As with a lot of fathers and sons, I suspect, probably 50% or more of the conversations my father and I had were about sport, and most of them were about football. Like my grandfather, like myself, my father was a lifelong supporter of Huddersfield Town, and he often talked about the great Town sides and players of the past: Vic Metcalfe and Jimmy Glazzard, Denis Law and Ray Wilson, Jimmy Nicholson and Frank Worthington.
He would talk, too, of other great sides he had been lucky enough to see play: the Blackpool team of Matthews and Mortensen, the Wolves team managed by Stan Cullis, and the double-winning Tottenham side of 1961. But the team and players my father talked about the most were the Manchester United Busby Babes, named after their manager Matt Busby.
Busby, formerly of Manchester City and Liverpool, had been poised to accept a coaching position at Anfield, when he signed a three-year contract to manage United in February 1945. He was still a sergeant-major in the Physical Training Corps and could not start work until he had been demobbed, but once he did, he very much went about things his own way. He was the first “tracksuit manager”, training and coaching the players himself. In this task, though, he was assisted by Jimmy Murphy, perhaps the shrewdest signing Busby ever made.
Murphy was the gregarious, often fiery-tempered foil to the more measured and reserved Busby. He could be scathing in his criticism of players if he felt they were shirking and not fulfilling their promise, but he was also unstinting in his devotion to any lad whose dream it was to pull on that red shirt.
Together with the coaching staff of Tom Curry and Bert Whalley, Busby and Murphy built two great United sides; the first, captained by the veteran Johnny Carey, were runners-up in the League four times before winning the FA Cup in 1948 and then finally the League in 1952. But it was Busby and Murphy’s second, youthful side that would capture the imagination of the wider public and of my father.
My dad was at Huddersfield’s old Leeds Road ground on 31 October 1953, when alongside veterans Jack Rowley and Allenby Chilton, Busby fielded younger players such as Bill Foulkes, Jeff Whitefoot, Jackie Blanchflower and Dennis Viollet, along with a 17-year-old called Duncan Edwards.
Up to this point, my dad’s sporting hero had been Denis Compton, who played cricket for Middlesex and England and football for Arsenal. But that all changed when he saw Edwards play.
My father was a year younger than Edwards and could not believe that a 17-year-old could have such strength and stamina, such guile and guts, such poise and presence. He wasn’t the only one who was impressed; the game might have ended as a goalless draw but the headline in the Manchester Evening Chronicle declared Busby’s Bouncing Babes Keep All Town Awake. The “Busby Babes” were born.
Over the next four seasons, Busby and Murphy would bring through more young players such as Geoff Bent, Eddie Lewis, Mark Jones, Liam “Billy” Whelan, David Pegg, Eddie Colman, John Doherty, Wilf McGuinness, Colin Webster, Albert Scanlon, Kenny Morgans, and one Bobby Charlton. By 1955, most of the Manchester United team were in their late teens or early 20s, and in 1956 they won the First Division title, by 11 points.
Off the pitch, the Babes were also becoming a phenomenon. Young men began to copy the David Pegg haircut or the Eddie Colman shuffle, and many of the first-team players had individual sponsors or newspaper columns. But the Babes’ fame remained very much a collective one: fans lapped up photo-spreads of the players in their shared digs, enjoying their tea, drying the dishes, playing cards and listening to records. The Babes even had a record written in their honour: The Manchester United Calypso by Edric Connor was released in 1957, the year the Babes won the League title for the second year.
Domestic honours, however, were not enough for Busby. He wanted to see his boys compete against Europe’s best sides, and that same 1956-57 season, United played in the European Cup for the first time, against the wishes of the governing bodies of English football, who saw Europe as an unnecessary distraction from the English game. Undeterred, United entered and reached the semi-final, losing 5-3 on aggregate to the legendary Real Madrid of Di Stéfano and Gento. But as champions of England again, United knew they would be back next season.
By 1958, my father had moved to London to attend teacher training college in Chelsea. He loved London with its abundance of concerts, cricket and football. And at Highbury, one freezing, foggy Saturday in February, my father witnessed what he called the “greatest game of football” he ever saw, when Arsenal entertained Manchester United.
United were three-up at half-time, but Arsenal brought the game back to 3-3 in the second-half before Viollet and Taylor made it 5-3 to United. Another late goal from Arsenal was not enough and the game ended with United winning 5-4. As Geoffrey Green wrote in The Times: “Spectators and players alike were breathless as the teams left the field arm in arm. They knew instinctively that they had created something for pride and memory.”
Five days later, walking home down Chelsea’s Kings Road, my father saw the headline on a placard: United in Plane Crash.
Returning from a European Cup tie in Belgrade, the United plane had stopped to refuel at Munich airport. After two abandoned attempts to take off, the third attempt resulted in a crash that killed 23 people, including eight members of the Busby Babes. Not only Manchester but the whole country was left grief-stricken.
My father died of vascular dementia in May 2022, and my latest novel, which tells the story of the Munich crash and its aftermath, was written in memory of him. Though my dad had spoken of Munich often, I had not fully comprehended the extent to which the disaster was a national tragedy.
In our often divided and tribal times, when some seem so quick to hate and mock, it’s easy to forget it wasn’t always this way. In February 1958, for most people -not all, it has to be said – it didn’t matter where you lived, or who you supported, or if you were interested in football, you grieved with Manchester and United.
I think that’s worth remembering.
• Munichs by David Peace is published by Faber (£20) on 29 August. To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
