Brian Greenhoff (28th April 1953 to 22nd May 2013)

At school there was an annual craze for football sticker books (living above a shop that sold the stickers helped.) You had to collect stickers of each team and in the playground at school boys with thick wads of cards would trade “swaps” to fill up their books. I can remember the Brian and Jimmy Greenhoff brothers who played for the Manchester United. You don’t get many brothers playing at that level in the same team at the same time. Here I am at Rochdale Crematorium where Brian was cremated after dying suddenly of cancer aged 60. What a lottery life is - both brothers were born of the same womb, brought up the same way, in the same house in the same way but one contracts cancer and goes too early. Is someone up there rolling a dice?

Both lads were both born in Barnsley in Yorkshire in humble circumstances - a small two-up two-down terraced house with an outside toilet and a tin bath hanging on a nail. Brian and Jimmy were both gifted footballers at school, so evidently brill there were no careers in factories or mills for them. They were snapped up quickly: Jimmy went to Leeds United and Brian went to Manchester United (he was one of Sir Matt Busby's last signings.) Over eleven years the Man U crowds grew to love him - this fast, mobile, enthusiastic trier with blonde locks set-up countless goals for Steve Coppell and Gordon Hill while forming a strong defence with Martin Buchan. His nil-frills, down-to-earth northern attitude could be typified in the first words to his future wife Maureen (they’d have three sons) in Brown's nightclub in Manchester: “You'd look a lot better if you took that sparkling muck off your face.”

He probably expected to hold the FA Cup in his paws in 1976 but the Reds unexpectedly lost to Southampton. He was so disappointed he couldn’t shake hands with a Southampton player and returned to the hotel, threw his loser’s medal across the room and told his wife he’d get a winner’s medal one day. Living up to his word he found himself (along with the new signing - his bro) at Wembley in the 1977 cup final against Liverpool. This cup final was probably the a twin peak for the brothers - Jimmy scored the clinching goal and Brian was voted man of the match.

Oddly Brian’s fortunes changed when manager Tommy Docherty was forced to leave the Reds in shame having had a relationship with the physiotherapist's wife. He never gelled with the new manager (Dave Sexton) and after 271 appearances and 17 goals he was sold to Leeds for £350,000. After playing for England eighteen times his career at Leeds dried up. He left the country for stints in South Africa and Finland and even made a fleeting comeback as at Rochdale. His brother Jimmy was managing the club and they fell out. They only argued once and this was it - about a small sensitive family matter that meant they didn't speak for another fifteen years.

Nowadays footballers of Brian's standard leave football as multi-millionaires but in the eighties wages weren't so silly and he worked for a sports wholesale company. Outside work he coached semi-professionally and played cricket. He even released his autobiography called "Greenhoff!" as chanted from the Stretford End at Old Trafford. At one point the family moved to Menorca. However by the time he died they’d moved back to Norden in Rochdale. Even though he was living with cancer and expected to live for many years he died suddenly one morning at home aged 60. It was so sudden the police were called to the house. He left a sparkling reputation, grown-up children, grandchildren and 44-year marriage.

As usual I had a stroll around the back of the crematorium and had a look the chimney whose inside walls must have witnessed the end of thousands of people. Brian was cremated after the service ended with Barry White's uplifting My First, My Last, My Everything. A sad day all round, I did a hearty salute and left.

Down to the crematorium where the service was held...

Around the back of the crematorium...

Perhaps Brian's ashes were scattered in the memorial gardens...

The main entrance to Rochdale cemetery and crematorium...