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MUNICH MEMORIAL
FRIDAY .... THE 6TH FEBRUARY 1958..... 15:03
... a date the greatest team ever died.
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SIR MATT BUSBY
Sir Matt Busby was keenly aware of the importance of 'scouts', owing his own career to a Manchester City 'stringer', who spotted his potential in the late 1920's. He quickly enlarged United's network of trusted scouts to help him find youngsters who could be moulded into the kind of players Busby and Murphy could use to take the club to greater victories.
Matt Busby was the epitome of the 'canny' Scot when it came to the transfer market, as his purchase of the supposedly 'over-the-hill' Jimmy Delaney had proved. That shrewdness became invaluable when, in the wake of the League Championship season, he decided that the veterans in his squad had to be replaced. Good and loyal as they were, many were ready to hang up their boots or move on into coaching jobs, or as players with other teams. In 1950, for instance, Jimmy Delaney had decided to return to Scotland and play for Aberdeen. Shortly before, fellow winger Charlie Mitten ill-advisedly joined a rebel group of British players who accepted lucrative offers to play in Colombia, even though the league there had been outlawed by FIFA, football's international governing body.
The new wingers Busby signed were Bolton's Harry McShane, and Johnny Berry, a Birmingham City player who had impressed Busby a year earlier when he'd hustled, bustled, and scored a delightful goal at Old Trafford. Bought for £25,000, Berry scored six goals in his first season, and went on to make almost 300 League and Cup appearances for United, and to score another 43 goals, until the severe head injuries he suffered at Munich ended his career.
By the end of that Championship season, United also had a new outside-left, the 20 year-old Roger Byrne. The first graduate of Busby's youth training academy, and so the first true Busby Babe, Byrne began his first team career at left-back, but was switched to left-wing for the last six games of the season.
Byrne scored 7 goals in those matches, staking a claim to key roles both in Matt Busby's future plans and those of the English national squad selection. On the club front, he returned to his original left-back position, using his natural speed and strength to start, and take part in attacking moves every bit as ably as he served in defence, a rare range of skills in those days.
He played almost 300 League and Cup games for United before being killed at Munich. He won no less than 33 successive international caps after first being picked for the England team in 1954. Aged only 28 when he died, Byrne had not been told that he was due to become a father for the first time. His wife, Joy, would give birth to a son, Roger, eight months after the crash.
When United lost six of their first 11 games in the 1952-53 season, Busby knew he had to act fast, acquire new players on the open market and bring on some of the youngsters that his scouts had brought to the club in preceding years.
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Sir Matt Busby |
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THEIR LAST GAME
On the right hand side you can see the last lineup photo of the BUSBY BABES in Belgrade 1958.
This was the first outstanding team built by manager Busby, who had played before the war for neighbour Manchester City. His second outstanding team were the so-called "Busby Babes" of the mid-1950's. United defied establishment orders and entered the European Champions Cup in 1956-57. They opened with a 10-0 thrashing of Belgium's Anderlecht and never looked back......not even in the bleak days of February 1958, after eight players including England Internationals Roger Byrne, Tommy Taylor and Duncan Edwards, died in the Munich air disaster.
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UNITED WE STAND |
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FLOWERS OF MANCHESTER
One cold and bitter Thursday
In Munich Germany
Eight Great Football Stalwarts Conceded Victory
Eight men will never play again, who met destruction there
The Flowers of English Football
The Flowers of Manchester
Matt Busby's team were flying home, returning from Belgrade
This great United Family, all masters of their trade
The pilot of the aircraft, the skipper, Captain Thain
Three times he tried to take off, and twice turned back again
The third time down the runway disaster followed close
there was slush upon that runway and the aircraft never rose
It ploughed into the marshy ground, it broke it over turned
and eight of the team were killed as the blazing wreckage burned
Roger Byrne and Tommy Taylor, who were capped for England's Side
And Irelands Billy Whelan and England's Geoff Benn died
Mark Jones and Eddie Coleman and David Pegg also
They all lost their lives as it ploughed on through the snow
Big Duncan he went too, with an injury to his brain
And Irelands Brave Jack Blanchflower will never play again
The great Matt Busby lay there, the father of his team
Three long months were to pass, before he walked again
The trainer, coach and secretary and a member of the crew
Also eight great sporting journalists, who with United flew
and one of them was Big Swifty, who will ne'er forget
the finest English goalkeeper, that ever graced the net
Aye, England's Finest football team, its record truly great
Its proud successors mocked by a cruel turn of fate
Eight men will never play again, who met destruction there
The Flowers of English football, the Flowers of Manchester
WE'LL KEEP THE RED FLAG FLYING HIGH
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