Living Through Munich: The Fans' Stories

 

There was no doubt about it. The Busby Babes breathed vibrant life into a sport that desperately needed it.

 

Football resumed after the war with players who had lost years of their careers to service in the army, and national service was still a thing years into the 1950s. But the Babes were a representation of a new generation.

 

“It was a game where the control of the ball wasn’t that good,” recalls Mike Carney. “It was slow. It was grey. But then the Busby Babes came along, and really, you’d have to look at it as a cultural shift. 

 

“They were colourful, fashionable. The V-neck, a different collar, shorter shorts. They were quicker, stronger. It was a different sort of game, not as tactical. It was ‘you attack, we attack’. It was about having space and seeking space – players seemed to have more time on the ball. The game was slower, but I found it more enjoyable to watch, because the games were more open.”

 

The theme of colour is one which often crops up in the recollections of supporters from this era. 

 

“Everything, to me, seemed colourless,” says Roy Cavanagh. “The men would have grey, long coats and caps or whatever, the working men would be in dark clothing. Old Trafford is known as the Theatre of Dreams, but, to me, it was actually a theatre of colour. 

 

“Living where I did on Ordsall Lane, there were no gardens, there was no grass. There was Ordsall Park, but you didn't see green. The first view of Old Trafford is a green pitch. It might have been muddy, it might have been not as smooth as it is today, but wow: green.”

 

It was also a time where the average supporter could consider themselves likely to bump into one of their heroes, particularly if they lived in Stretford or made journeys to or from Old Trafford to pick up tickets. And in a United team packed full of stars, there was one particularly distinctive talent: Dudley-born Duncan Edwards.

 

“When I began playing for one of my school teams, every Saturday morning, after the match, I would head for Old Trafford, if we were at home,” remembers James Vance. “It was during that period when I often met Duncan Edwards walking to the stadium. I was small in stature and he was a ‘giant’ but he would always find time to chat and answer questions from an inquisitive youngster. He was my hero … my favourite player of all time!”

At least Vance was able to talk to Big Dunc; Mike Carney, on the other hand, was tongue-tied when he had the opportunity to meet the giant Midlander. 

 

“I once bumped into Duncan Edwards walking down Talbot Road,” Mike says. “I’d been to get a ticket for the Real Madrid game in 1957. He had a grey-blue suit on. He was just as impressive off the pitch as on it. We walked past each other. I wanted to say something, but I was just awestruck. Those players marked the difference from pre-war football to the modern day. They changed everything. They changed the way you dressed. I was too young to go out, but I would hear stories about them going to the Ritz on Saturday nights and I was desperate to grow up and be a part of it.”

 

It wasn’t just a case of seeing heroes; these players were part of the community. 

 

“I lived in Ordsall, the Salford side of the swing bridge,” Cavanagh recalls. “Many of the players lived on the other side of it. Duncan Edwards, Billy Whelan and Tommy Taylor were all in the Stretford area. But Albert Scanlon would get the bus and get off just around the corner from where I lived. Even closer than the bus stop was Archie Street, where Eddie Colman lived. I’d pass his house, number nine, on my way to school.”

 

At the turn of the year from 1957 to 1958, United’s progress as a club seemed to be kicking into another gear. The youth and reserve teams had never been as competitive – and the search for new talent never ceased.

 

“I had played for England schoolboys and Joe Armstrong knocked on the door of my house every day for two weeks to convince me to sign for United,” says Tony Street. “Coaches John Aston and Bert Whalley would also be there. I started the season playing for MUJACs, alongside Nobby Stiles and Tommy Spratt for a couple of games, then I moved up to the B team. Because I’d played for England Boys, I was under the impression I could play a bit, but I found that almost everyone on the full-time staff was an international at one level or another. The standard of player was incredibly high.”

 

And then, tragically, came Munich.

 

“I was at university,” recalls Street. “My lectures finished about five o’clock. I had a coffee and a sandwich in town, then I made my way to Old Trafford. On the way, I saw the billboards saying ‘United Plane Crash’ but I naively dismissed it as being minor. I got to the ground to be told the seriousness of the situation, and that I may as well go home as there will not be any training tonight.”

 

Workers were told before the end of their daily shift. 

 

“I was in the middle of a six-year apprenticeship as a compositor (type-setter),” remembers Derek Manton. “At about 4:30 in the afternoon, the foreman came to me and said that the Manchester United plane had crashed. I remember saying that if this was going to be a joke, I didn't think it was funny. He said no, it's true, and that there were fatalities. We didn't have much more information for the rest of the day. The next morning, my dad came to wake me up as usual. He had been listening to the radio and started to reel off the known dead. I just rolled over and sobbed and sobbed. It was all like a bad dream. It was so hard to take in.”

Schoolboys were finding out as they walked home from school. 

 

“I still get emotional when I think about it,” says Carney. “My memories start from the day before. I was coming home from school. I walked past a news stand and it said United had drawn 3-3. Brilliant. We were through. The next day, I had school as usual. I travelled from Northwich, as always. The only sports socks you could get were red-and-white hoops or green-and-white hoops. I wanted socks that were like United’s. So, when I came out of school, I used to go to Hale to get a train back, but there was a sports shop in Altrincham, so I went there instead. It was at the back of the station.

“I was running back for the train when I saw this placard for the Evening Chronicle. United in Air Crash. I didn't take it in, I was just at the age where I was getting cynical about what I read. But at the station, there were two porters talking to each other, looking at the Evening News. I remember one saying ‘everyone on board believed dead’. But I just sat on the train. There was a friend on the train. And I just said nothing. I didn't tell him what I’d just seen or heard. I was just absolutely shattered. 

 

“When I got to Northwich station, my father was there to meet me. He’d obviously heard it. He knew I’d be distraught. I was. I went straight to bed. I know I got up at one point, to see the news, when they were reading the ones who had died. It was a strange feeling. I just kept hoping to not hear Duncan’s name. All of it was heartbreaking.”

 

James Vance’s story is similar. 

 

“I walked from my school in Hale and headed to Altrincham station to catch an electric train to my aunt’s house in Sale where my dad had promised to pick me up later on his way back from Manchester,” he says. “The placard at the entrance to Altrincham station was the first indication of the imminent nightmare. At my aunt’s house, we listened to the radio as the news developed with each new report.”

 

The names of the people who had died were read by reporters on the television and on the radio, and written in the newspaper. But some children found out their heroes had been involved in a tragedy via a schoolteacher. 

 

“Our headmaster told us all about it at assembly on the Friday,” says Cavanagh. “In my table, I had some United stuff, and whatever there was about United, I just got hold of. I would go home at dinnertime. I can remember walking right to number nine Archie Street and knocking on the door. A lady came to the door, and I just handed her everything and I said I wanted her to have them. I don’t know why I did it. I really don’t. It was just… Eddie, who lived on the next road.”

The nightmare continued long after that. When Jimmy Murphy visited Munich, he was implored by a gravely ill Matt Busby to ‘keep the flag flying’. He resolved to do just that. United would go on. Quite how, nobody knew.

 

“Junior-team games were cancelled for a fortnight,” Street says. “On resumption of training, evening sessions at The Cliff mainly consisted of games where I was inside right to Warren Bradley’s right wing and told to feed him the ball as often as possible to improve his fitness levels. The attitude among the junior players was handled brilliantly by coaches John Aston and Jack Crompton, who just got on with the job in hand.”

 

The league game against Wolverhampton Wanderers – scheduled for Saturday 8 February – was postponed. The FA Cup tie with Sheffield Wednesday was moved, too, to Wednesday 19 February. 

 

As matchday grew closer, Murphy was still none the wiser how he might be able to select a full team of 11 players to take to the field. That indecision is immortalised in print – or, to be factually accurate, the absence of print – as the match programme for the game showed a blank United team.

 

Supporters might not have known who was going to be on the pitch, but they knew they had to be in the ground. Support had never been as literal as it was on the evening of 19 February 1958. 

 

“My mate and I arrived at the ground early to make sure that we got in,” remembers Manton. “There were nearly 60,000 in, and the gates were locked. It's honestly hard to describe the atmosphere.  I had been in the crowd when we beat Anderlecht 10-0 and when we beat [Athletic Club] Bilbao 3-0 but this was something else. Holding a programme with just blank spaces. My emotions were all over the place. Staring at the pitch, tears welled up. We filled in the team sheet and then cheered like maniacs as the teams came out.”

 

“I was with my dad in the Stretford End Paddock,” remembers Vance. “Everyone, even grown men and women, were in tears. The fact that we won the match was irrelevant; nothing could compensate for the loss that we all felt. Even now, almost 70 years later, I find it difficult not to shed a few tears.”

 

The energy around Old Trafford was emotional and yet, in many senses, defiant. “The night of the Sheffield Wednesday game was absolutely fantastic,” says Street. “The atmosphere was electric. No-one knew what the team would be, only that there would be surprises. I saw the game with some other members of the youth squad – we were just going mad at the back of the main stand.”

 

“I was in the corner,” remembers Mike Carney. “I had queued for a ticket for the game before the crash. There was no way I was going to miss it. I could see the team coming out, amidst this big roar. It did feel different. Players you weren’t familiar with. Crowther? Who’s he? Others had played a few, but some were making their debuts. It didn’t look like the team we were used to seeing. I was standing in the corner, right behind Shay Brennan when he scored his goal. There wasn’t a breath of wind. You didn’t curl the ball in those days. But that ball did. It curled right in. The goalkeeper came out for it and missed it. People around me said it was somebody up there.”

Brennan’s 27th-minute goal made Old Trafford feel alive again. Late on, Brennan got a second, and Dawson added a third, to make it 3-0. With victory, Murphy’s Marvels had somehow written the first page of a new Manchester United story.

 

“I don’t remember it being glum, or a miserable atmosphere,” Carney says. “People were just so desperate for United to win. It didn’t feel mournful. It was a different kind of energy. There was little chanting in those days; everybody shouted different things at the same time. It was a roar, and it roared them on. I thought that was more effective.”

 

“When we scored, we went mad … laughing, cheering and crying,” says Manton. “I think that the Sheffield players would have rather been anywhere else than Old Trafford that night. For us, I thought that Ernie Taylor was terrific. He was organising those young lads, Dawson and Pearson, who had been thrust into that team along with the others. He was cajoling and guiding them all through the match, though they had the exuberance of youth just like young Duncan and Eddie Colman before them. A game like no other.”

 

“It felt better for a couple of days,” says Carney. “I got the train to school on Friday morning. This fella across from me was reading the newspaper. He turned the page and there was a picture of Duncan, with the headline that he had died at 2am. I had thought he was unbeatable. You knew he would probably never play again, but after United won, there was just this thought that maybe, if Duncan came back … but he died. And everything changed in that moment. Everything about United changed at that moment.”

 

United were drawn against West Brom in the quarter-final, and a 2-2 draw at The Hawthorns was followed by a keenly contested replay at Old Trafford. The game seemed destined to end goalless, but the fighting spirit, so often personified by the magnificent Edwards, continued to thrive ethereally. 

 

“The game was decided in the last minute, Colin Webster scored,” Carney says. “It was the most well-received goal I've ever known at Old Trafford. My dad was going to that game, and because it was a replay, you just rolled up. And I said to him, you want to get there early. He said not to worry. I went straight from school, which I did, and I'd get in about half past six, and I always remember, City were playing that night. They got a big gate, because thousands were locked out of Old Trafford. I got home, and at about midnight, dad came in. He’d had to go to Maine Road. Anyway, in the game, West Brom were the better team. United were on their knees. It was 0-0 in the last minute. Charlton carried that team on his back. He darted down the right, got to the byline, passed it back to the full-back. He knocked it into the box and Webster was there at the far post.”

The reality of life after Munich for supporters was a mixed experience. The jubilation of that last-gasp win was followed by another visit from the same opponents in the league a few days later. 

 

“Professor Maurer and his staff [who had treated the victims at the Rechts der Isar hospital] came from Munich as guests of the club,” Carney recalls. “Matt Busby spoke over the Tannoy. You could hear a pin drop in the ground.”

 

On that day, the emotion and sobering reality of the near future told, as West Brom won 4-0. Youngsters like Carney, Manton and Vance were only at the start of their matchday lives, but some older fans never really got over the shock of Munich.

 

“It did feel different coming to games after,” Carney admits. “It wasn’t the same. The spark went away, it felt darker, and there was a two or three-year period of real struggle. In spite of that, I started to feel more bonded to the club, a stronger connection to it, obviously because of everything. But my old fella didn’t really go afterwards. He wasn’t the only one. It was too difficult for him. It was too painful.”

 

Roy Cavanagh, who was just 10, couldn’t face returning to Old Trafford until the following season. “I can't explain it to you, but I just couldn't go and watch the new team play,” says Roy. “My team had died.”