I remember that a building society opened a branch on Wilbraham Road in Chorlton in November 1981 and commemorated the occasion by having Trevor Francis make a personal appearance. Anyone who opened an account got a free photo taken with him, and I saved my dinner money for the day so that I could take advantage of the offer. He was extremely gracious to a nervous kid, so I always thought favourably of his character after that.
He was a truly wonderful player, too. We had some other fairly big names at the time, but the team really was markedly far worse during the third of our fixtures that Trevor missed through injury (plus one suspension after he was sent off at home to Everton). It disgusts me now as much as it did at the time that the utter **** Swales used Trevor Francis to advertise season tickets on Piccadilly Radio only to flog him off for a laughably cheap fee as soon as they stopped being on sale.
Francis's departure signalled the start of City ceasing to act like a proper big club, a stated of affairs that persisted for a distressingly long time. Still, even his spell with us didn't last long, it was a privilege to watch him in that season he spent with us. He was an absolute thoroughbred of a footballer and showed it pretty well whenever he took the field.
