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Post by Sméagol on Jan 24, 2018 10:35:48 GMT
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Post by Sméagol on Jan 28, 2018 11:49:35 GMT
There are always moments in this job that you remember more than others. The trips abroad, the sweet-scented nights at all those fabulous old grounds where, even subconsciously, you find yourself quickening your step on the walk in. Or the occasions with the great football men from years gone by, when you know how lucky you are to be in their company, listening to their stories with the shackles off, and it feels like an education. One of those times, in particular, will always stay with me. I remember how well turned out they all were, in their polished shoes and their smart blazers, and that first moment when Sir Bobby Charlton came up the stairs and brought the room to a respectful silence. He smiled politely but you could see, up-close, that it was going to be an ordeal. On the next table, Bill Foulkes shook our hands, a generation of football writers who maybe didn’t know the story as well as we should have done, and started going through his own memories, half a century on, of that seminal, awful night on the runway of Munich‑Riem airport. Foulkes was one of the survivors who had pulled others from the wreckage but there was absolutely no way he was willing to portray himself as a hero. We were only a few minutes in before this formidable old centre‑half – “tough as teak”, Charlton remembered him – was struggling with his emotions and reaching for a glass of water. Of all the memories of covering Manchester United, all the matches and trophies and air miles, it was certainly quite something to sit opposite these men at the club’s training ground 10 years ago, building up to the 50th anniversary of the Munich tragedy, and listen to their accounts of the day that changed their lives. Harry Gregg, another of the heroes, had flown in from Belfast, where the walls of his house are adorned with pictures of Matt Busby’s team. Albert Scanlon, who escaped with a fractured skull and a broken leg, talked about the profound psychological scars that had stayed with him and Kenny Morgans, the youngest player involved in the crash, explained he did not usually like to talk too much about it. Morgans was the last survivor to be rescued from the burnt-out BEA Elizabethan after being found under the wheels five hours after the official search was called off. He spoke beautifully about the team‑mates who had been lost. All five of the men in our company did. We sat with them, listened and felt a little bit more connected with the club’s history. Next weekend, a crowd will gather outside Old Trafford, as it always does before the home match nearest the anniversary, to remember the 23 people who died, 60 years since that European Cup tie against Red Star Belgrade. Eight of the dead belonged to the thrilling, youthful team that had won the league championship under Busby’s expert guidance the previous two seasons. Other victims included two members of the air crew (though the pilot, James Thain, survived), three club officials and eight journalists including one of my own predecessors, Donny Davies, of what was then the Manchester Guardian, writing with a pseudonym, as many football correspondents did in those days, of “An Old International”. We live in an era when football seems obsessed with finding new ways to hold a minute’s silence, often when it has nothing whatsoever to do with the sport. But this one always resonates. Before José Mourinho’s team play Huddersfield there will be a rendition of Flowers of Manchester beneath the Munich plaque. Supporters will be given a commemorative pack, including a book, Remembering the Busby Babes, that has been written specially for the occasion by Ivan Ponting, a prolific author of United’s history. A service will be held at Old Trafford the following Tuesday while, 80 miles south in Dudley, other events are taking place to remember the town’s most famous football son. An exhibition about the life of Duncan Edwards, the original boy wonder, opened two weeks ago and on 21 February the great and good will gather for a tribute dinner on the anniversary of his death. Edwards, an England international by the age of 18, was so catastrophically damaged when the plane skidded off the runway the initial casualty list described him as “mortally injured”. Instead, it was another 15 days before his final breath, though not before he asked Jimmy Murphy, Busby’s assistant, what time kick-off would be against Wolves the following Saturday, and whether he was playing. “It was as though a young Colossus had been taken from our midst,” Frank Taylor wrote in The Day a Team Died. Of the players who made it out of flight 609, only Charlton and Gregg are with us now and neither will ever lose sight of the fact that the miracle of life came at a terrible price. Everyone was affected in different ways but the people who know Charlton best, including his brother, Jack, say that was the day he “stopped smiling”. More than once, I have heard him described as a little stern, or difficult to approach, but what you have to remember is that Charlton was always “one of the boys” before the quarter-final in Belgrade and the stop, for refuelling, in the snow and ice of Munich. If he lost his sparkle on that runway, at the age of 20, who could ever be surprised? His life since, he told us during that audience 10 years ago, had been accompanied by one unanswerable question: why me? Why, he wanted to know, was he able to run his hands over his body and realise he had nothing more serious than a bang on the head and a small cut? When he closed his eyes, he could still recall the awful noise of metal on metal, the smoke and carnage and the blare of sirens. He could recall coming to his senses, outside the wrecked plane but still strapped into his seat, and seeing so many stricken team-mates lying around him, some already beyond help. Charlton found Busby lying on the runway and, in those catastrophic seconds, took off his overcoat to lay it across him. Then it was the following morning, in his bed at Rechts der Isar hospital, when the names of the dead were read out to him. “The names of all my pals. Friends I would go to the dance with at the weekend. Friends who would invite me to dinner at Christmas. It felt like my life was being taken away from me, piece by piece.” He is 80 now, no longer so visible in everyday life at Old Trafford, but still feels it is his duty to educate the current squad. Ten years ago, Charlton requested Sir Alex Ferguson’s permission to speak to the players. His talk lasted an hour and each player was given a DVD about the Busby Babes. This time, he has written a letter that will be given to all the players. I hope they read it, take it in and realise, for all their riches, that Old Trafford is not just the giant fruit machine that is sometimes portrayed. By pure coincidence, United’s under-19s will be in Belgrade to play in a Uefa Youth League tie. A reception will be held at the Majestic hotel, where Busby’s travelling party had stayed before that fateful game in 1958, and at least one surviving member of the Red Star Belgrade team is expected to be there. A minute’s silence will be held at the old Stadion JNA and hopefully the latest products from United’s youth system will reflect what happened to their predecessors and understand a little better, perhaps, why there is the “Munich Tunnel” running beneath the stand at Old Trafford that is named after Charlton. Our own audience with those men, as the football writers who cling to United’s coat-tails and lost some of our own on that flight, was certainly time to cherish. “We were the best team in the country,” Charlton wanted us to know before we left. “People don’t believe me sometimes when I tell them how good Duncan Edwards was. Tommy Taylor. David Pegg. Eddie Colman. Billy Whelan. All of them. You look at the old black-and-white footage and you think everything is slow and ponderous but, I tell you, they all had unbelievable talent – and I would hate for anyone to forget that.” amp.theguardian.com/football/blog/2018/jan/28/munich-disaster-60-years-manchester-united-anniversary?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Tweet&__twitter_impression=true
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Post by grandpaTJ on Jan 28, 2018 20:53:27 GMT
That is a brilliant and memorable piece of journalism.
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Post by Sméagol on Feb 2, 2018 8:55:03 GMT
Harry Gregg recalls the Munich Air Disaster on the 60th anniversary of the tragedy: 'For years I couldn't face the families of my team-mates who died... why them and not me? Ahead of next week’s Munich memorial service, I have mixed emotions. I want to go but at the same time I don’t want to go. I hope people can understand that. It will be an emotional, difficult day for me. But I will be there because I feel I should be there. I should be there on behalf of the people I was lucky enough to play with and who sadly and tragically never walked away from that plane or, in the case of dear Duncan Edwards, never left that hospital in Munich. I am not trying to play the nice guy here but when we gather together in Manchester, I hope we remember not just those wonderful young footballers who lost their lives, but every single person who was on that plane. The staff, crew, journalists and members of the public who died all had mummies and daddies too, remember. Their loss was equally tragic and their absence has been felt just as keenly and acutely by those who loved them over the years. If I close my eyes, I can still recall every detail of what happened that day in Germany. My God, I wish I couldn’t. But I remember where everybody was sitting and what many of the boys said before we tried to take off in the snow for the third time. I will not retell that story today, there is no need. Over the years, I have had some troubles dealing with it. Survivor’s guilt is what they call it, I believe. For many years I really did struggle even to face the families of some of my team-mates who died. Why them? Why not me? I will be honest to say today that I have moved on a little from that now. I will meet relatives of my team-mates in Manchester next week and share memories, both good and bad. I no longer think about Munich every day and I am glad of that. If I did, I don’t think I would ever sleep at night. Some days I still find memories closing in. Some days I find it tough and others I don’t. But do I live with that horror every day? No, I don’t. I am no hero, though. That much I know. On another day the same thing could have happened and I would have been the first to run and I would not have looked back. I did what I did that day out of instinct and many others would have done the same if they could. In life, you are what you are and it is hard to change. I have heard stories from others who were there that I don’t recognise and that makes me angry. I also hear stories — at after-dinner speeches and things like that — from people who say they weren’t there but may have been had circumstances been different. They know who they are. That makes me angry, too. I was there. I know what happened. I loved being part of that team and I still treasure the memories. I was a footballer first and foremost, not a hero. I felt like I was walking on to a Hollywood set when I joined for £23,000 from Doncaster Rovers in 1957. I still can’t believe I played more than 200 times for that great club. People say I am remembered fondly and I sometimes struggle to understand that. I have not always been a nice man down the years, so to learn of that affection embarrasses me a little. I am just glad that I was part of a great club and a great group of players. I still watch their matches every week on the television in Ireland and I am still a supporter. Football has changed. It is not always the great game I remember but that does not dilute what I feel for Manchester United. On Tuesday I will think of my friends and team-mates and will think fondly of the wonderful Jimmy Murphy, that brilliant, fiery little Welshman. He looked after the club and the team in the aftermath of what happened while Sir Matt Busby recuperated. He kept us going but God, he felt it all, too. One day in Germany we went to the hospital to visit Duncan. Back at the hotel I heard a man crying on the stairs. It was Jimmy. People ask me often about Munich, of course. That’s natural. For years I stayed away from it, didn’t go near it. But then I asked myself why? There was no need to hide. I have made some kind of strange peace with it now. I will travel to Manchester on Monday with my son John and my dear wife Carolyn. I’m apprehensive as I know some of it won’t be easy. I have not been back for many years. Over the years I have said things off the top of my head. Some of those things I regret and some I don’t. But what I feel about that team doesn’t change. Some years ago I wrote this poem. I’ll leave it with you now. How they laughed and loved and played the game together. They played the game and gave it every ounce of life. And the crowd they thronged to see such free young spirits. My good god there was not many who came home. The dice was cast, for some their last, on snow bound ground in far-off Serbia. Roger Byrne, Mark Jones and Salford’s Eddie Colman. Tommy Taylor, Geoffrey Bent and David Pegg. Duncan Edwards, Dublin’s own boy Liam Whelan. My good god, there was not any who came home. They are those gone down that long, long road before us but each morn we try and keep them in our sights. In memory’s eyes, the Busby Babes are all immortal. The Red Devils’ spirit lives. It never died. Harry Gregg was talking to Ian Ladyman www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-5341667/amp/Harry-Gregg-recalls-Munich-Air-Disaster-60-years-on.html?__twitter_impression=true
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Post by cantonaisgod on Feb 2, 2018 9:28:58 GMT
Twas the night before Christmas, Old Trafford was bare. The staff all gone home, there was nobody there.. The lights cast a shadow, a soft glimmer which lit up the soft green grass on the pitch.
Just as the clock gave out its twelfth chime An old man appeared, as if frozen in time. He gazed at the tunnel, then broke out in voice "ITS TIME TO BEGIN.. LETS HAVE YOU MY BOYS"
Out from the tunnel appeared a lone figure Same as in life, only infinitely bigger The old man called out as he slowly drew near "good evening Duncan, are the rest of you here"
The figure broke out in wide open smile "Good Evening Sir Matt, it has been a long while The rest are all coming, they'll be here soon," As seven more shadows were cast by the moon.
Whelan and Bent, Pegg, Taylor and Byrne, Jones , and Colman, they came out in turn. He greeted each one, just by calling their name then proudly announced "do you fancy a game"
They took to the pitch, and the still night was broken By leather on leather, not one word was spoken They played once again, like they did long before And imagined the sound of the Old Trafford roar
Edwards called out "come on lads lets pretend That we've just scored a goal at the old Stretford End" As they ran to the edge of the pitch by the goal There in the stands sat a solitary soul.
His eyes were all puffy, his cheeks wet with tears As his mind wandered back to those wonderful years "come down and join us" they cried all as one "yes come down and join them" said Matt "go on son"
The lonely man stood and with much pain he said "I'm afraid I can't play with you, you are all dead. You are all ghosts, and I am alive That was the price that I paid to survive"
My role was to go on, inspire the team And finally realise Matt Busbys dream To tell of your greatness, and as I get older To burden the weight of your life on my shoulders."
The ghost of Sir Matt then raised up his head Giving out a loud groan, he finally said "Bobby, You survived, that much is true But we wouldn't be here if it were not for you
For you are the one who has kept us alive That was the reason you had to survive If you were with us, all we have would be gone And the game that we play could no longer go on That one just makes the tears flow R.I.P.gentlmen
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Post by ratbag on Feb 2, 2018 13:14:39 GMT
Twas the night before Christmas, Old Trafford was bare. The staff all gone home, there was nobody there.. The lights cast a shadow, a soft glimmer which lit up the soft green grass on the pitch. Just as the clock gave out its twelfth chime An old man appeared, as if frozen in time. He gazed at the tunnel, then broke out in voice "ITS TIME TO BEGIN.. LETS HAVE YOU MY BOYS" Out from the tunnel appeared a lone figure Same as in life, only infinitely bigger The old man called out as he slowly drew near "good evening Duncan, are the rest of you here" The figure broke out in wide open smile "Good Evening Sir Matt, it has been a long while The rest are all coming, they'll be here soon," As seven more shadows were cast by the moon. Whelan and Bent, Pegg, Taylor and Byrne, Jones , and Colman, they came out in turn. He greeted each one, just by calling their name then proudly announced "do you fancy a game" They took to the pitch, and the still night was broken By leather on leather, not one word was spoken They played once again, like they did long before And imagined the sound of the Old Trafford roar Edwards called out "come on lads lets pretend That we've just scored a goal at the old Stretford End" As they ran to the edge of the pitch by the goal There in the stands sat a solitary soul. His eyes were all puffy, his cheeks wet with tears As his mind wandered back to those wonderful years "come down and join us" they cried all as one "yes come down and join them" said Matt "go on son" The lonely man stood and with much pain he said "I'm afraid I can't play with you, you are all dead. You are all ghosts, and I am alive That was the price that I paid to survive" My role was to go on, inspire the team And finally realise Matt Busbys dream To tell of your greatness, and as I get older To burden the weight of your life on my shoulders." The ghost of Sir Matt then raised up his head Giving out a loud groan, he finally said "Bobby, You survived, that much is true But we wouldn't be here if it were not for you For you are the one who has kept us alive That was the reason you had to survive If you were with us, all we have would be gone And the game that we play could no longer go on That one just makes the tears flow R.I.P.gentlmen I think I just got something in my eye...
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Post by WhatsTheMata on Feb 2, 2018 22:41:56 GMT
YOUR SONG: MUNICH: 60 YEARS ON Ever since British European Flight 609 careered off the end of Munich runway and killed outright seven Manchester United footballers and many other poor souls on board, the amount of tears shed for those fallen could fill an ocean. Now, sixty years on there will be many more poignant words spoken, poems recited and songs sung. Few events have touched the heart of British sport like the events of February 6th 1958. After drawing 3-3 with Red Star Belgrade and winning overall 5-4 on aggregate, the Busby Babes had made it into the European cup semi-finals for the second year running. The previous season saw them go head to head with the reigning champions, Alfredo Di Stefano and his wizards and magicians of Real Madrid. Two pulsating contests finally saw Real through and although it was clear a gulf in class existed between the two teams it was by no means a chasm. Rightly so it was thought by Matt Busby and Jimmy Murphy one easily breachable. Given time. Time. Tragically, fate decreed it wasn’t to be and nine months later as the clock turned three o’clock in the afternoon in Munich and two in Manchester, amid the fire and flames and the blood in the German snow. A broken plane, the fuselage split in two, bodies laid out under coats and rags. Survivor stunned, cold, shocked, wounded and dying. The grim reaper had come calling with larcenous intentions and ripped the heart out of Manchester United football club. Back home the sense of despair was overwhelming, people found it hard to breathe, never mind take in what had occurred to their lads far away in southern Germany. A sense of great pride and relief the day previous when news filtered back that Busby’s exuberant young team had knocked out Red Star in a breath-taking match in Belgrade, was replaced by feelings of utter horror. As the death toll mounted and supporter’s favourites were named people gathered outside Old Trafford as if drawn by some invisible thread. Praying it was all just a simple nightmare and they would wake up and life continued as normal. A top of the table clash against Wolves at home on the coming Saturday. Hoping for no injuries, that the boys weren’t too tired. That Big Dunc was fit. For when Edwards played it was like 12 against 11. Duncan was a colossus and he was theirs’s. Tragically, as the crowds stood in mournful silence under black Mancunian skies, Duncan Edwards was fighting for his life in the Rechts Der Isar hospital in Munich. One that after an astonishing battle to stay with us he finally lost. On 21st February 1958, the last victim of the Munich air crash took his final breath. For fifteen days the mindset of United supporters was if Duncan survives, even after the loss of so many, hope remained. Then, suddenly he was gone. As appeared the last grain of salvation. There was though another who by hands wretched and sometimes blessed by fate never travelled to Belgrade because of other duties. Despite wanting to go and be with his boys, Busby insisted that assistant manager Jimmy Murphy stay behind and travel to Cardiff in his position of Welsh team coach. ‘We’ll be back before you know it Jim lad’ said Busby. ‘Your job is to ensure Wales beat Israel and make the World Cup finals.’ Reluctantly Jimmy agreed, only to walk back into hell on earth returning to Manchester and finding out what had occurred on the afternoon of 6th February. That somehow from the depths of personal hell he found the strength to keep United going is a miracle, a cruel one albeit. Jimmy ranted at the world, he cursed, cried, pleaded, threatened, prayed and gave every inch of his being to drag his beloved club back from the brink. There were those on the club board who thought it a fight unwinnable and wanted to shut the gates, but on informing Jimmy of this idea, amid a Welsh firestorm they swiftly changed their minds. On the 19th February, in a traumatic atmosphere of pure unmitigated relief of grief, United roared back into life and at Old Trafford, with a concoction of young boys, reserves and veterans fired up by Jimmy Murphy, they beat Sheffield Wednesday 3-0 in the FA cup fifth round. As the crowd roared, painted smiles engulfed by tears, it was recognised that night Manchester United would go on, but to where and for how long remained written in the stars. Jimmy Murphy had given the club the invaluable gift of time. This time around not a curse. Time… Sixty years have now passed and the feelings Munich still evoke amongst not just United supporters of that era, but so many others remains powerful as ever. Those of a younger red vintage have learned, read or had the story of how those Babes flew so high only to ultimately come crashing down whilst still in the beauty of youth passed down by family. A dad or grandad, an uncle. Who walked up Warwick Road proud with a United ribbon and loved their team equally as any young supporter does today. Your twenties, an age where you believe life goes on forever. Death belongs to someone else much older because you’re too busy living, laughing and loving. That those footballers who lit up not just Old Trafford, but every town or city they visited should be ripped away and taken so violently and suddenly, still bleeds the heart today of all whom witnessed them play. They speak the names of the lost players and it doesn’t take long before the eyes moisten and the tears fall. Come next week as the 60th anniversary is remembered, not celebrated, never the word. Songs such as the ‘Flowers of Manchester’ will be sung with passion and heartfelt gusto. Another in particular no doubt will be getting a hearing at the forthcoming home game against Huddersfield at Old Trafford. When the minute silence ends, the whistle blows and ‘We’ll never die’ resonates loud across every part of the stadium, just look up for a moment. Because, well, if you’re up there watching lads. This will be your song.…. t.co/nPZVyGxdhE
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Post by king nothing on Feb 2, 2018 23:22:52 GMT
YOUR SONG: MUNICH: 60 YEARS ON Ever since British European Flight 609 careered off the end of Munich runway and killed outright seven Manchester United footballers and many other poor souls on board, the amount of tears shed for those fallen could fill an ocean. Now, sixty years on there will be many more poignant words spoken, poems recited and songs sung. Few events have touched the heart of British sport like the events of February 6th 1958. After drawing 3-3 with Red Star Belgrade and winning overall 5-4 on aggregate, the Busby Babes had made it into the European cup semi-finals for the second year running. The previous season saw them go head to head with the reigning champions, Alfredo Di Stefano and his wizards and magicians of Real Madrid. Two pulsating contests finally saw Real through and although it was clear a gulf in class existed between the two teams it was by no means a chasm. Rightly so it was thought by Matt Busby and Jimmy Murphy one easily breachable. Given time. Time. Tragically, fate decreed it wasn’t to be and nine months later as the clock turned three o’clock in the afternoon in Munich and two in Manchester, amid the fire and flames and the blood in the German snow. A broken plane, the fuselage split in two, bodies laid out under coats and rags. Survivor stunned, cold, shocked, wounded and dying. The grim reaper had come calling with larcenous intentions and ripped the heart out of Manchester United football club. Back home the sense of despair was overwhelming, people found it hard to breathe, never mind take in what had occurred to their lads far away in southern Germany. A sense of great pride and relief the day previous when news filtered back that Busby’s exuberant young team had knocked out Red Star in a breath-taking match in Belgrade, was replaced by feelings of utter horror. As the death toll mounted and supporter’s favourites were named people gathered outside Old Trafford as if drawn by some invisible thread. Praying it was all just a simple nightmare and they would wake up and life continued as normal. A top of the table clash against Wolves at home on the coming Saturday. Hoping for no injuries, that the boys weren’t too tired. That Big Dunc was fit. For when Edwards played it was like 12 against 11. Duncan was a colossus and he was theirs’s. Tragically, as the crowds stood in mournful silence under black Mancunian skies, Duncan Edwards was fighting for his life in the Rechts Der Isar hospital in Munich. One that after an astonishing battle to stay with us he finally lost. On 21st February 1958, the last victim of the Munich air crash took his final breath. For fifteen days the mindset of United supporters was if Duncan survives, even after the loss of so many, hope remained. Then, suddenly he was gone. As appeared the last grain of salvation. There was though another who by hands wretched and sometimes blessed by fate never travelled to Belgrade because of other duties. Despite wanting to go and be with his boys, Busby insisted that assistant manager Jimmy Murphy stay behind and travel to Cardiff in his position of Welsh team coach. ‘We’ll be back before you know it Jim lad’ said Busby. ‘Your job is to ensure Wales beat Israel and make the World Cup finals.’ Reluctantly Jimmy agreed, only to walk back into hell on earth returning to Manchester and finding out what had occurred on the afternoon of 6th February. That somehow from the depths of personal hell he found the strength to keep United going is a miracle, a cruel one albeit. Jimmy ranted at the world, he cursed, cried, pleaded, threatened, prayed and gave every inch of his being to drag his beloved club back from the brink. There were those on the club board who thought it a fight unwinnable and wanted to shut the gates, but on informing Jimmy of this idea, amid a Welsh firestorm they swiftly changed their minds. On the 19th February, in a traumatic atmosphere of pure unmitigated relief of grief, United roared back into life and at Old Trafford, with a concoction of young boys, reserves and veterans fired up by Jimmy Murphy, they beat Sheffield Wednesday 3-0 in the FA cup fifth round. As the crowd roared, painted smiles engulfed by tears, it was recognised that night Manchester United would go on, but to where and for how long remained written in the stars. Jimmy Murphy had given the club the invaluable gift of time. This time around not a curse. Time… Sixty years have now passed and the feelings Munich still evoke amongst not just United supporters of that era, but so many others remains powerful as ever. Those of a younger red vintage have learned, read or had the story of how those Babes flew so high only to ultimately come crashing down whilst still in the beauty of youth passed down by family. A dad or grandad, an uncle. Who walked up Warwick Road proud with a United ribbon and loved their team equally as any young supporter does today. Your twenties, an age where you believe life goes on forever. Death belongs to someone else much older because you’re too busy living, laughing and loving. That those footballers who lit up not just Old Trafford, but every town or city they visited should be ripped away and taken so violently and suddenly, still bleeds the heart today of all whom witnessed them play. They speak the names of the lost players and it doesn’t take long before the eyes moisten and the tears fall. Come next week as the 60th anniversary is remembered, not celebrated, never the word. Songs such as the ‘Flowers of Manchester’ will be sung with passion and heartfelt gusto. Another in particular no doubt will be getting a hearing at the forthcoming home game against Huddersfield at Old Trafford. When the minute silence ends, the whistle blows and ‘We’ll never die’ resonates loud across every part of the stadium, just look up for a moment. Because, well, if you’re up there watching lads. This will be your song.…. t.co/nPZVyGxdhEIt hits me hard every year. I never gets easier reading about it. And I always end up crying. Every time I see Sir Bob I think of what he went through and the friends he lost. I'm welling up now writing this. I'll always fight, fight,fight for united, because of those great players. Never die. That red flag. Always flying high.
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Post by ScholesEvilTwin on Feb 3, 2018 12:20:58 GMT
From the dark snows of Munich back in ‘58, I remember a team that once was so great, Their memory it still lingers on in my mind, So I’ll follow United, ’till the end of my time.
And its Man United, Man United F.C. They’re by far the greatest team, The world has ever seen.
“It’s glory or nothing” the great man he said, There’s nothing on Earth like being a Red, I’ll follow them far and I’ll follow them near, I’ll follow United on whisky and beer.
There is a plaque at Man United, It’s underneath the old main stand, It bears the name of Duncan Edwards, He was the finest in the land.
But he died on Munich’s runway, Without a tear, without a sound, His strong body battered and broke, As he lay helpless on the ground.
But one man survived the aircrash, And he lived to tell the tale, Of the boys who played in Red, For they did not know how to fail.
So we’ll drink a toast to Matt Busby, And we’ll drink one to that team, They were acclaimed the whole world over, They were the finest ever seen.
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Post by ScholesEvilTwin on Feb 3, 2018 12:49:33 GMT
Supposed to be a couple of thousand over for the anniversary this year.
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Post by CaajScot on Feb 3, 2018 20:04:09 GMT
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Post by Deez on Feb 4, 2018 12:07:25 GMT
The packages on the seats were a classy touch. We got a small book on the Birth of the Babes, a Munich pin which has been on my coat since the game and a complimentary Munich edition of United Review. Very happy with it all
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Post by CaajScot on Feb 4, 2018 20:45:56 GMT
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Post by Sméagol on Feb 5, 2018 9:37:42 GMT
There he is in all his glory: eyes down, left arm outstretched, right foot about to be swung forward with menacing force. The backdrop of Dudley market and the surrounding shops might seem inauspicious, but those who knew him feel the statue is perfect, a Black Country boy in the heart of his town, captured in his youthful prime, as if ready to lash that bronze ball all the way up Castle Street and into the zoological gardens beyond. Even now, 60 years on from the horror of the Munich tragedy, there is something of the comic-book hero about Duncan Edwards. It is not just the tales of how hardened top-flight opponents would bounce off his teenage frame or how his powerful shots would leave goalkeepers cowering for cover. It is everything about his story: an ordinary kid whose prodigious talent made him the cornerstone of Manchester United’s all-conquering Busby Babes, winning two league titles by the age of 21, and the great young hope of the England team until disaster struck on the ice-covered runway of Munich-Riem Airport on February 6, 1958. At Old Trafford on Saturday they marked the 60th anniversary of the tragedy as poignantly as always, paying solemn tribute to those who lost their lives in Munich — not just the eight United players and three club staff but the eight journalists, two crew members, a supporter and a travel agent. To focus on just one of those 23 lives might seem wrong, yet there is something uniquely beguiling about the story of Edwards. “Take the best of, say, Roy Keane, Bryan Robson, Steven Gerrard, Cesc Fàbregas, all rolled into one, without any bad temper or anything, and that was Duncan Edwards,” his former team-mate Wilf McGuinness said a few years ago. Sir Bobby Charlton’s evaluation is more straightforward: “The best player I’ve ever seen and the best footballer I ever played with.” To others, though, he was just “Our Duncan”. Keith Edwards, now 80, remembers his cousin turning up at their home in a Warwickshire mining village during one school holiday, speaking with the thickest Black Country accent imaginable. Duncan and his cousins would go swimming and fishing in the local streams, but above all, he would impress them with his mind-boggling skills with a pig’s bladder at his feet. “And I do mean a pig’s bladder,” Keith says. “They used to kill a pig in our yard and we would keep the bladder and blow it up to play with. And the things he could do with that pig’s bladder were absolutely amazing.” He always dreamt of playing football, of following in the footsteps of his uncle, Ray Westwood, who played for Bolton Wanderers and England. In a piece of schoolwork entitled A True Wish, he said that it “all began when I was a little boy of about seven years of age”, hearing his father “takeing [sic] about a place by the name of Wembley Stadium”. His uncle George told him he would go there one day and, in A True Wish, which he wrote as a 15-year-old in December 1951, he reflected that this wish had come true earlier that year when he made his debut for the England schoolboy team against Wales. Barely six years separate A True Wish and the tragedy that unfolded at Munich. Edwards packed more into those six years than seems possible. He made his professional debut against Cardiff City at just 16 years and 185 days, becoming the youngest player to play top-flight football in England, and soon became a first-team regular, one of the “Babes” whom Matt Busby built his title-winning teams of 1956 and 1957 around. Just under two years later, aged 18 years and 183 days, he made his full England debut against Scotland. In a 3-1 win against West Germany in Berlin the following year, he was, according to the captain Billy Wright, “phenomenal”. Wright said that he “tackled like a lion, attacked at every opportunity and topped it off with a cracker of a goal. He was still only 19, but already a world-class player.” Much of this happened while Edwards was doing his national service. “That’s one thing a lot of people don’t realise,” Jim Cadman, one of the organisers of a new Duncan Edwards exhibition in Dudley, says. “Between the ages of 19 and 21 he was also serving in the army — living in a Nissen hut at Nesscliffe [barracks in Shropshire], servings as a barracks policeman, playing for the army team on a Wednesday, sometimes playing for the barracks on a Monday. And, if he did all of that, he was allowed to play for United on a Saturday. He played something like 200 games over that two-year period and he never once complained of being tired.” Going into 1958, Edwards seemed unstoppable, indestructible. Walter Winterbottom, the England manager, said years later that the “Busby Babe confidence” of Edwards, along with Roger Byrne and Tommy Taylor, convinced him that they would win the World Cup in Sweden that summer. United, beaten by the mighty Real Madrid in the semi-finals the previous season, were bidding to become the first English team to win the European Cup. On February 5, 1958 they secured their semi-final place with a 3-3 draw with Red Star Belgrade for a 5-4 aggregate win. On their way back from Belgrade the next day, there was a refuelling stop in Munich. After two failed take-off attempts, it seemed that snow would see them stranded in Munich overnight. After disembarking, Edwards sent a telegram to Mrs Dorman, his landlady in Manchester: “All flights cancelled. Flying tomorrow. Duncan.” The players were nervous as they were told to board once more for a third attempted take-off. Edwards, along with Mark Jones, Eddie Colman and Tommy Taylor, took seats at the back of the plane, which they believed to be safer in the event of an accident. Liam Whelan, the Irish inside forward, is reported to have said aloud: “This may be death, but I’m ready.” In the crash that followed, as the plane skidded off the runway, Jones, Colman, Taylor, Whelan, Byrne, Geoff Bent and David Pegg died instantly, along with 13 other passengers. The former Manchester City and England goalkeeper Frank Swift, who was among the journalists on board, died on his way to hospital. Edwards, like Busby, was seriously injured, left fighting for his life. Edwards’s cousin Keith remembers emerging from his shift down the mines to be told the news. To him, it seemed devastating, yet it was somehow encouraging — somehow just right — that Duncan the indestructible had survived the crash. It quickly became apparent that it was not as straightforward as that. As well as broken ribs, broken pelvis and multiple fractures of the right thigh, he had suffered a collapsed lung and severely damaged kidneys. Several days later he regained consciousness. On medical advice, nobody dared to tell him what had happened. Legend has it that, upon seeing Busby’s assistant Jimmy Murphy, he asked what time they were playing Wolverhampton Wanderers. Edwards assumed that the match was going ahead and that, somehow, he would make sure he was playing. There was to be no recovery. The damage to his kidneys was too severe. Edwards’s parents, Gladstone and Sarah Anne, and his fiancée, Molly Leech, flew to Munich to be at his bedside. Sarah Anne reminded him of the gleaming Morris Minor 1000 that he had bought himself after turning 21 four months earlier. “You keep it there until I get better,” he told her with a smile. On February 21, 15 days after the crash, Edwards lost his fight. “It was as though a young colossus had been taken from our midst,” Frank Taylor, one of three journalists who survived the crash, wrote in The Day a Team Died. “My dad took me to Dudley for the funeral,” Edwards’s cousin Keith says. “There were thousands there at the churchyard. You could hardly get near the place. Among the mourners, I saw Billy Wright crying. The whole town, the whole community was devastated. I’ve never known anything like it.” The devastating impact of the tragedy on Manchester and on United in particular has been well documented. Likewise the consequences for the national team. Edwards’s cousin Keith is not the first to suggest that “if Duncan had lived, he was destined to be England’s captain for the next ten years and it would have been him, not Bobby Moore, lifting that World Cup in 1966.” The former England full back Jimmy Armfield, who died last month, went even further in The Lost Babes, saying that “with Edwards, Byrne and Taylor we would have won the World Cup in 1958 and then four years later” as well as 1966. That argument would certainly be endorsed in the Black Country, but the sense of loss there went beyond what Edwards could have been. It was also about what he represented. “Manchester United lost eight players and Duncan Edwards was one of those,” Cadman says. “Dudley and the Black Country lost Duncan Edwards and I would go so far as to say it took the heart of the town and the community.” Most profound of all was the impact on Edwards’s family. His parents had lost their only daughter, Carol Anne, in infancy. Now they had lost their son. Gladstone took a job tending the graves at Dudley Cemetery, where their two children were buried together. Sarah Anne, who survived her husband, spent her final years in a council flat in nearby Coseley, guarding a treasure trove of shirts, medals and memorabilia but also, far more precious, her memories. “Sarah Anne absolutely adored Duncan,” Rose Cook-Monk, who has produced a documentary and written a play in honour of Edwards, says of his mother. “Not because he was a superstar, but because he was their only son and because he was so close to them. She loved him and she idolised him. The last conversation I had with her, before she died in April 2003, she said to me: ‘Promise me you won’t let Duncan’s name be forgotten in Dudley’. And I said: ‘Rose, I promise you we won’t.’ “I wouldn’t say Duncan’s memory had ever been forgotten in Dudley,” Cadman says, “but there was a period where I think it had been allowed to wane. People were still talking about Duncan, but not doing anything about it. It feels like now people are getting behind it in a big way. This archive exhibition and each of the pieces here reminds people of what an enormous impact Duncan Edwards has had on the heritage of the area.” The Duncan Edwards Foundation has been set up to raise funds to help children from poor backgrounds pursue their sporting ambitions. Locals are finding out about Dudley’s finest as part of their modern history curriculum. “I went to Priory Primary School, his old school, a few weeks ago to talk about Duncan Edwards and the headmistress told me afterwards the children are now besotted with him,” Cadman says. “It is a great comfort for an area that has been deprived, suddenly being reminded again where talent and hard work can get you. You often hear this Black Country phrase: ‘it cor be done’, i.e. it can’t be done. The story of Duncan Edwards tells them that, with hard work and talent, yes it can be done. He did not live a long life, sadly, but if he was one of the greatest players in the world at 18, according to all these legends of the game, then that’s something we here can be proud of, isn’t it?” www.thetimes.co.uk/article/17497ff8-09ca-11e8-85df-de495bc64eb7
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Post by Deleted on Feb 5, 2018 13:22:12 GMT
www.theguardian.com/football/2018/feb/05/munich-air-disaster-donny-davies-guardian-football-correspondent-died?The afternoon light was fading and the crowd of 52,000 were dispersing as Donny Davies completed his match report. “At Belgrade today,” it began, “in warm sunshine and on a grass pitch where the last remnants of melting snow produced the effect of an English lawn flecked with daisies, Red Star Belgrade and Manchester United began a battle of wits and courage and rugged tackling.” The concluding sentences of the piece, which recorded a 3-3 draw and United’s 5-4 win on aggregate, were the last he would ever write. Davies was the Manchester Guardian’s chief football correspondent. A small figure in a flat cap and a duffel coat, he loved classical music, poetry, art, the theatre and the ballet, and read Goethe, Baudelaire and Cervantes in the original. For 25 years his job as headmaster of a school for apprentices run by Mather and Platt, a giant Manchester engineering firm, gave him time to cover league matches on Saturdays and in the holidays. His reports appeared under the byline “An Old International”, referring to his three amateur caps on the right wing for England on a tour of Austria, Hungary and Romania in 1914. The Munich disaster’s long shadow still falls on us all, 60 years on It was his habit to retreat to his study for three hours on a Sunday morning, left strictly undisturbed by his wife and two daughters, to compose his description of the previous day’s match. There was no such luxury that Wednesday afternoon in Belgrade – where, because floodlights had not yet been installed, the match kicked-off at 2.45pm. Like his fellow reporters who had travelled from Manchester with United’s players and staff on a chartered BEA Elizabethan airliner, he transmitted his words in time to catch the first edition of the next morning’s paper. Less than 24 hours later, he and seven of those newspaper colleagues would be lying dead or dying in the wreckage of G-ALZU near the slush-covered runway at Munich-Riem airport. In those days, history had given the inhabitants of the press box a different set of life experiences. Davies had joined an infantry battalion at the outbreak of the first world war, transferring to the Royal Flying Corps for pilot training in 1917. On his second mission over the western front, he was shot down near Douai and spent the rest of the war in a German POW camp, where he captained the inmates’ football team, studied languages, and read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He emerged in 1918 weighing six stones and given only a few months to live by a doctor evidently unaware of the strength of his character. Another survivor of that war was Henry Rose, the flamboyant, Jaguar-driving controversialist of the Daily Express’s sports pages, who had come close to death in the trenches. A younger man, Tom Jackson of the Manchester Evening News, served through the second world war in the Army Intelligence Corps, latterly unmasking concentration camp officials. Rose and Jackson were killed on Flight 609 along with Davies. So were Alf Clarke of the Manchester Evening Chronicle, who had been on United’s books as an amateur, and Frank Swift of the News of the World, who had made 510 appearances for Manchester City and 33 for England, including wartime caps, and whom Matt Busby had tried to lure out of retirement. George Follows of the Daily Herald, Archie Ledbrooke of the Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail’s Eric Thompson were the remaining journalists who did not survive the crash. Two other reporters had been scheduled to make the trip but were displaced at the last minute. Davies’s decision to join the party came at the expense of a disappointed John Arlott, who had been granted a request for more ambitious assignments. Arlott would find himself writing Davies’s obituary only a matter of hours after reading his colleague’s match report in that morning’s paper. Rose had pulled rank on a younger Express man, Tony Stratton-Smith, who later founded a record label and groomed the likes of Genesis and Lindisfarne for 1970s rock stardom. When the news of Davies’s death came through, the Guardian’s presses were stopped in salute. The son of an orphanage boy who became a mill manager, he made an early mark as a footballer with the renowned Northern Nomads and was on the brink of joining Stoke City – who had promised to cover the cost of his history degree course at Manchester University _ when war broke out in 1914. After recovering his health he concentrated on cricket, playing as a batsman for Lancashire in the 1920s and serving on the committee at Old Trafford for 30 years. In 1957, a few months before the trip to Belgrade, he retired from his post at Mather and Platt, a manufacturing colossus of the industrial revolution. The company’s Newton Heath works, painted in 1943 by LS Lowry, covered a 50-acre site incorporating not just the school but a canteen that could take 1,000 workers at a sitting. Letters in the Guardian’s archive, written to the editor in the aftermath of the Munich disaster, attest to the admiration and affection in which Davies was held. Referring to his coverage of the United players who had perished with him, one reader wrote: “They will always be alive in our memories because he painted their movements so vividly.” His illustrious colleague Neville Cardus described him as “not only the best of the soccer writers; he was also something of a poet”. And in the words of a former Northern Nomads team-mate” “He was a grand companion and a great sportsman in the very best sense of the term. May the soil rest lightly on him …”
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