In times of loss at Manchester United these past few years, the bronze sculpture of the club’s ‘Holy Trinity’ – George Best, Bobby Charlton and Denis Law - has become a place of pilgrimage and reflection, from which carpets of flowers and scarves have flowed.
Little did the two surviving members of that trio imagine that it would take on such significance, as they stood together for the statue’s unveiling, 16 years ago - Charlton joking that Law was cast rather more muscularly than he remembered him. The sculptor, Philip Jackson CVO, had originally been commissioned to produce a statue of Best, after his death, but ‘The United Trinity’ was testament to how much finer the union of teammates is.