This provoked Matt Busby into one last gamble in an effort to retrieve the Double which would have crowned arguably the most brilliant piece of team building and replenishing in the history of English football. Wood returned to goal and Duncan Edwards, the man for all situations and seasons, was pushed into attack. With Ray back between the posts Villa had lost the numerical advantage they had cleverly exploited with McParland’s scoring burst between the 67th and 71st minutes and Tommy Taylor retrieved a goal with seven minutes to go. We roused ourselves to a frenzy of effort, winning a stream of corners, but Villa hung on to their advantage.
Busby’s post-game speech was another testament to his style. He thanked the team for its efforts, and noted that no one could question our commitment or our ability. Sometimes football was like life. You didn’t always get what you deserved, but the trick was to continue to believe in yourself – and never to forget the need to do the right thing. He was proud of us all. We were young and there was still so much to achieve. It should not be forgotten that we had won our second straight league title and reached the semi-finals of the European Cup. He raised a glass to the future of Manchester United.
9
INDESTRUCTIBLE
A FEW MONTHS after the FA Cup final, we beat Aston Villa 4–0 in the Charity Shield. Ray Wood and Peter McParland were captains for the game, which meant that they shook hands and closed, as warmly as possible in the circumstances, a chapter that had caused much bitterness among United fans. I now believe that Villa had been charged up that day, nobody more so than Peter, and I am convinced that what he did came out of determination to steal an edge rather than from any bad intention. However, less than a year after, the sense that we had indeed been victims of some very rough larceny still surfaced strongly if ever the subject was raised. But then football, like life, rolls along and on Saturday, 1 February 1958, at Highbury, we would probably have laughed at the idea that somehow we were a team who might draw more than the occasional wound from unkind fate.
We beat Arsenal in a stupendous game, one that some would tell me later was the best they ever saw. It was also true that no one at that time could have been less susceptible than me to a bout of brooding over the future. The team flowed beautifully and once again I had that boyish feeling that I was indestructible. I may still have been in the dog days of my army life, but as a professional footballer I was touching new levels of confidence in my ability. The dictums of Jimmy Murphy were no longer a set of difficult demands. They formed the code which I knew now could open all the doors.
However, this was only after I had noted that in football more than most places it is a tide which can suddenly change direction. Back in the autumn, for example, it was hard not to view prospects rather more pessimistically. There had been a dip in the team’s performance that had brought the worry that the tumultuous events of the previous season might be bringing a reaction. I was also growing a little restive that Billy Whelan and Dennis Viollet had reclaimed their places. Increasing the frustration was the fact that neither in their form nor their fitness were Billy or Dennis offering much hope that I could quickly reclaim some of the attention that had come to me in such a flood the previous spring.
By the start of February 1958, however, the last of the doubts were over – both, it seemed, for me and the team. In the game against Arsenal we were marching again and with the sharpest touch of my career I was able to play a significant part.
We had returned to the basis of all previous success. It is an aspect of football that it is very easy to forget what first made you a force. It is supposed to be a simple game, but lost sometimes is the amount of work and thought necessary to make it so. You win a few games and you assume that winning is a right as much as an achievement. You stop doing the things that made you great – and this is when a great teacher and enforcer like Jimmy Murphy plays his most important role. If he does it well, he becomes part of your conscience.
For me it was a return to the truth that I had discovered just a few weeks after my debut against Charlton the season before, and was then underlined by Tommy Taylor and David Pegg before the semi-final with Birmingham City.
Lesson one had came against the Wolves team which Stan Cullis had built on such solid foundations. In fact at that point, back in November 1956, they were in some ways superior to us, despite Matt Busby’s accumulation of outstanding talent. They had worked relentlessly and they were in every sense a team. In that first season with the seniors, I was told constantly how difficult it was going to be, moving up to First Division football. You couldn’t afford to make a single mistake in the process of nullifying everything the opposition were bound to throw in your direction. Against a poor Charlton Athletic that message was hardly borne out; against Wolves it was underlined by every minute of the game at Old Trafford – my third in the top flight.
Though Peter Broadbent, an inside forward I admired so much for his craft and his eye for dangerous situations, was missing, Wolves were still formidably strong with England men like Billy Wright, Ron Flowers, Bill Slater, Dennis Wilshaw and Jimmy Mullen. Before the
