The Lost Babes: Manchester United and the Forgotten Victims of Munich

The Lost Babes: Manchester United and the Forgotten Victims of Munich
Jeff Connor

A moving story of how a legendary football team was lost to tragedy – and how this disaster irrevocably altered the lives of the survivors and the bereaved families, and ultimately brought shame on the biggest football club in the world.The Manchester United team Matt Busby had built in the fifties from the club's successful youth policy seemed destined to dominate football for many years. Such was the power of the ‘Busby Babes’ that they seemed invincible. The average age of the side which won the Championship in 1955-56 was just 22, the youngest ever to achieve such a feat. A year later, when they were Champions again, nothing, it seemed, would prevent this gifted young team from reigning for the next decade.But then came 6 February 1958, the day that eight Manchester United players died on a German airfield in the 'Munich Air Disaster' – a date to be forever etched in the annals of sporting tragedy.Duncan Edwards, Eddie Colman, Tommy Taylor, Roger Byrne…the names were already enshrined in legend before the air crash, but Munich in many ways earned them immortality. They have never grown old.Jeff Connor traces the rise of the greatest Manchester United side of all time, alongside a vibrant portrait of England in the 1950s, but he also paints a dark picture of a club that enriched itself on the myth of Munich while neglecting the families of the dead and the surviving players. The repercussions and the toll the disaster took on so many linger to the present day.Drawing on extensive interviews with the Munich victims and players of that era, The Lost Babes is the definitive account of British football's golden age, a poignant story of the protracted effects of loss and a remorseless dissection of the how the richest football club in the world turned its back on its own players and their families.

THE

LOST BABES

Manchester United and the

Forgotten Victims of Munich

JEFF CONNOR

To the first Manchester United fan I ever met,

Arthur Clive Connor. And to my mother Nancy,

who had to put up with all three of us.

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#u5dd41261-3e87-54dd-a088-c0c30c116ea6)

Title Page (#u4032b55c-1d61-56b0-8ecf-bb0100229371)

Dedication (#uc23d9114-415d-5860-b1e3-2ce15d2a3b16)

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (#ue1359193-f3ef-584f-ba79-10c0270e2dd7)

INTRODUCTION (#u66d67af7-1859-5e07-a8b1-949b98779b4d)

1: THE FLOWERS OF MANCHESTER (#u71f053e6-203b-531f-91f8-b2d6f9ecf0da)

2: BLOODY KIDS (#u22ffa57b-8d2b-5b94-90af-e93df70b347c)

3: NEAREST AND DEAREST (#ue087800f-2502-598e-be20-3b0f92a9b04a)

4: A SMALL FIELD IN GERMANY (#u89a7ca29-88ab-5fec-a141-006d3d2ec805)

5: DUBLIN’S FAIR LIAM (#litres_trial_promo)

6: DUNCANVILLE (#litres_trial_promo)

7: WHITE ROSES, RED CARNATIONS (#litres_trial_promo)

8: THE KNIGHTS’ TALE (#litres_trial_promo)

9: OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND (#litres_trial_promo)

10: FORTY-YEARS ON (#litres_trial_promo)

11: ERIC THE READIES (#litres_trial_promo)

12: THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY (#litres_trial_promo)

EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)

Praise (#litres_trial_promo)

INDEX (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (#ulink_1ed3587c-4ed9-5ba5-8307-0a47ff616f69)

Page 1: The young prince (Popperfoto) Page 2: Roll models (PA/ Empics); Happy days (Popperfoto) Page 3: Well turned out (courtesy of Irene Beevers); Birthday Boy (Solo); Pride of Lions (Manchester Evening News) Page 4: Fear of flying (courtesy of Irene Beevers); Playing his cards right (Solo); The inseparables (courtesy of Irene Beevers) Page 5: Four of the best: Dennis Viollet (courtesy of Irene Beevers), Eddie Colman (Manchester Evening News); Mark Jones (Manchester Evening News); Roger Byrne (courtesy of Irene Beevers) Page 6: Strength in depth (PA/Empics); Happy Valley (S&G/Empics/Alpha); King Alfredo (Popperfoto) Page 7: White rose in bloom (Central Press/Getty Images); Beaten but not disgraced (Empics/Topham); Dublin’s fair Liam (Central Press/Getty Images) Page 8: The 1957 League Champions (TopFoto); The last goodbye (Getty Images); Last line-up (Popperfoto) Page 9: The aftermath (PA/Empics); The bulletin (Manchester Evening News); The stricken (Getty Images) Page 10: On the road to recovery (Manchester Evening News); Survivor (Manchester Evening News); Grounded (Empics/Topham) Page 11: The return (Getty Images); First gong: (Getty Images); They also serve (Manchester Evening News); Born again (Solo) Page 12: Safe hands (Manchester Evening News); Well saved (Popperfoto) Page 13: Memories (Action Images); Only a rose (PA/Empics); Return to Munich (Empics) Page 14: Flowers of Manchester (PA/Empics); Lest we forget (PA/Empics); Germany remembers (Man Utd via Getty Images) Page 15: Forever young (Popperfoto); Without farewell (Empics) Page 16: Roll of honour (both Empics)

INTRODUCTION (#ulink_627f0c00-9e97-5137-aa65-57df77b3d342)

Manchester United plc can be remarkably sensitive about the subject of the Munich air disaster and, in particular, certain events—or maybe we should say lack of events—in the years following the club’s blackest day of 6 February 1958. When I first approached the company to ask for access to records and statistics from the Busby Babes’ era the first words of the assistant secretary Ken Ramsden in his office at Old Trafford were: ‘We will simply not cooperate with anything that will damage the good name of the club.’ This before I had even described the content of the proposed book. Mr Ramsden also asked me if I was ‘a fan who is trying to be a writer or a writer who is a fan’. When I told him the latter was the case, I had the overwhelming impression that he, and the Manchester United plc, would have preferred to be dealing with the former, of whom there have been many.

I was also informed that I would have to secure permission from the plc’s chief executive to talk to employees, past and present, including Mr Ramsden’s mother and aunt, who ran the laundry at Old Trafford in the Fifties. But all my e-mails and telephone calls to the then CEO, Peter Kenyon, went unanswered. Someone closely connected with the club also took it upon himself to telephone some potential interviewees in advance to warn them of me, and the subject matter I intended to broach with them. Happily, these pleas fell on deaf, and defiant, ears. It is safe to say, however, that this book was written in spite of Manchester United plc and is unlikely to be found on sale in the Old Trafford Megastore.

Over a period of three years, this book caused much soul-searching about content and motivation. At one stage work on it was halted for over twelve months, mainly because I began to believe that some of the criticisms levelled in these pages—that a number of people had sought to profit from Munich—could justifiably be applied to me. In the end, I chose to agree with a member of one of the Munich families who told me: ‘This is a story that should be told.’

Jeff ConnorEdinburghFebruary 2006

1 THE FLOWERS OF MANCHESTER (#ulink_530fa364-8557-5f7d-84b5-0cb79351f82f)

First of all, a confession. In what amounts to a small lifetime since 19 February 1958, I have only been to one football match at Old Trafford. What is more, I haven’t lived in Manchester for almost four decades and in that period have been back to the city on maybe five occasions, and never for any length of time. In many red-tinted eyes this will immediately place me in the same dubious category as Zoe Ball, Eamonn Holmes, Angus Deayton, Simon Le Bon and the millions of other surrogate fans worldwide who have chosen to attach themselves to Manchester United, the ‘part-time supporters’ reviled in terrace song and on the multitude of websites devoted to the club.

But there’s worse: when I did return to Old Trafford as an employee’s guest, in October 2002, it was to join Roy Keane’s despised corporate spectator brigade in the club’s Platinum Lounge where we scoffed, not prawn sandwiches, but paupiette of plaice, stuffed with cockles, and washed down with a bottle of Château Guirauton 2000.

The sixty-or-so current and potential sponsors dining there that night included a smattering of semi-famouses headed by Angus ‘Statto’ Loughran and Derek ‘Deggsy’ Hatton and we had been met at the doorway by the Platinum Lounge’s extremely famous, and very canny, host (‘Don’t I know your face?’ asked Paddy Crerand of me). Over coffee, a liveried waiter took my order for ‘your halftime drink, sir’ before someone remembered there was a football match on that night and I retired, in the company of executives from Boots the Chemist, Fuji Films and Ladbrokes the Bookmakers, to my comfy, padded seat in the North Stand to watch Everton dispatched 3-0.

The atmosphere, even when United scored the three goals in quick succession to secure a late victory, was curiously antiseptic, particularly among the support around me. True, clenched fists were occasionally raised selfconsciously, but no one once left their seats, even for a goal. The representatives of Fuji Films seemed more concerned with the number of times play went close to their one million pounds a year revolving trackside advertising hoarding than the quality of the football, and the only evidence of real passion came from a large Liverpudlian accompanying Deggsy, whose language was what you would expect from a large Liverpudlian in the company of Deggsy.

The evening’s entertainment had cost me £5, the price of a ticket to park my car in a vast, fenced-off area of waste ground on John Gilbert Way close by the stadium, and in the rigidly defined terms of the terraces I plainly do not qualify as a ‘supporter’, although the current plc may be happy to learn that I have stayed in a nearby hotel partowned by Manchester United, spent money in the Old Trafford Megastore, eaten three meals in the Red Café and paid two visits, at £5.50 a time, to the club museum. It all depends how you define support.

Before the subscribers to Red Issue, Red News, Totally Red and Red-whatever-else start to compile the threatening letters, let me say that despite those forty years spent elsewhere, if people ask me where I am from I always give the answer ‘Manchester’. If pressed further I may add (and a northerner’s habit of revealing only one item of information at a time has never gone away): ‘North Manchester’ and, perhaps, ‘Harpurhey’. I may also, if I sense a football audience, reveal that Beech Mount nursing home was 100 yards from where Nobby Stiles’s father ran a funeral parlour and close by the birthplace of Brian Kidd. If anyone else (and this is always the next question) demands to know where my football allegiances lie I always insist ‘United’, and if the more erudite look at the evidence of late middle age—grey hair, nascent jowls and alarming waistline—and venture a little further to enquire if I saw the famous Busby Babes in action I can truthfully reply: ‘Yes, several times.’ They are the reason why the colour red and the place-name Munich represent only one thing to me; why I still feel unreasonably happy when Manchester United win and unreasonably churlish when they lose (even though I feel little or no affinity with the current crop of players, or their manager).

This lifelong and incurable affliction is why, much to the discomfiture and embarrassment of other customers, I wept into my Guinness in a Southampton public house when the man with the flop-over hair lifted that graceless silver trophy at Wembley on a sweaty May night in 1968. And why, as extra-time approached in Barcelona in the Champions’ League Final of 1999, I was crouched behind the settee in my Edinburgh flat, out of sight of a taunting television and with a finger in each ear. The Busby Babes are the reason my fealties would have remained unchanged had they won absolutely nothing for the last forty-five years…and why, in all that time, I have only once ventured inside Old Trafford for a football match.

On the night of the Everton game, I had foolishly gone along in the hope of catching sight of shades of long ago, imagining that if I half-closed my eyes I would see Duncan Edwards belligerently pushing out his chest and tucking his jersey into his shorts before the game, Roger Byrne imperiously patrolling the touchline, David Pegg tip-toeing down the wing and Tommy Taylor rising to head another goal. But nothing, save a lone banner high in what had once been the Stretford End which read: ‘Flowers of Manchester, 1958’. In forty-five years United and Old Trafford had moved on to something I could not recognize and my return ended in a confusion of disappointment, frustration, and something close to guilt.