When George Came to Edinburgh: George Best at Hibs by John Neil Munro (Birlinn Books 2010)

'George always seemed to find room on the pitch and he never appeared hurried, even though he was the most closely marked footballer in Scotland at the time. I remember someone stabbed a hard diagonal pass towards him during a game. It was a difficult pass to take, but he didn’t even bother. He stepped over it with his right foot and the ball shot through and then he brought “his left heel behind him and used it to angle the ball to one of his teammates, who was waiting for a pass out on the wing. This poor guy had obviously never seen a pass like this before and the ball just rolled past him and out of play. George just sort of looked at this guy with his hand outstretched as if to say, “Aw come on.” It was so slick and controlled – the type of thing Maradona or Pele would do. George was overweight, but even so he was always going to prosper in that league. If he’d applied himself, he could have played on here for years. The opposition were all petrified that he was going to make a fool of them, so they held back and that gave him the time. He was a real artist on the ball.'

(Ian Wood talking about George Best's time at Hibs.)

32 Programmes by Dave Roberts (Bantam Press 2011)

Then suddenly, midway through the first half and after several hours of watching cars whizz past us, a Terry lookalike in a beaten-up VW slowed down and came to a halt. Seeing the red brakelights got my heart beating rapidly with excitement. Kevin, the driver, just nodded at us knowingly, and uttered the word 'karma'. We got in and Terry sat in the front, taking care of the conversation, while Dave and I took the back seat where we sat in a cloud of Brut. The driver didn't know where the ground was, which I saw as conclusive proof that most hippies don't like football, but said he'd drop us off in the city centre.

He was as good as his word, and half an hour later we were in the middle of Southampton, frantically looking around. Dave asked a woman where the football ground was and she gave us detailed directions. It was within walking distance, but we ran. It was now 3.55 by my watch so we were still in with a chance of watching the last half hour or so, as long as we could get there quickly. Eventually the floodlights came into view, and not long after that I saw a road sign saying THE DELL and heard the sound of the crowd. We arrived at the turnstiles dripping with sweat, but we'd made it. In a rare piece of good luck we didn't have to pay to get in, having missed about three quarters of the game.

Exhausted from all the physical exertion, we wearily clambered up the step terracing just as a chorus of boos was ringing out. What was going on? We arrived at the top just in time to see a lone figure in a white shirt trudging off the pitch, head bowed. The referee, Lester Shapter (Paignton), was brandishing a red card and pointing towards the tunnel. I didn't need to see the number 7 on his back to know that the dismissed player was George Best.

According to the jubilant Saints fans standing next to us, George had taken exception to the awarding of a free kick and had made his displeasure known to Mr. Shapter with an extensive rant. The only  consolation was the possibility of George being the first player ever to get a red card (the card system was in operation for the first time that day), but he was narrowly beaten to that honour by Dave Wagstaffe of Blackburn.

We had hitched all the way to Southampton to see our hero walk sulkily off the pitch. We had major hangovers, we hadn't slept, and we would now have to stand in the rain and watch an irrelevant Second Division game that, without its main attraction, none of us would have watched even if it had been played in our back garden.

(From Chapter/Programme 12 - Southampton v. Fulham, 2 October 1976)