My Manchester United Years: The Autobiography

of those I was closest to at the time of the crash, particularly Sarah Edwards and the mothers of David Pegg and Eddie Colman. I also talked with Roger Byrne’s wife Joy, a very strong woman who seemed so well matched with the man I admired so much from that certain distance. I went to the Colman house in Archie Street, and in that place where I had spent so many happy hours I was overwhelmed by sadness. Eddie’s father Dick was suffering terribly and he told me that at the heart of all the pain was the fact that in Munich there had initially been some confusion in the identification of bodies. This was distressing, but here at least there was some reassurance when Eddie’s body finally came home. His pet dog had waited each day on the corner of the street, but when the coffin finally arrived he immediately ran to sit beside it.

In the North East I was shielded from the emotion that was being publicly expressed in every street and pub and corner shop in Manchester, but of course there was no protection against my own memories. I was trying to heal my feelings, and get some grasp on what happened, among my own people. I made several visits to our local doctor and I did talk with him about how I felt, but there was no truth in a report, attributed to him, that I had said I would never play football again.

The most crucial development in my recovery to the point where I felt I could play again, run out in the red shirt of Manchester United, came when the club was required to play its first game after the accident, an FA Cup fourth round tie against Sheffield Wednesday at Old Trafford. I was in a local pub with my father and a few of the lads when I realised I had to be at the match. I asked my uncle Tommy Skinner, the only member of our family to own a car, if he would drive me down. He agreed straight away. In those days, in that part of the world, you shared everything with your family – a pig, vegetables from the allotment, a car. It was a long drive down to Manchester on those old roads and I don’t suppose I was the best conversationalist, but I didn’t have to make excuses to Uncle Tommy.

The confusion before the game about who would play against Wednesday was so deep that the match programme was printed with a blank page where the United team should have been. The club had been granted special dispensation to make emergency signings, and Jimmy Murphy had invested in two of the elements he considered most vital to a successful team … some craft and some iron in defence. The craft was supplied by little Ernie Taylor, the Blackpool and England inside forward who had acted as such a brilliant manservant to Stanley Matthews in the 1953 cup final. For the hard-tackling, Jimmy opted for the extremely tough Stan Crowther, a member of the Aston Villa defence who had torn away our chance of the Double.

The emotion in and around Old Trafford was so extraordinary that, among all your other reactions, you had to feel a little sympathy for the Wednesday players. They were suddenly the team almost everyone in football wanted to see beaten.

I went into the dressing room before the game and the scene that greeted me was overwhelming. Harry Gregg and Bill Foulkes were there and, with the exception of Shay Brennan and the new recruits, they were surrounded by kids from not only the reserves but also the third team – boys like Bobby Harrop, Reg Hunter and Reg Holland who had been bumped up into the squad, although they didn’t actually play in the match. None of them would go on to have famous careers, but they had this one incredible moment in football history, and I could see on their faces as I gave each of them a hug that they were utterly committed to proving that they had every right to be at this famous club.

Shay, who was a wing half at the time, played forward and scored two goals. When they went in you wondered if Old Trafford might be split apart by the great tide of cheers. As the night wore on, as the emotion kept hitting new levels, I said to Uncle Tommy, ‘Well, this is ridiculous, me going back to the North East from here.’ For a moment, I thought, ‘No, I’ll not go back, I will not budge from Manchester,’ but then I thought it would be better if I did return home for a couple of days. I did have some things to do there: I had to collect some clothes and I had to thank my family and all my people for the support they had given me at such a terrible time.

After the game I told Jimmy Murphy, ‘I have to come back – I’ll be here in a couple of days.’ Jimmy said the timing was up to me, but he gave me a hug and he gave me the impression he was very pleased. For me it was as though at least some of the pressure had lifted from my shoulders, and that perhaps the worst of the pain had lessened, at least to a small degree. I knew what I had to do; I had to start playing at the first possible opportunity now. I was also lucky that I could join in a crusade that took on even greater significance, given the unlikelihood that our reduced strength would enable a realistic pursuit of a third straight league title: we could make a run at the FA Cup.

The media attention was a help. It put football back into the equation. It said, in effect, that victory over Sheffield Wednesday could indeed be the starting point of recovery. Nothing then