Agnes Docherty, Tommy's first wife, became quite a close friend of my mother after moving with him to the Manchester area for him to take the job at United in 1972. Mum's best friend from school was Agnes and Tommy's G P in Hale; she, my mum and Agnes started to go to the theatre and make other trips together as a three. That lasted until Agnes died in 2005.
As a result of this friendship, I met Tommy a handful of times when I was a kid (this stopped for obvious reasons when he left United). He was always good company and generous with his time. Understanding that, at such an age, I was ill-equipped to indulge in football banter, he was actually quite complimentary to me about City as well. I have good memories of him.
By the way, I see mentions in the thread of Mick Docherty, Tommy's son, who had a brief spell at City in 1976. He played only 8 league games for the club - and two were in derby matches against his father's team (both defeats, unfortunately).
I think Tommy did always have respect for City as a club, despite the banter. I believe he applied twice to become manager. Once after he left QPR in 1980 and we sacked Allison and Book; we'd already tapped up John Bond, though, so Doc would only ever have been a fall-back option in case the agreement with Bond fell through.
The other was in the summer of 1983, when John Benson was fired after our relegation. Quite a few newspaper reports at the time claimed that the club was likely to appoint Docherty, who was very keen on the idea. IIRC, Billy McNeill threw his hat in the ring quite late in the recruitment process after arguing with the Celtic board, and maybe that scuppered the Doc's chances.
The excellent Simon Curtis tweeted a newspaper article from the time proclaiming Docherty as the leading candidate for the job - see below:
As a result of this friendship, I met Tommy a handful of times when I was a kid (this stopped for obvious reasons when he left United). He was always good company and generous with his time. Understanding that, at such an age, I was ill-equipped to indulge in football banter, he was actually quite complimentary to me about City as well. I have good memories of him.
By the way, I see mentions in the thread of Mick Docherty, Tommy's son, who had a brief spell at City in 1976. He played only 8 league games for the club - and two were in derby matches against his father's team (both defeats, unfortunately).
I think Tommy did always have respect for City as a club, despite the banter. I believe he applied twice to become manager. Once after he left QPR in 1980 and we sacked Allison and Book; we'd already tapped up John Bond, though, so Doc would only ever have been a fall-back option in case the agreement with Bond fell through.
The other was in the summer of 1983, when John Benson was fired after our relegation. Quite a few newspaper reports at the time claimed that the club was likely to appoint Docherty, who was very keen on the idea. IIRC, Billy McNeill threw his hat in the ring quite late in the recruitment process after arguing with the Celtic board, and maybe that scuppered the Doc's chances.
The excellent Simon Curtis tweeted a newspaper article from the time proclaiming Docherty as the leading candidate for the job - see below: