Jack and Bobby: A story of brothers in conflict

It has been claimed that Bobby, as a child, was a Sunderland supporter. In her autobiography Cissie said that Bobby’s ambition was to play for the club, writing, ‘He was a great admirer of Len Shackleton’s team and would have jumped at the chance to join it.’ But this view is disputed by those who grew up with Bobby. Ron Routledge, the schoolmate who went on to play for Sunderland, told me, ‘I don’t know where all this business about Bobby and Sunderland comes from. It’s just not true. Never once was he involved with Sunderland. We all followed Newcastle and I went with Bobby to most of the home games at St James’ Park. I suppose some people might have thought that Bobby modelled himself on Len Shackleton, the Sunderland striker – for they had the same body swerve – but he didn’t. Bobby was always just Bobby.’

Jack also remembers going to Newcastle with Bobby. ‘Me and our kid would go to Newcastle to see Jackie Milburn. My father put us on the bus, and we’d get off at the Haymarket and go for something to eat at the British Home restaurant. Then we’d go and queue at St James’ Park. We’d always leave it to the last minute so that we could get passed over everybody’s heads in the crowd, ending up right at the front.’ As usual, the difference surfaced between the brothers, for Jack was far more partisan in his support of Newcastle. He once told Mike Kirkup, ‘I’ve always followed Newcastle United. To this day I’m a Newcastle fan and I was brought up black and white eyed. I don’t think you ever change. Even when I was a player, the first results I looked for were those of Newcastle. When you’re a Newcastle fan as a boy, you’re a fan for life.’ Indeed, one writer told me that he was recently in Jack’s home during a Newcastle game which was being shown live on Sky TV. Just before the kick-off, Jack went down on his knees in front of the television screen in a mock act of worship to his beloved Magpies. Yet Bobby never felt the same attraction to Newcastle. ‘I don’t remember him ever being a great Newcastle supporter,’ says Bobby’s schoolfriend Evan Martin, who went with him a few times to St James’. Bobby himself says that after Manchester United won the FA Cup Final in 1948, they became his favourite team, though he always liked to watch good football wherever it was played.

And no-one played it better than Bobby Charlton. His natural talent was so enormous that anyone who saw him, even as a child, knew that he was destined to become a professional footballer. Ashington locals still speak with awe about the sight of the young Bobby, sailing past opponents twice his age and then producing a deadly shot from outside the box. Walter Lavery remembers: ‘He stood out like a beacon. He was different, far above the rest of the young players, believe me. He was as near a genius as you could get. He was a great dribbler, with a real sense of style, even when he was young. He could run fast with the ball. He had techniques that the rest of us lads did not even realize existed until we went to professional clubs six years later. That gave him this special aura. Now don’t get me wrong, he was a good mixer with the other lads. But, for all that he was in your company, you always had a sense that his mind was elsewhere, thinking about football. He knew that, with his talent, he was going to get away. And he was so passionate, competitive. I remember going to watch a school game one Saturday morning, and I caught sight of Bobby arguing with the referee.

“What’s the matter over there?” I asked a spectator.

“It’s young Chuckie. His team is winning seven-nowt and yet he’s been arguing with the ref for the last five minutes that they should have been granted another goal.”

That was so like Bobby. He wanted to win all the time.’

Rob Storey agrees. ‘Bobby was always small for his age and went by the name of “Little Bobby”. Maybe it was because of the low centre of gravity that he could control the ball so well. When we were playing in Hirst Park, everyone always wanted him in their team, because he was so much better than the rest of us, even though he was younger than most.’ Evan Martin, who later went to grammar school with Bobby, recalls seeing him in a junior match: ‘Bobby was only seven years old then, but already he was running rings round lads who were 11. He had terrific speed, one-touch skills and lovely balance. My father, who was a football fanatic and was also watching, turned to me and said, “Watch that kid Charlton. He’ll make a name for himself.’”

Bobby’s talent was in direct contrast to Jack, who failed to shine amongst his contemporaries, as Rob Storey remembers: ‘In all honesty, he was little better than me. Physically, he stood out a mile because of his height and long neck, but, when it came to football skills, though he was a solid full-back, he was so inferior to Bobby that it was an embarrassment.’ Jackie Lothian says their destinies could not have looked more different. ‘We all knew that Bobby would be a footballer, but we never thought Jack would be one. He was no better than anyone else. You see, he had no motivation. The thought of a career in the game had never entered his mind.’

Jack had the same character on the field as he was to show at Leeds, aggressive, uncompromising. But rather than playing centre-half, he was generally a full-back in his early games. And Bobby Whitehead says that this was his biggest problem. ‘Being tall, he was good in the air but, at left-back, I think he was out of position. I kept him out of our school team for a few games when I was 14 and he was 15. But when we had a Cup match, our usual centre-half was off sick, so Jack moved in there. My father, who was watching, said afterwards, “That’s the lad’s position. He had a brilliant game.’”

Perhaps the greatest myth about the Charlton upbringing in football is that Cissie taught Bobby how to play football. Folklore has it that, to quote Bobby, ‘Being a Milburn with football coursing deep in her veins, she took me out on the slag heaps of Ashington and showed me everything from selling a dummy to scoring from 50 yards.’ But this tale is untrue. For Bobby was a totally instinctive footballer, with a natural sense of how to play. Moreover, though Cissie provided exactly the right environment for her football-crazy son, she only once gave him direct, personal coaching. This happened when he was already 15, was at Manchester United and had played for the England Schoolboys. After one of these schoolboy internationals, Cissie had been talking to the chairman of the selectors, who said that Bobby’s slowness on the turn was a serious weakness. When she returned to Ashington with Bobby, she decided to give him some specialized training. Adopting the methods that her own father, Tanner, had used when coaching sprinters, she took Bobby to Hirst Park early in the morning and had him running backwards and forwards until his speed on the turn gradually increased. ‘I suppose that to a stranger it may have looked odd to see a 15 year old training like that with his mother, but this was Ashington and everyone knew I was football mad,’ she said.

Cissie’s own brothers were a bigger influence on Bobby, particularly his Uncle George, who was at Chesterfield. In his summer holidays, Bobby went down to the club and joined in the training with the professionals. The hardened footballers were kind to him, allowing him to run all over the field and even to take penalties against goalkeeper Ray Middleton. After training, they took him to lunch or to the dog track or the golf club. If they went to the pub, Bobby sat outside with a tonic water. What really struck Bobby was the amount of swearing amongst the players. One incident particularly stood out in his memory, when a player who had been dropped had a ferocious, expletive-filled row with the manager. It brought home to Bobby, sitting quietly in the corner of the dressing room, the realities of life as a professional footballer.

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph in 1973, Bobby spoke about the influence of Cissie’s family and his youthful approach as footballer. ‘My uncles made a big impression on me. They used to tell me I had a terrific backheel. That probably does not sound much now, but then, there was no-one doing it much, not even in the League. The game just came naturally to me. It surprised me when other boys couldn’t kick or fell over. Why hadn’t they the same balance? I thought they were unusual, rather than me. From watching as a kid and kicking around in the street, my philosophy of the game was always as an out-and-out forward. I never put my foot in – getting the ball was other players’ work.’

It was an outlook that in later years would delight millions of fans – and enrage some of his closest colleagues.

CHAPTER TWO The Migrants (#ulink_aa84931e-b945-5f81-ba67-6244a793ac03)

Jack and Bobby had been on divergent paths since their earliest years, and the gap between them became much wider in adolescence, when they went to different secondary schools.

Both of them had attended the Hirst North Primary School, a traditional red-brick building in the heart of Ashington. Like so many others, the sports master of the school, Norman McGuinness, immediately recognized Bobby’s outstanding gifts: ‘There wasn’t much he could be coached in. My first memory is seeing this small lad of nine, playing football with the 14-year-olds and just waltzing through them. It didn’t take the wisdom of Solomon to see that he had great natural ability. Even at nine he had a body swerve and natural check that would take the other man the wrong way.’ Inevitably, with Bobby as the captain, his school team was triumphant, winning the East Northumberland Junior Schools League Championship in 1949. In one match, Bobby’s dominance had ensured that his side was leading 12–0 at half-time, and Norman McGuinness was forced to tell him, ‘I want no more goals. You’re humiliating the other side and that’s bad sport.’ It is a reflection of the austerity of post-war Britain that Bobby’s team played in shorts fashioned from old blackout curtains by one of the teachers.

Bobby was not just much more successful than Jack on the soccer field. He also outshone him academically, as Jack later admitted: Tm afraid I was a bit of a non-starter. I just wasn’t interested in subjects like English and maths. Robert was different. Not for him the wayward glances to what was happening outside the classroom. He was attentive and bright. And his handwriting was the envy of the whole class.’

In view of this testimony from Jack, he can hardly have been shocked when he failed his 11-plus and had to go to Hirst Park Secondary Modern School, while his younger brother won a scholarship to grammar school. But some of their contemporaries do not remember Bobby being as clever as Jack has claimed. In fact, Bobby, like Jack, initially failed his 11-plus, and only won a grammar school place after taking a second test, known as the ‘review’. Alan Lavelle says: ‘There were a lot in our class who were brighter than Bobby. To be honest, I was a bit surprised when Bobby got into grammar – I did not think he was that good a scholar.’ Bobby himself has said that he was not the academic type. ‘I neglected my lessons and found it difficult to do my homework because my mind was always on football. I was so totally convinced I would be a footballer that I could not concentrate on anything else. But I regret not working harder. I wish I had studied my English and maths, so today I would be able to explain myself better.’

Nevertheless, for all such weaknesses, Bobby was proud to have gained his scholarship to Morpeth Grammar School. But then a complication arose. His family discovered Morpeth did not play soccer, preferring the socially superior game of rugby. Understandably, Bobby was distraught. The headmaster of Hirst Primary, James Hamilton, also thought it would be a ‘tragic waste’ to send Bobby to ‘one of those snooty places that did not like football’ – to use his phrase. So Hamilton, backed up by the formidable figure of Cissie Charlton, approached Northumberland County Council and explained the exceptional circumstances of Bobby’s case. With a foresight not always shown by municipal bureaucrats, the education committee agreed that Bobby could be transferred to Bedlington Grammar, south of Ashington, a school which played football.

Bobby began at Bedlington in the autumn of 1949. Evan Martin, another Bedlington pupil, recalls that Bobby was eagerly awaited at the school. ‘When he arrived we were already expecting him because of his local reputation. Everyone wanted him in their house so he could play for their house team. And then this kid comes in, with small, thin legs, looking anything but a footballer. But he soon showed that he could play. Even when he was 12, he was picked for teams of 18 year olds. He was that good, with wonderful silky skills. Bobby would get the ball with a man on him – he was always very heavily marked – and with his first touch he had beaten him. I never saw him head the ball much. If he got a high ball, he would chest it down. If he hit the ball anywhere around the penalty area, the keeper had no chance. He was even good in goal. Once, in a house match, the regular keeper was injured so Bobby went in and was fabulous. You could see he was gifted at all sports, whether it be snooker or cricket. As a batsman he would get into line and had all the shots. I once said to him, “Bobby, you could have been a good cricketer.” He replied, “Ah, that stuff wasn’t for me.”’

Evan Martin, who was close to Bobby, has other memories of him as a grammar school pupil: ‘He was very unassuming, a smashing lad really. He never, ever boasted, even when he was picked for England Schoolboys. He was reasonably bright, though, like me, he was not brilliant at mathematics or science. He was quiet, deep, never really let on what he was really thinking, though he was a good mixer and had a lovely sense of humour. There was a group of about five of us, led by a lad called Tucker Robinson, who was a character with greased back hair, like Henry Winkler as the Fonz. Bobby was a colliery lad first and foremost, and if there were any tricks going, he would be there. We used to go to the pictures a lot in Ashington, and I remember one night, after we had been to see The Jolson Story, he sang songs from the film all the way from the cinema to the bus stop. Bobby loved the music of people like Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.’

Evan Martin says that Bobby was neither especially good looking or popular with girls when he was at Bedlington. ‘He was short and he had this problem with his hair, a double crown at the back which would stick up and he was always trying to plaster it down. But when he was 14, he did go out with a lovely girl called Norma Outhwaite. She and Bobby were beautifully suited because they had the same temperaments: nice, straightforward, easy to get on with.’

Among the boys of Bedlington, according to Martin, ‘There was a mystique about Bobby, because of his football. Everyone knew he was going to be a top professional, playing for England.’ But this admiration was not shared by elements within the school establishment, which prided itself on academic attainment and frowned on the idea of a young lad thinking only of football as a professional career. Cissie Charlton wrote that this conflict between Bobby’s interests and the school’s ‘meant that those days at Bedlington Grammar were not very happy ones’. The school’s attitude was illustrated by two incidents which happened to Bobby. The first occurred during a lesson in the physics laboratory, which looked out on to the playing fields. Sitting on a bench by the window, Bobby was distracted by the sight of some boys having a football practice. Suddenly the teacher, Tommy Simmons, rounded on him: ‘Charlton, you’d be wise to pay more attention to the blackboard than to the games outside. This is where your future lies, in your schoolwork. You’ll never make a living as a footballer.’

The second arose when Bobby had been picked to play for England Schoolboys. Amazingly, the headmaster, Mr James, refused him permission to travel down to Wembley for the game. ‘You’re a scholar, first and foremost,’ he said. The sports master, George Benson, was more understanding. Without the head’s knowledge, he sneaked Bobby out of the school and drove him to Newcastle station for the rail trip to London.

George Benson was not the only Bedlington teacher to admire Bobby. Another was Tom Hedderley, the French master who was also involved with sport. Now in his eighties and living in Newcastle, he gave me his recollection of teaching Bobby: ‘I will never forget my first sight of him. It was during a games lesson and, because it had been raining heavily, the football pitch was wet. We used heavy leather balls in those days, which were not waterproof. One of the balls came rolling out to this little kid, who was not the size of two penny-worth of copper. And he just smacked it. I can still see it, rising all the way from the edge of 18-yard area, thudding against the bar and then bouncing back halfway up the pitch,’ Tom Hedderley remembers one match, the final of the local Blake Cup, when Bobby’s tremendous local reputation worked against him. ‘We were playing Blyth and it was a needle match. Blyth had worked out that their only hope of winning was to stifle Bobby – and they succeeded, winning 1–0. In desperation, our lads kept giving the ball to Bobby to see what he could do. But every time he got it, there were about six Blyth boys straight on to him. It was just impossible for him to get through.’

Hedderley continues: ‘Bobby was naturally tremendously popular in school, but he never played on it, never became swell-headed. As in his later career, he was very gentlemanly on the football field. Everyone respected him, not only because he was a damn good footballer but also because of his nice nature. He was not an outstanding pupil, but he was in the upper stream for most of his time with us. In my subject French, for instance, he got by without showing any signs of being a linguist.’ Hedderley disputes the view that Bobby was especially withdrawn. ‘Yes, he did not like being thrust forward, but he was not reticent. I would have actually called him happy-go-lucky. He worked steadily, though it always seemed that his mind was on football. We talked about him a lot in the staffroom because we knew he was going to be someone special.’ Like others, Tom Hedderley saw the graphic contrast in Bobby’s parents. ‘His dad was a really nice fella. Sometimes, he used to come and watch on Saturday mornings. He was a very quiet man, the opposite of Cissie.’

Bill Hodgkiss, Bobby’s form master, told me that ‘Bobby was an average academic pupil, a well-behaved, popular lad who was never in any trouble. In fact, he was the sort of boy who would try and quieten down trouble rather than cause it. He was relatively quiet, not outwardly vivacious, but I would not have called him withdrawn.’

Hodgkiss, like everyone else, knew that Bobby’s only ambition was to play professional football. And, not long after his arrival at Bedlington, it became clear that he would soon achieve this goal. By the age of 14, Bobby was already the star, not just of his school, but also of East Northumberland District Boys and Northumberland County Juniors. News of his brilliance was now reaching top clubs across the country, and the first to act was the one Bobby eventually joined, Manchester United.

Ironically, it was Jack’s secondary modern school, not Bedlington, that helped to secure the interest of United. For the Hirst Park School’s headmaster, Stuart Hemingway, was a friend of the legendary United scout, Joe Armstrong, the man who secured so many of the Babes for Matt Busby. Having been told by Cissie about the lack of encouragement Bobby was receiving at Bedlington, Hemingway wrote to Joe Armstrong, urging him to come to the north-east to see Bobby. On 9 February 1953, Armstrong arrived at Hebburn to watch Bobby playing for East Northumberland Schoolboys. It was a bitterly cold day. A covering of ice lay on the rock-hard pitch. Oh, I can see it all now,’ recalled Armstrong nearly 20 years later. It was a thin February morning and I had to peer through the mist. Bobby didn’t do so much that day, but it was enough for me. He was like a gazelle and he had a shot as hard as any grown man, yet he was a kid of only 14.’

Armstrong was so impressed that immediately after the game, he approached Bobby and asked him if he would like to join United when he had finished school. Convinced of Bobby’s talent, he did not raise the question of a month’s trial, the usual condition for young players. To Cissie Charlton, who was also, inevitably, at the game, he said: ‘I don’t mean to flatter you, Missus, but your son will play for England before he is 21.’ Armstrong then informed Matt Busby, the United manager, of his new find. On his scout’s recommendation, Busby went to see Bobby play for England Schoolboys in a trial. He was just as impressed, marvelling at Bobby’s grace, power and physique. ‘I decided then that I wanted him for my team. He was a must, with his timing of a pass, his jinking run, his shooting. We needed no more qualifications,’ recalled Busby.

Within weeks of this trial, Bobby was in the full England Schoolboys team, prompting a flattering profile in the Newcastle Journal: ‘Bobby Charlton, a 15-year-old Bedlington Grammar School student, is the first member of the famous Ashington family of footballers to have received this honour. The young inside-forward, whose ambition is to become a sports journalist, is the second son of Mr and Mrs R Charlton of 114 Beatrice Street, Ashington and the grandson of the late “Tanner” Milburn. It is interesting to recall that “Tanner” Milburn prophesied some time before his death that, of all the footballers in the family, Bobby would be the finest. This prophecy looks like materializing as Bobby possesses a remarkable record in school football, equally at home in either inside-forward position.’ Bobby was part of a powerful young England team which drew with the Scots, beat Wales by four goals in Cardiff, and crushed the Irish by eight at Portsmouth. The most memorable game for Bobby was at Wembley, again against the Welsh, when, in front of 90,000 screaming young fans, he scored twice in a 3–3 draw. ‘When I walked out on to the pitch, the stadium engulfed me and I played the game in a sort of trance. It was over before I realized what was happening,’ he told the Daily Express. His first goal resulted from the kind of long-range shot which was to become his trademark, as he recalled. ‘I whacked it and then saw it moving away from the keeper all the time. I knew it must be a goal as soon as I hit it.’ His second goal was a poke through a mass of bodies, while he also made England’s third, crossing for Maurice Pratt to head home.

By now an array of clubs was after Charlton, including many of the biggest in the country, like Wolves, Arsenal and Sunderland. Kenneth Wolstenholme, the renowned commentator, told me: ‘I saw Bobby play for England Schoolboys and you could hardly get into Wembley for all the scouts who wanted to sign him.’ This pressure was kept up at all hours of the day and night in the Charltons’ home in Ashington. At one stage, no less than 18 top clubs were trying to take him on. Cissie recalled, ‘I’d be cleaning the fireplace in the morning and I’d look round and there would be another one standing behind me. There were times when we had one scout in the living room and another in the kitchen. The Arsenal scout, in particular, always seemed to be on the doorstep.’ In fact, Cissie was quite keen for Bobby to join Arsenal, because of the club’s reputation for looking after young players, while Bobby himself has said that he was attracted to the fame of a big London club. ‘I was very tempted to go to Arsenal. Since I was a northerner born and bred you would have thought that Highbury would be the last place for me. Yet the temptation was a very real one. Arsenal still has tremendous glamour and there’s almost a physical attraction in going to a club which boasts such names as Hapgood, Bastin, James, Male and the Comptons.’

But, despite all the advances from Arsenal and the other clubs, Bobby decided to stick with the earlier offer from Manchester United. There were a number of reasons. One was that Joe Armstrong, the scout, had been the first on the scene, showing an interest before Bobby had even been selected for a schoolboy international. ‘Whoever was going to be first was going to be in with a real shout. I wanted to be a footballer as quickly as possible and Joe was the first,’ he told Tony Gubba in a 1993 BBC interview. Since that initial meeting, Armstrong had maintained regular contact with the Charltons – to such an extent that when the local education authority objected to all the scouts following Bobby from match to match, Armstrong passed himself off as his ‘uncle’, while his wife became ‘Aunt Sally’.

Just as importantly, given the influence of Cissie on the Charlton household, Armstrong made sure he cultivated her. It was the kind of role he relished as much as talent hunting, for the tiny, grey-haired, crinkle-faced Armstrong delighted in his ability to charm the working-class mothers of his young quarries. As Eamon Dunphy, journalist and ex-Manchester United youth player, puts it: ‘Joe was a delightful man with a shrewd mind and an instinctive grasp of the human condition. Women liked him. He was kindly yet flirtatious in a comforting way. Mothers were apt to be apprehensive about big city life with all its temptations. Joe understood their fears only too well.’

If Arsenal had glamour, then so did Manchester United in abundance. By the early 1950s, United had become the most exciting force in British soccer, winning the League in 1951/52 and gaining admirers across the country for their flowing style and brilliant young players like Johnny Berry, Duncan Edwards and Roger Byrne. When Bobby Chariton visited Maine Road for a schools trial match in March 1953 between East Northumberland Boys and Manchester Boys, another future United youth star, Wilf McGuinness, was in the Manchester team. ‘I was captain most of the time of everything I played in and I was a bit cocky. I saw this young lad. He came up to me after the game when we had beaten them, and said, “We may both be going to United. My name is Bobby Charlton,” and I thought, “Who the hell is Bobby Charlton?” He was very weak-looking in those days and made little impression on me. All I thought was, well, he’s not a bad little player.’

By coincidence, this was the day that Tommy Taylor, the centre-forward, signed for United from Barnsley for a British transfer record of £29,999 – Matt Busby had knocked a pound off the fee so Taylor would not be lumbered with the title of the first £30,000 player. After Bobby’s game, the local Manchester boys rushed off to see United, while Bobby had to travel home to Northumberland. As the bus took him to the rail station, he passed Old Trafford and glimpsed thousands of fans queuing eagerly to get into the ground. The whole experience only stoked the fires of his enthusiasm for the club.

Throughout his life, Bobby may have been unassuming, but he never lacked confidence in his ability. Certain that he could compete at the highest level, he therefore wanted a club which would provide him with the best training. Manchester United, he thought, fitted the bill because of its reputation for a strong youth policy. It was a policy born largely of necessity. Immediately after the war, when Matt Busby was appointed manager, the club had been desperately short of cash, largely because Old Trafford had been badly bombed by the Luftwaffe. Though the financial situation had improved by the turn of the decade, Busby was still reluctant to spend heavily in the transfer market. He preferred the acquisition of youthful excellence as the route to success, becoming particularly adept at exploiting the pool of talent available in schools football, a source largely ignored by other clubs. It is a remarkable fact that between 1951 and 1957, the golden years of the Busby Babes, United bought just one player, Tommy Taylor. So many of the other great names of that era, such as Albert Scanlon, David Pegg, Mark Jones, Wilf McGuinness and Eddie Colman, came directly from school, just as Bobby Charlton did. Ron Routledge, Bobby’s Ashington contemporary, says that Bobby’s desire to join United reflected his self-belief. ‘He said to me, just before he signed, “Ronnie, I’m going to be the best.” That is where you’ve really got to admire him. He could have gone to any other club and been quite comfortable. But he didn’t because he wanted to be with the top young players – and United had the name then because of the Busby Babes. There was no way he was ever going anywhere else.’

When he signed for United, many in the north-east expressed surprise that he had not joined Newcastle, effectively his local side. In fact, his parents even received angry mail from several Newcastle fans, complaining about the decision to allow Bobby to leave the area. But, as Bobby later explained, it was Cissie’s own cousin, ‘Wor Jackie’ Milburn, who was instrumental in ensuring that Bobby did not sign for Newcastle: ‘He came armed with an offer to give me a job on a north-eastern newspaper but he was completely honest with me. He told me it was not such a good club at that time and that, what organization there was, was inefficient. He didn’t believe in the way they treated their young players and the training was almost non-existent. They just went to the ground on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, kicked a ball around and there was no coaching.’

The other great club in the north-east, Sunderland, was never really in the running after an incident in which Bobby felt he was rebuffed by them. This happened on that frost-bitten morning in February 1953 when Joe Armstrong from United turned up to see Bobby playing for East Northumberland Boys. A scout from Sunderland was also at the match but at the final whistle, instead of going to see Bobby, he approached Ron Routledge, the East Northumberland goalkeeper, and made him an offer. According to Cissie, ‘Bobby was really hurt to have been overlooked by Sunderland that day. Later, when Sunderland joined a long queue of major clubs trying to recruit Bobby, he had his own back. This time it was Bobby who did the turning down.’ But Sunderland did not give up easily. Even when Bobby was travelling down to Manchester to sign formally for United, the Sunderland scout Charlie Ferguson followed him and got on the same train in the hope of persuading Bobby to change his mind.

Ray Wood, the former Manchester United and England goalkeeper who played throughout the 1950s with Bobby, says that Sunderland would have been absolutely the wrong club for him because of its mean spirit and lack of support for youngsters. ‘Like Bobby, I’m from the north-east and Sunderland had wanted to sign me after I had played in the County Cup Final at Roker. They were known as the Bank of England team, they were so rich. After a meeting with the manager, Bill Murray, I was offered the forms to become a professional. Before I had looked at them, he asked, “How much were your expenses?” I said about one shilling, and ten-and-a-half pence. He gave me two shillings and asked for change. I could not believe it. I didn’t sign after that. I don’t think Bobby would have done as well if he had joined Sunderland or Newcastle. Neither wanted good young players to escape but, unlike United, they never give them a proper chance to develop.’

For all the high-minded talk of youth policies, there could also have been a simpler reason why United were able to win the battle for Bobby’s signature: money. There were persistent claims that, as at some other top clubs, United offered financial rewards to the parents of talented youngsters – and this may have happened in Bobby’s case. As Ron Routledge said to me, ‘Bobby was off to United, yes, because of the youth policy, but also because of the little incentives on offer.’ Cissie denied, in her autobiography, that she or husband were ever tempted: ‘The high-pressure tactics employed by the more unscrupulous scouts included some pretty lucrative bribes. Yet the plain fact of the matter was that taking bribes was illegal and we just couldn’t bring ourselves to do it, even if they were an accepted fact of professional football life in those days. We were honest, working-class people with a very clear idea of right and wrong and no amount of money was going to change that.’

But the distinguished football writer Brian Glanville gave me a different account. ‘I was once told by Jackie Milburn, with whom I was very friendly, that Bobby was all set to join Newcastle United. The deal had been done and dusted and Bobby was going to get a newspaper job. But Manchester United ensured it did not happen. According to Jackie’s story, Cissie said to him, “I’m terribly sorry, but United offered us £750. What could I do?’” Brian Glanville continues: ‘I have put that story to Jack Charlton and he has denied it but it would hardly be a surprise if it were true. At the time there were two clubs which were absolutely notorious for suborning young players and they were Manchester United and Chelsea. Matt Busby, for all his genial, incorruptible image, was actually a very ruthless man.’ Glanville points to the example of Duncan Edwards, who was born in Dudley in the heart of the West Midlands. It would have been obvious for him to join Wolves or West Brom, both outstanding clubs in the 1950s, but instead he was enticed to Old Trafford. And, as John Kennedy wrote in his biography of Tommy Taylor, there were “rumours going around at the time of his transfer that Matt had offered all sorts of inducements to persuade Tommy”.’

Rumours about such payments were given more credence in 1979, long after Matt Busby had retired, when a Granada World in Action programme revealed the web of unscrupulousness at Old Trafford. Most of the programme focused on the actions of United’s late chairman, ‘Champagne Louis’ Edwards – father of the current chairman Martin – who made a fortune in the meat business, partly through the manipulation of local authority catering contracts, and used his wealth to gain control at Old Trafford in the 1960s. Shortly after the programme was screened, he died of a heart attack while having a bath. Granada researchers uncovered a wealth of evidence suggesting that United were in the habit of paying more than just transfer fees. Particularly damning was the testimony of John Aston, one of United’s great players of the post-war era and junior team coach since 1954, who, in a sworn affidavit, said, ‘Some of these boys were induced to sign because United offered them or their parents backhand payments. In some cases I was personally involved in obtaining cash and handing it to the families of boys.’ As Aston explained, money would be secretly raised through fictitious expense accounts, and then used to pay off families. Such was the strength of Aston’s evidence that Matt made little real effort to dispute it, while two other books repeated the claims. One, Michael Crick and David Smith’s Betrayal of a Legend, states: ‘£500 or £1,000 might be handed over in banknotes. Alternatively, the father of a promising young player might be employed as a part-time scout, though, of course, he was not expected to do anything for this,’ And Eamon Dunphy, in his brilliantly vivid and subtle biography of Sir Matt, A Strange Kind of Glory, writes: ‘Year by year, Matt Busby had found himself sucked into a moral quagmire. A few quid in an envelope to the father of a talented youngster for scouting, no bribe intended.’ This does not, of course, necessarily mean that all young players, like Bobby, were acquired through such methods, or that they would have been aware of such approaches by United. But it does put into perspective some of the sugary guff that is written about United and Busby, as if he was too virtuous ever to be involved in the more mercenary aspects of professional football.

On 16 June 1953 Busby finally got what he wanted, when Bobby officially signed for United, thus beginning an association with the club that lasts to this day. So highly regarded was Bobby that the Daily Mail recorded the event. ‘This may sound a minor signing but it is of major importance in a soccer world which is acutely aware of the value of developing youngsters. Charlton, the star of the England v Wales match last season, has superb positional sense and ball control.’ Before leaving for Manchester he played out his last season for Bedlington. Evan Martin recalls, ‘We had a hell of a team in 1952/53, thanks mainly to Bobby’s skills. We used to go to really hard secondary schools, like North Shields, and win easily. In the very last match of the season, we were on the coach and Bobby asked Tucker Robinson, “What’s the highest individual score this season?”

“I got three against Alnwick,” replied Tucker.

“Well, I’ll get four today.”

And he did. Two of them were 30-yard piledrivers. The goalkeeper did not even see them.’

Elder brother Jack had played no role in the saga of Bobby’s move to United. There was no army of scouts after him, no club representative offering Cissie a fistful of cash for his services. Yet it is one of the strange twists of this story that Jack was actually taken on by a League club before Bobby. For most of his early years, Jack had rarely impressed anyone with his football. He was merely another competent youngster, a decent stopper of the kind that could be found throughout the north-east. He played for his school, district and YMCA side, but did not come near to his county team, never mind the England Schoolboys. In fact, he was dropped for several games from his district because of his habit of standing still, as if wondering what had happened, when he was beaten by a winger. ‘You’ll have to sharpen your wits up,’ he was told. Evan Martin says: ‘I remember watching Jack playing for the East Northumberland Juniors. He was at left-back and he was big, gangly and awkward. He did not impress me one bit.’

Indeed, it is a remarkable fact that the man who later gained a World Cup winner’s medal could not even get in the Ashington FC junior team. Ken Prior, who grew up with Jack, explains: ‘Jimmy Denmark, the former Newcastle centre-half, came to manage Ashington and the club decided to have a junior side. So the call went out for all the budding youngsters to come to Portland Park. We had a trial and Jack did not even get picked for the final squad. I didn’t think he played too badly but he did not stand out, certainly not for his size. Jack went home, a bit upset, and after he’d gone, Jimmy Denmark said, “You know, that lad will never make a player.”’

Yet, as he approached his 15th birthday, there was something about Jack – his size, his strength, above all his ‘Milburn’ heritage – which meant that he could attract the interest of a League club. After playing well for the Ashington YMCA Under-18 side in a match against Barkworth, he was approached by a Leeds scout, who offered him a trial at Elland Road. In his later career, Jack would sometimes maintain that he, like Bobby, was always destined to be a professional footballer. ‘Neither of us had ever considered anything but playing the game for a living,’ he told the News of the World in April 1973.