'Only Ronaldo and Mo Salah have since done what I did to Man Utd - they weren't happy' - The Mirror

After the mother of all New Year hangovers, Dennis Bailey remains the last Englishman to score a hat-trick at Old Trafford as a visiting player - but his attempt to get the match ball signed by Manchester United's shellshocked players was misadventure

Full of the joys after banging in a career-defining hat-trick, Dennis Bailey collected signatures on the match ball like a squirrel hoarding nuts.

Egged on by his team-mates, the last Englishman to score three times at the Theatre of Dreams as a visiting player ventured along the corridor and knocked on Manchester United ’s dressing room door. In hindsight, Bailey’s misadventure was probably like gatecrashing an alcoholics anonymous meeting and asking if anyone fancied a pint.

Queen’s Park Rangers had just blown the title race apart by winning 4-1 at Old Trafford on New Year’s Day in 1992 and giving Sir Alex Ferguson the mother of all hangovers after his 50th birthday 24 hours earlier.

United would be pipped to the title by Leeds four months later, and the holy grail which had eluded their grasp for 25 years would continue to taunt Fergie as a fugitive laurel. Bailey’s hat-trick, and QPR ’s insolence, remains one of sport’s greatest shock results before Richard Keys and Andy Gray invented football later that year.

And for autograph hunter Bailey - although he didn’t know it at the time - his astonishing appendix to Auld Lang Syne would be as good as it got in a career spanning 10 clubs.

Now 59, he is content to be remembered as one of English football’s great saboteurs - even if United fans don’t recall his ambush with much affection in the week when Amad Diallo scored another eye-catching hat-trick at Old Trafford.

Bailey, a PE teacher and football coach in the Midlands by trade these days, still has the match ball from his finest hour.

“A few of the boys - Alan McDonald, Clive Wilson and Andy Sinton - told me to knock on the home dressing room door and get the United players to sign it,” he recalled. “Being young and naive, I took the ball under my arm and when I got to the home changing room, the door was slightly ajar so I knocked and pushed it open.

“All the United players were sat there in total silence, staring at the floor or with heads in their hands. They looked like they had seen a ghost, but I’ve gone in there with a beaming smile asking, ‘Can you sign my ball, please?’

“It wasn’t the best time to ask for a favour. All I got was a complete blank. Steve Bruce briefly glanced at me with an expression which basically said, ‘Not now, son.’ United only missed out on the title by three or four points that season. That result cost them, big time. And don’t forget, this was before they had won the their first title under Sir Alex.”

Bailey’s misadventure was like breaking your neighbour’s window with a wayward shot in the back garden then going round to ask for your ball back and asking if they would sign it.

He revealed: “What I didn’t know at the time is that Sir Alex must have been standing directly behind the door when I pushed it open and he had just been giving his players the hairdryer treatment. It was only years later that someone told me he had recalled the incident in his autobiography.”

Here you go, Dennis - in Fergie’s own words, he wrote: “Their centre-forward, Dennis Bailey, thanked God after the good fortune of his hat-trick. I don’t blame him. Hat-tricks by opposing players are rare enough at Old Trafford to invite suspicion of the supernatural. Bailey did push his luck a little when he bounced into our dressing room, full of the joys, wanting our players to sign the match ball.”

Two up inside five minutes, Rangers wasted no time in administering the plink-plink-fizz to Fergie’s Hogmanay celebrations - on a ground where they had only earned a solitary League point in their history.

Bailey said: “We were on a decent unbeaten run, and I had scored the winner at Norwich just before Christmas, so we went up to Old Trafford with some confidence - even though QPR had never won up there before and United were odds-on to swat us aside. I think they had only lost once all season, but it was one of those games where everything just clicked for us from the kick-off.

“Did I honestly feel like I was going to score a hat-trick? Nah, even when we went 2-0 up so early it was too early to get carried away. If United had got one back early, you know it’s going to be the Alamo around our box.

“But the siege never really came. I made it 3-0 with a nice dinked finish over Peter Schmeichel and my hat-trick goal was a tap-in after Andy (Sinton) hit the post.”

Strikers often trade on the premise of being in the right place at the right time. The adage was not always true of Bailey, who found his path to first-team level as a teenager at Watford blocked by John Barnes’ emerging talent, and at QPR he often played second fiddle to Les Ferdinand.

“I remember looking across at Barnesy during training and thinking, ‘Wow, how does he do that?’ Then at Crystal Palace, I was in the same group as Ian Wright and Mark Bright. Not many opportunities there. And Les was obviously the first-choice centre-forward at QPR.

“So if I’m the answer to a pub quiz question about the last Englishman to score a hat-trick at Old Trafford as an opposition player… yeah, that’s pretty cool. The only others who have done it since me are the Brazilian Ronaldo and Mo Salah. That’s good company. I’ll take that.”

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