Graeme Hogg on marking Diego Maradona and leaving Manchester United

“I’d had a poor game and at the end this guy and his dog came across the grass walking right towards me,” he recalls. “The man said: 'Can I have a word with you? I've been watching you for the past 10 weeks. D'ya fancy going down to Man United for a trial?’

There’s a pause and you can sense a smile playing on Hogg’s lips.

“I looked down at the dog and thought: 'Did you talk there?' I thought, 'he's taking the p**s here'.”

But Hogg had also attracted the interest of Middlesbrough and, after a trial at Boro and a conversation with his father Jimmy, the Aberdeen captain for a spell during the 50s and 60s, a decision had to be made.

“My dad just said: 'You only get one chance and even if it doesn't work for you at United – no disrespect to Middlesbrough – somebody will take you.”

And so, in the summer of 1980, Hogg began an eight-year association with United that endures to this day: his name is engraved on a red brick inside the Old Trafford museum, a privilege granted to anyone who has played more than 50 times for the club. He hasn't seen it yet but his son, Connor, once on Falkirk's books, has. Hogg, now 56 and living in Carronshore, is fiercely proud of the fact that he played a further 60 times and rueful at perhaps not making more of his career.

“When I look back on it I was probably a better player than what I showed at professional level,” says Hogg, who also won four Scotland Under-21 caps. “I could do different things but I was stuck at the back and I was just told to go and head the ball. But, listen, I did all right.”

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It would be unkind to say Hogg was one of the nearly men of a nearly team managed by Ron Atkinson. For example, he never lost a match at Old Trafford but he was certainly unlucky - he just missed out on an FA Cup winners medal in 1985 through injury having played in every round prior to the final and he played in some big matches against some of the best in Europe.

Of the small trophies he cherishes, one is a jersey that belonged to the Italian World Cup winner Marco Tardelli which he has framed in his bedroom. The shirt was swapped after the European Cup Winners Cup semi-final against Juventus in 1984, a match which United lost 3-2 on aggregate. He had man-marked Diego Maradona out of an earlier quarter-final encounter with Barcelona at Old Trafford but he found the Juventus striker Paolo Rossi a tougher proposition.

“Half that Juventus team was in the Italian national side that won the World Cup. I would say Rossi [was harder to play against than Maradona]. He scored the winner in extra-time. Kevin Moran went to clear the ball and it hit somebody on the backside and rolled right at Rossi's foot and he just tapped it in.

Hogg, himself, was on the scoresheet in the European run. Alas, it was a goal for Barcelona in the Camp Nou.

“The first game didn't go that great for me because I scored an own goal. It was an absolute beauty. Big Ron said after the game 'it's the first goal that I've seen rocket off the roof off the net,” says Hogg before there's another pause and again you can almost hear the half smile. “'And then the goalie dived'.”

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There is a more serious side to Hogg, too. There are times when he reveals something more profound. He says one of his biggest regrets in life is that his dad died before he got the chance to see him play in the United first team.

“He was really ill at the time and he said to me: 'Go on and do it for me. At least I did it for him,” he adds. “The one thing they can't take from me is that I played 100 games at Man United. Not a lot of people can say that.”

There's sadness, too, when he talks about how his playing career came to an end. The second chance that his father foretold came at Portsmouth where he played another 100 times followed by spells at Hearts, Notts County and Brentford. At County in 1995, he earned his highest wage as a footballer - £750 per week – but a series of injuries and a struggle to return to the first team meant Hogg, by now in his 30s, was loaned to Brentford. At Griffin Park, manager Micky Adams promised to give Hogg a year's contract when his loan spell ended. That would have taken him up to his pension age of 35, but a change of ownership at the London club turned those plans upside down. The former Crystal Palace chairman, Ron Noades, took over the running of the club and brought in Ray Lewington to oversee first-team matters.

In the midst of a takeover, there was uncertainty all around, especially when Adams was sacked before the final game of the season against Bristol Rovers, a match Brentford lost 3-1 to confirm their relegation to the old English Third Division.

“I came back up to Falkirk in the close season and I phoned them to see what their plans were. Ray said: 'The chairman is looking to get a young side together. Anybody over the age of 30, we're not interested in. I hope you get yourself fixed up.' I put the phone down and that was the end of my career. I was finished.”

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For Hogg, all he had known for the previous 15 years was flipped on its head. A matter of weeks after being told he wouldn’t be receiving a contract at Brentford, he was working as a security guard at a retail park in Larbert.

“In terms of mental health, that's when I needed help,” he recalls. “There was absolutely zero. If I wanted to ask somebody for help – I could maybe have phoned the PFA if I was in dire straits but to say it didn't affect me, it did, because I used to think back and say 'effing hell, I'm a security guard, now. That shouldn't be happening. I went and did the job for six weeks in a building putting alarms on and off but I couldn't stick it any longer.

“There was no phone number I could ring to say 'I've been a professional footballer, I played against Maradona, been at the highest level and I'm now a security guard manning a building in a retail park in Larbert, can I get some help? Can you put me through a course? I got nothing, it was just a case of 'well, son, you're on civvy street, now, you need to roll the sleeves up and get on with it'.

“I needed to pay the bills. What's out in the open now is the help that people get and the money that people are getting now is far, far superior to what I was on. I was on £500 a week at Manchester United.

“I thought to myself 'what can I do? What. Can. I. Do?' I went from school, no A levels, no education at 16-year-old straight down to Man United. The only thing I knew how to do was drive a car. I thought the only way I'm going to get a decent living is by taking and passing my HGV courses.”

Nowadays, Hogg regularly traverses the road from his home in Falkirk back to where it all started. His route as an HGV driver for food distribution company Bidfood takes him up the A90 to Aberdeen three times a week. Last week he was in Aboyne, driving through the snow to deliver supplies to care homes and hospitals, doing vital work in the midst of the pandemic. He is especially grateful to one man for the chance to build a new life for himself.

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“Stuart McRoberts gave me the job at Bidfood, he says. “His boy used to play in goal for Motherwell when my boy was playing for Falkirk. I used to see him up at games when he was watching. I owe quite a lot to that guy. I can't thank him enough.”

As we get ready to end the interview, we make arrangements for a photograph to be taken of Hogg. “I'll probably have Bruce with me, my wee Westie,” he says. “The dog can get in the photo as well.”

The metaphor is fitting. Hogg, now 56, needs no reminding that the existence of a former pro footballer can be a dog's life. He is not bitter about that, nor is he angry but there is no punchline this time.

“You go into civvy street, into a job and somebody says 'Do you know who that is? That's big so and so, played with Man United, played with Hearts' and then you'll get the odd one who'll go 'He's not with Man United any more, I'll sort him out'. You've got to be strong in a sense.”