lifted the trophy with City, Neil Young’s first-half goal enough to secure a 1-0 win over Leicester, the same season he was crowned Footballer of the Year with Tottenham’s Dave Mackay.

But for some subterfuge from Allison and a smudged birth certificate, though, Book is adamant he would have lived out his life in relative obscurity as a brickie in Bath until retirement. Allison had taken Book to Toronto City from Bath, convinced he had discovered a gem, but when he moved to Plymouth in 1964, he was concerned the club’s board would not sanction a £1,500 fee for a player just shy of his 30th birthday who had never played professional football before. “He told them I was 28 and asked if I could doctor my own birth certificate!” Book says, his own laughter drowned out by that of his delightful wife of 62 years, Sylvia.

“As it happened, I said, ‘I won’t need to, Mal – the ink on it is all smudged’. Right where [my birth year] 1934 was, you couldn’t actually tell what it said so I didn’t have to amend it. Anyway, it was just the same at City as Plymouth. They thought they were signing a 30-year-old but I was in fact 32.

Book will be at Wembley to see if City can emulate his success of 50 years ago
Book will be at Wembley to see if City can emulate his success of 50 years ago Credit: PA

“Joe was a bit concerned about my age – he knew the truth – but he quietened down when Malcolm reminded him he was the same age when he left Everton for Arsenal as a player.”

Book is reminiscing at his home in Sale, a short drive from Manchester. With his thick shock of grey hair, he looks less than his 84 years and is so affable, so humble that it is easy to understand why he was so popular with team-mates and fans. He played for City until just short of his 40th birthday, before the transition to manager after a brief spell as Ron Saunders’ assistant. George Best, the legendary former Manchester United winger who was best friends with Book’s City team-mate, Mike Summerbee, rated Book as one of his toughest opponents.

“They used to give me stick at United,” Book recalls. “When George would get the ball, it was always, ‘Skin the old b------’. I used to come in for all sorts because of my age but that would just get me at it. I always had a good thing with George. I used to have a bit of pace so I could stay with him. I used to run alongside him and say, ‘Pass the ball, you little b-----’. I always thought to myself, if he didn’t have it, he couldn’t hurt me.”

Book went from bricklayer to title winner in the space of five years
Book went from bricklayer to title winner in the space of five years Credit: PAUL COOPER

In truth, the most stick he ever received was from Summerbee if he dared try to overlap the City winger. “Once he’d had a go at me in a game, that was it – I just made sure I only backed him up and never went by him,” Book says. “I don’t know how he’d have got on with today’s full-backs. But he was great to play with, Michael – all you had to do was get him the ball.”

It was some City side back then – Summerbee, Colin Bell, Francis Lee. It had to be to beat United to the title in 1968, the first of four trophies during a heady-two year period when, in addition to the FA Cup, they also won the League Cup and European Cup Winners’ Cup. Just as City went into the final day of the 2011/12 season level on points with United but ahead on goal difference and needing a win to guarantee the title having clawed back their rival’s lead, so it was the same back then. Yet even now, Book says City’s achievement was somewhat overshadowed by United’s triumph in the European Cup final just over a fortnight later. “We certainly felt that,” he says.

The closest City had come to ending that title hoodoo before Sergio Aguero’s historic winner against Queens Park Rangers was in the 1976-77 season when, with Book as manager, they missed out on the title by a point to Liverpool. Suffice to say he enjoyed seeing City edge out the Merseyside club by a point last Sunday in the finale to this season’s epic title race.

“I know how Liverpool feel …,” he says, smiling. “Revenge at last.”

Book says he found management hard, not least the process of having to sell on players he had for so long called team-mates, such as Lee and Summerbee, but his record was far from shabby. As well as winning the League Cup, City qualified for Europe for three successive seasons under Book, who would also fill in as caretaker manager in later years. It has been some life in football and to think, in different circumstances, it may never have come to pass.

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