“I was pretty much given a free rein to wander around The Cliff and then Carrington to ensure I could arrange the interviews and photoshoots,” she remembers. “When it came to nailing down a ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘maybe’ from a player, I spent many a lonely hour hanging around their car park.”
More often than not it was a ‘yes’ from players, eager for an appearance in the magazine – the biggest-selling football mag in the country at one time – or with something they wanted to communicate to United supporters through its pages. And when it came to presenting those interviews in the magazine, there was usually a creative treatment of some sort dreamed up for this or that close encounter with a Reds player – even if some ideas came with a little risk!
“I’ll always remember nailing a brilliant Christmas cover for the magazine one year,” Rebecca recounts in the new special edition. “I’m not sure where photoshop was in 2002, because the snow that gently fell down on Roy Keane, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Ryan Giggs and Seba Veron involved me and a colleague standing on ladders and throwing artificial snow on their heads! Keano looks festively cheerful on the cover – that’s not the look I got in between takes!”
