Busby's Last Crusade: From Munich to Wembley: A Pictorial History

By Jeff Connor

A pictorial history of Manchester United’s rise from the 1958 Munich air disaster to a European Cup win ten years later, and the manager who led them there.

With words from best-selling author Jeff Connor and over 200 images, many of them new to the public, this is one man’s search for his personal Holy Grail, and his determination to get there. This is not a eulogy for Sir Matt Busby. As Connor points out, his roles as a club director after 1968 will always be questioned and that King Arthur would never have succeeded without his knights: Duncan Edwards, Roger Byrne, Bobby Charlton, George Best, Denis Law and, above all, Jimmy Murphy. All of these, and others, lighten the pages of a book certain to be seen by fans everywhere as a permanent memoir of an unforgettable era.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781788853132

Jeff Connor

Jeff Connor is rugby correspondent for the Mail on Sunday. He is the author of eleven books, including an entertaining account of the Tour De France, ‘Wide-Eyed and Legless’, and ‘Up Down and Under’, a diary of the 2001 Lions Rugby Tour to Australia. ‘Pointless, A Season with Britain's Worst Football Team’, will be published by Headline in 2005.

Book preview

IN THE BEGINNING

Munich means different things to different people. For my mother, who is 96 as I write this, it means Chamberlain, Hitler and 1938. For journalists I worked with at the Orlando Sentinel in Florida during the mid-80s it meant the Olympics of 1972 and a massacre (though some preferred to remember Mark Spitz and his five gold medals). The only Chamberlain Floridians seem to have heard of was the Wilt of basketball fame.

But if you ask a football fan, of any age and from any era, Munich means only one thing. It doesn’t take long to become involved in the history and if anyone wishes to see the depths of that involvement try a visit to Old Trafford any 6 February. If there were no ‘official’ ceremony organised by Manchester United plc – in fact were there no plc at all – the faithful would still be there on that day.

There are all types. I met a young couple from Singapore who had been trailing a suitcase on wheels down Warwick Road and had asked for directions. There were middle-aged men who had taken time off work, pensioners and children of every age.

The ritual is always mirrored elsewhere: at Marakana stadium in Belgrade; on a cold day in Dudley, in Salford, Doncaster and Barnsley; by Liam Whelan’s grave in Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery and in Munich, close by the site of the tragedy at the village of Trudering. Irene Beevers, the sister of David Pegg, told me that when she visited her brother at Doncaster’s Adwick-le-Street cemetery she would often find a single, fresh, red rose in the perforated holder on top of the grave. Irene knew why, but never managed to find out who.

Much of this has been chronicled so many times newspapers have struggled to find anything new about Munich. Not that that will stop them from trying, with or without the facts. On 6 February 2008, the Daily Mail spread two of its feature pages which included a photograph of ‘the Busby Babes boarding the flight to Munich from which many of them would never return’. The image was indeed of Manchester United players boarding a plane to Munich . . . but was taken in 1959. They were heading for a fixture against Bayern Munich, their first match abroad since the disaster. Busby is there, along with assistant manager Jimmy Murphy and trainer Jack Crompton, who were not on the Munich flight of 1958. The Daily Express covered the anniversary with an image of a youthful Albert Scanlon ‘who died after the plane crashed’. This was undoubtedly news to Scanlon who not only survived but was still alive 50 years later.

The Sun, inevitably, weighed in with a piece from an eye witness ‘exonerating’ Captain Thain after he had been blamed by the German authorities for not de-icing the aircraft’s wings. In fact, the pilot had been cleared in 1968 and the quotes – from the German rescuer eye witness – had been lifted from Stanley Stewart’s excellent 1986 book, Air Disasters.

How long will this go on? Forever, I would guess.

A photographer friend sent me an email on the day after United’s home win against Huddersfield on 3 February 2018. He had attached a file showing images he had taken pre-match of notables gathering for the memorial ceremony: Harry Gregg, Bobby Charlton, Alex Ferguson, and Jose Mourinho along with directors (though not the owners), current players and fans. Using the sort of pun endemic to newspapers he had added a one-line caption: LAST OF THE TWO?

He obviously meant Gregg and Charlton, who were both in their 80s at the time. Gregg had later promised that this, the 60th anniversary, would be his last and so it proved. On 16 February 2020, the Last of the Two became Last of the One.

On the day Gregg died, I checked who was left: Charlton obviously, Vesna Lukic, the baby Gregg rescued from the blazing cabin, her mother Vera and, given that Vera was four-months pregnant at the time, a son, Zoran should be included. They all live in Serbia, part of the old Yugoslavia, and the last member of the cabin crew, air stewardess Rosemary Cheverton, is 86 and has lived in North Carolina for several years. Goalkeeper Ray Wood died in 2002, Albert Scanlon, the winger turned dock labourer, in 2009, Bill Foulkes, the coal miner turned defender, four years later. Frank Taylor, the only journalist to survive, died the same year as Wood.

Then the close family members, wives or girlfriends, along with the affiliates: Roger Byrne Jnr, son of the club’s revered captain from cancer in 2011 and Sandy Busby, son of Sir Matt, from a heart attack in 2014. John Doherty, a Busby Babe from 1952 to ’57 and a driving force behind fundraising efforts for survivors’ and victims’ families died in 2007. Munich memorial services were becoming like the Cenotaph on Armistice Day: lots of ceremony, but no survivors. Any journalist intent on writing a Munich piece today may struggle for quotes, but there are always the ‘heroes’ by proxy, people who insist they would have been on the flight but missed it for various reasons. In his autobiography, Harry’s Game, Gregg railed at a former teammate, ‘an after-dinner speaker who has lived on it for years, claiming he would have gone to Yugoslavia but for injury’. Gregg wouldn’t name the player in print, but Wilf McGuinness, one of the original Babes and later the manager, used to be popular at corporate hospitality functions where he would tell tales of his days at Old Trafford. He had often claimed he was listed to go to Belgrade and, by implication, death. He was still making the same claims in 2019 during an interview with The Guardian’s Donald McRae (who should really have known better).

The former Old Trafford CEO, Martin Edwards, went one better. Talking to the Mail on Sunday in 2018 in an effort to plug his autobiography, he was asked about the ‘grief of the Munich air disaster’. He obliged with this eye-raiser: his father, Louis, a family friend of Busby, ‘might have been on the plane’ had not a club director blocked his proposal to join the board. Do we thank that club director . . . or blame him? Louis was voted on to a grief-stricken board the day after the disaster and both father and son made millions out of the club. At varying times, too, Manchester police were, as they like to say, ‘investigating allegations’ against both men.

They were always willing to bend a knee to the history of Munich . . . but only when it suited them. Reading the Mail on Sunday piece, I remembered an enlightening interview with John Doherty in 2005 and in particular his description of his visit, eight years previously, to see Edwards at his home in Wilmslow. Doherty had been part of a consortium trying to find the means to support survivors and bereaved families financially. They hadn’t been having much luck.

‘I wanted to ask Martin Edwards about the likelihood of some sort of benefit game for them,’ Doherty said. ‘He replied: But why now, John; why now, after all this time?

‘And I said: Because they are fucking skint, that’s why.’

Illustration

Rosemary Cheverton, front right, with the three other surviving members of the BEA crew: Captain James Thain (left), Radio Officer Bill Rodgers and Stewardess Margaret Bellis (left). Cabin Steward Tom Cable was killed instantly and co-pilot Ken Rayment died in hospital five weeks later.

Illustration

The public got sight of the statue for the first time three years after George Best’s death in 2005 and 40 years after the European Cup win. ‘That’s as close as you’ll get those three embracing each other,’ said one wag to me, pointing at the statue and implying that Best, Law and Charlton were never the best of pals (though Law was friendly with just about anyone). The ‘Holy Trinity’, as some were brave enough to call it, was built by the Scottish sculptor Philip Jackson, who created a similar tribute to Sir Matt Busby.

There were new players, new rivals and even new management, but some things never changed in Manchester: come match time David Meek of the Manchester Evening News would be following United and Peter Gardner, also of the MEN , would be covering City.

Meek, who was 88 when he died in 2018, did this for close to 40 years; Gardner, the whipper-snapper, managed a mere 28 and is still alive as I write this. They were good operators, as they say in the business and better known in the city than several current players.

Running reports (runners) on matchdays, particularly Saturdays, were amazing affairs: an open phone line from wherever United or City were playing, a copytaker at the other end taking down the report and, usually, a choice of three intros (win, lose or draw) ten minutes before the end. It was out on the streets 15 minutes later.

Monday to Friday involved follow-ups: communiques from the manager and his views on the match, injury checks, team news and interviews with players of choice (in the 60s, like the 50s, this was never refused). These sounded like the dream jobs in journalism . . . but there were limitations. Meek and Gardner travelled in the same team coach from match to match and were on friendly terms with players and management and this is never ideal. They could see and hear a lot, but would never dare use it. The first time Meek overstepped the mark and broke an ‘exclusive’ the club wanted to suppress, Busby immediately banned him from the team bus for life. Gardner had similar problems when Howard Kendall took over at Maine Road in 1989. On daily newspapers, too, the same football writers were often embedded to the same teams and it was never wise to step out of line: the club management could make life difficult for you and instead of covering United or City you could end up at a Bury or a Bolton. This was one reason why George Best stories in the 70s were handled not by the Meeks and Gardners of the world but by news reporters for whom being banned by a football club meant absolutely nothing.

Illustration

They got close enough in 2000 when all three were presented with lifetime achievement awards as part of the National Football Awards. The ceremony took place at half-time during the Premiership match against Newcastle United at Old Trafford. goals from Ronny Johnsen and Andy Cole ensured a 2–0 win.

In George’s case, news desks had soon realised that at some part of the week, whether on or off the field, there will be a Best story and they had better not miss it. The media’s view of him was summed up by skysports.com after George died in 2005 and they were trying to flog a video of him: ‘A close look at Northern Ireland and Manchester United genius George Best, who was as well known for his exploits off the field as he was on it.’ His on-the-field exploits were certainly well known to me because I saw most of them. I never came across him off the field and (unlike skysports.com) didn’t feel qualified to discuss his exploits there. Most of that information was supplied by the tabloid press, a group resistant to accuracy. The broadsheets were no better. I can remember one piece in The Guardian in 2001 which shows the extent of the background newspapers were willing to go to. It was just after he ‘had fallen off the wagon again’ as they liked to put it in headmasterly tones: ‘He participated in one heavy drinking session last Monday and continued consuming large amounts of alcohol throughout the week. He was seen drinking in pubs in Ballyhalbert and Donaghadee, near his home on the Ards peninsula, near Belfast.’ Some of the reportage was bizarre. Two packs a day celebrities like Kenneth Tynan or John Huston were never criticised for heavy smoking despite knowing that their emphysema (an illness) would kill them but Best was reviled for the alcoholism (a disease) that would kill him. Incidentally, if Best’s infamous TV interview with Terry Wogan in 1990 proved anything it was that George wasn’t much of a drinker.

Illustration

Kick-off time for the Big Three ahead of the 2–2 draw against Fulham at Craven Cottage on 27 March 1967. The smudger (a word he is said to have invented) on the left is legendary Mirror man Monte Fresco.

Illustration

George Best the teenager in 1964.

So how should we remember him now: the exploits on the field or those off it? The missed training sessions, the failed marriages, the arrests, the very public suicide . . . or the boy in a Northern Ireland shirt reducing Scotland to impotence in a European Championship qualifier and ‘the slim, boyish, dark hair shining in the floodlights as he scythed through the Benfica defence’ (David Meek)? Maybe we should remember George as we remember others whose real addiction was a dislike for convention: Charlie Parker or Louise Brooks or even Errol Flynn – beautiful and gifted but fatally flawed and whose true worth came only after death.

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• Like every other unmarried man at Old Trafford during the Busby era Best was expected to live in digs. Number 9, Aycliffe Avenue, was a red-brick terrace in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, the home of Mrs Fullaway, her son Steven, George and his United team-mate David Sadler (who escaped by marrying local girl Christine Halliday in 1968). George had two spells at No.9, the second being early in 1971 after a series of misdemeanours.

He had deliberately missed a Division One match against Chelsea in January that year, gone into hiding and was eventually tracked down to the Islington flat of Sinéad Cusack, a member of the well-known Irish film, stage and television family.

When the United management did get George back to full-time work and the sanctimonious howling in the media had died down his penance was that he had to move back into digs.

Living with Mrs Fullaway, by all accounts, was a safer option than living with Sinéad Cusack.

A Best-less United, incidentally, won 2–1 at Chelsea.

Illustration

Best used to joke that of all his action pictures Chelsea’s Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris was in most of them. There was one particular goal against Chelsea at Old Trafford when Harris had been told (by Chelsea manager Tommy Docherty) that he was to follow Best everywhere. By half-time he was dizzy and then Harris to