Local Hero

Remembering 60 years ago:

I saw him play only once

Yesterday, far from Preston where I was born and grew up, I was taken back to a November day in 1957 – over 60 years ago now, almost a lifetime. I was 12 years old at the time and over those intervening 60 plus years I have recalled and replayed in my mind on numerous occasions the events of that day - but none more so than yesterday. That day a lifetime ago wasn’t a special day – just an ordinary Saturday - November 9^th. I would have risen early (about 6 o’clock) and completed my newspaper round in the streets around New Hall Lane for the local newsagent Joe Unsworth, returned home and eaten my breakfast of cereal and a cup of tea and then walked down Caroline Street and Chatsworth Street to the house of my Auntie Edna – although I always, till the day she died, called her Nennie – on Fishwick View. Once there I would have done her shopping – borrowed her bike and cycled up New Hall Lane to Moon’s bread and cake shop and there bought her bread, some barm cakes (bread rolls to non-Lancastrians) and a selection of cakes that she always had on order (my auntie loved her cakes!) and importantly a cake for myself – I always chose a chocolate éclair or an apple turn over! Then, after paying her newspaper bill at Joe Unsworth’s, I would pick up some groceries at the local Co-op on Skeffington Road and some tripe for my Uncle Joe’s Saturday tea from the tripe shop on New Hall Lane and then precariously cycle back with the shopping bags swinging on the handle bars to enjoy a cup of tea and my éclair or turn over while Nennie  chose a cake from the selection I had brought back for her. And, as I left – by now it would be late morning - she would press a silver coin in my hand, if I was lucky a half-a-crown (a two and sixpenny piece/12½p); a fortune – and she would whisper “Don’t tell Joe”. If I was really lucky my Uncle Joe would be there and he, too, might press a coin into my fist and wink as he whispered “Don’t tell Edna”! My auntie was a weaver at Emerson Road Mill and Joe was a tackler there (a tackler was the man who kept the looms going and sorted out any problems). I remember all this because those Saturday mornings filled my early teenage years until I left school and went to work  as a trainee draughtsman at Thermic Engineering in Salmon Street just off London Road.

Part of the wonderful Dudley Museum exhibition 

But that Saturday was going to be different. Little did I know that it would be a Saturday I would remember for the rest of my life. As usual, like every Saturday afternoon, I would go along to Deepdale to watch Preston North End play –  one week the First team and the next week the Reserves - but on that day the First Team game was special, Manchester United were coming to play; the famed Busby Babes were in town. So having eaten a sandwich for my dinner I  called for my pal “Nebber” and we walked the mile or so up Skeffington Road to be at the ground by 1 pm clutching our autograph books hoping to catch the eye of the players as they arrived. Almost 40,000 squashed into Deepdale  that day. United were already topping the Division and looking as if they would go on to win the 1st Division Championship. Preston finished second that year behind Wolves but United's 1957/58 season ended in tragedy their chances scuttled of winning the 1st Division title as they had been expected to. On that long ago Saturday the game ended as a 1-1 draw – North End scoring first and United grabbing an equalised 10 minutes later.  The local Evening Post had been full of the fixture for days – Preston versus United, a big game, with two of the top clubs in the land - but I can still remember reading the sports pages in the days leading up to the game; the big news was that the mythical  Duncan Edwards was expected to play for United. He was the player everyone wanted to see and so did Nebber and I. Little did we all know that we would see him play only this once and that in a few months this great United team, Edwards included, would be so tragically broken up in the horror of the Munich air crash.

Memories of old programmes that I recognise from my teenage

support of Preston North End

This interest in Edwards was remarkable for it was in age when the “superstar celebrity” was unknown. Few people had a TV and so in reality few had actually seen Edwards play – it was all by word of mouth or by newspaper reports that the young player’s fame, skills and personal qualities were becoming known. But we all knew of him and his talked of prodigious talent. Even in those far off days this 21 year old was being called England’s greatest ever player. For Nebber and me to see him on the same pitch as the man who we all knew was England’s greatest ever – North End’s Tom Finney – was a treat indeed. So we queued at the turnstile with the sign “Juveniles” over the door, paid our money and pressed our way into the crowd at the Kop end of the pitch – where we always went. We wormed our way through the crowd to the front to sit on the cinder track on the very edge of pitch (as was the fashion for children in those days) just to the right of the goal and within touching distance of the players. With our blue and white scarves wrapped round us we listened to the Brindle Band as they marched up and down the pitch playing their rousing music and  marching in perfect formation while I strained my eyes to catch a sight of my Uncle Ken who played the cornet in the band.

In all honesty I remember little of the actual game I had eyes only for the United player in the number 6 shirt, Duncan Edwards. In one way I was a bit disappointed because my other hero from the Busby Babes was the young Bobby Charlton who I had hoped to see play. When we bought our programmes however and heard the announcer give out the teams on the loudspeaker we learned that Charlton was not playing - so I only had eyes for Edwards that afternoon!  Tom Finney, I know, scored for Preston but it was Edwards that filled my mind as the final whistle blew. By his standards I think he had a quiet game but even now, 60 years on I can still remember and almost feel the silent  intake of breath from the crowd each time he got the ball, the expectation that something special was going to happen. Such was his charisma and presence that to my young eyes (and I suspect to thousands of others) he seemed to fill the whole pitch; to coin a much over used and trivialised term in these modern days it seemed to my young eyes that he truly was "awesome". At the end of the game at 4.40 pm (in those days there was only a 10 minute half time and 4.40 was when games finished – none of the nonsense of today when games can drag on and on because of stoppage time)  Nebber and I both ran. We had newspapers to deliver at 5 o’clock. As I collected my Saturday evening “first post”/early edition round from Joe Unsworth’s (and got a telling off and a few expletives  from Joe for being late!) the headlines were still of the upcoming visit by United and Edwards – the early edition  had, as usual, been printed prior to the game. But by the time that I took my second round – the “Football Post” – at just after 6 o’clock the match report was there and I walked around the streets reading it as I delivered the papers, pleased that I had at last seen this young man who was becoming a legend in his own lifetime and who was now, having seen him play, very definitely my hero! As I walked the streets with my bag of papers hanging round my neck I never imagined that for the rest of my life – even until today in my eighth decade - I would remember that day and regularly repeat when talking of football and great players  what many of my generation who were fortunate enough to see him would say: “I saw him play only once........”  

A detail from the stained glass windows

“I saw him play only once........”,  an innocent enough comment - but even as I write this a shiver still runs through me as I remember.  They are but a few simple words but carry within them great meaning, excitement , admiration and regret; they are the ones that I and many thousands of others have used over the past six decades such was the impact that this young man had on football fans of my generation, and yesterday they came back to me in a torrent. All the feelings, memories, sights, sounds and dreams from when I was that 12 year old child sitting on that cinder track around the Deepdale pitch in November 1957 flooded my mind. And the reason for the memories and the nostalgia? – what happened only a few short months afterwards in early February 1958 when it all went so dreadfully and so tragically wrong as the plane carrying United home from a game in Belgrade crashed at Munich and many young men, the heart of the Busby Babes, lost their lives. All the promise of that day when I saw Duncan Edwards play at Preston were  dashed in the snow of the Munich airport runway.  Just as with President Kennedy’s death, football fans of my generation (and, I suspect, for many who are not particularly involved in football) can remember what they were doing or where they were when the news of Edwards’ death came through. and all those memories and feelings came back yesterday; the sixty years falling away to nothing. I can still remember -  no, feel - the event exactly; me and Nebber playing football after school in the evening dusk under the street lights of Caroline Street and then the news coming through; people standing on their doorsteps talking in whispers as they listened to the radio or the few that had a TV watched it for news. As the story unfolded there was only one question in my  young mind (and in the minds of thousands of others) has Big Duncan survived?  It was not to be; the greatest of the Babes, the young Duncan Edwards, my hero (and of thousands of other little boys) - survived the immediate aftermath of the crash but died a couple of weeks later of his injuries; and I saw him play only once.

Even within that terrible tale there was a piece of cruel irony. Each month Nebber and I pooled any pennies we had and bought a copy of the football magazine popular at the time Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly to share and in mid February 1958, as Duncan Edwards lay in a Munich hospital losing his battle for life, the March edition came out. It had been printed prior to the air crash and by a terrible twist of fate it was Edwards who decorated the front cover, standing in full kit putting on his boots. Inside was a hurriedly inserted piece of paper from the magazine’s publishers explaining that the magazine had gone to press prior to the disaster and that sympathy was extended to all the victims and of course to the family of Duncan Edwards in particular. I was smitten and showed it to my mother and asked if she would make me a football shirt like his – I knew that buying one was out of the question. So a few days later - by now Edwards was dead - I can remember walking down Caroline Street and up to the park at the top of New Hall Lane with my pals to play football and feeling a bit special as I walked along in my Duncan Edwards shirt which my mother had turned out on her old Singer treadle sewing machine using a bit of old red material she had. It wasn’t even the right shade of red – maroon rather than the vibrant United red. It didn’t have the white trim that the real shirt had – just plain red. But, and this was important, it did have a “V” neck and short sleeves and it was just like (at least to my eyes) the one worn by my hero who was no more. And, better, my mother had cut an old piece of white material (probably one of my dad’s shirts!) to make a number six which she had stitched on the back – just like Duncan Edwards! Of course, I didn’t have the rest of the kit there was no way we could have afforded that, but that didn’t matter – the red United number 6 shirt was the thing and even though I was a Preston North End supporter through and through the glamour glitz of the Busby Babes and especially the tale of Duncan Edwards even in those days was worming its way into the national consciousness. 

St Francis' Church - and the splendid Retreat Café

So, yesterday, in this 60^th anniversary year of the Munich air crash, I went on a little pilgrimage with my wife Pat. We spent a wonderful day in the Black Country, in Duncan Edwards’ home  town, Dudley.  I had read that in the town’s Museum there was a small exhibition retelling Duncan’s life and rise to fame so I went to relive my past. It was not a huge exhibition but so very, very poignant and beautifully put together. As I walked around peering at the old programmes, grainy black and white photographs, school memorabilia, his Manchester United and England shirts, his England international caps the feelings of the 1950s came back in a rush. Not only was I seeing things that I hadn’t seen for 60 years like old programme covers from clubs that I had visited in my teenage years as I watched Preston play but more tellingly I was reminded of the atmosphere of the age: the way newspaper articles were worded, the implicit belief in sportsmanship and fair play, the pride that went with wearing a team’s shirt (whether it be the school football team shirt or the England shirt), the reserved, often deferential manner in which people at that time described and talked of people like Edwards and his team mates. But above all I was struck by something that I  also knew – the lack of celebrity and glorification. There were many examples of this but one I liked was an old programme relating to an England Schoolboy International game that the young Duncan Edwards played in. Today, as with all football, games such as this are played at our major stadia since they feature young players who are expected to be next year’s superstars. In Edwards’ time it was different – even schoolboy internationals were played at very humble places and this game in particular was played at “The playing field Chesterfield”. The young Duncan Edwards might have dreamed of one day playing at Wembley or some other great venue but his feet were being kept very firmly on the ground.

And this was the message of the whole exhibition – arguably the most talented player England has ever produced in an age when there were many hugely talented young players – was, in the end, just an ordinary lad from a very humble background in a very ordinary small town in the middle of England. Edwards and his fellow Busby Babes would not have recognised the super star celebrity footballers of today in their gated mansions and fleets of high powered top end cars. He would have gazed in wonderment at the life of David Beckham or Wayne Rooney. He would have been horrified  - and I have absolutely no doubts about this – at the foul language on today’s football pitches or the action of the ex-Liverpool and England player Jamie Carragher a few days ago who was filmed spitting into the car adjacent to him as he sat in a traffic jam after the game between Manchester United and Liverpool. In short, the exhibition told a tale of a simpler and gentler age where a different set of values perhaps operated than in these brutal years of the early 21^st century. It was a salutary but worthwhile reminder of how things might be.  

My school prize when I was 13 and the new edition that

I have now

Having enjoyed the exhibition we then visited the town centre to gaze up at the splendid statue of this local hero which stands in Dudley’s market place. On the plinth below the statue are the famous words of Jimmy Murphy, Edwards’ coach and mentor at Manchester United: “The most complete footballer I have ever seen”. Amen to that. As we walked down the High Street and through the Market Place to gaze at the statue and then find some lunch in the local Wetherspoons pub we enjoyed reading the slabs set in the pavements pointing out various historical facts and names associated with the town; there was, we felt, a real sense of local history and of civic pride here and, of course, pride in Dudley’s own local hero Duncan Edwards.  

Duncan Edwards with his great manager

Sir Matt Busby

Lunch enjoyed, we travelled the short distance to St Francis’ Church where the funeral of this young man was held a few days after his death in Munich. The church was locked but the little “Retreat Cafe” at the side was open serving cups of tea and snacks to anyone who turned up needing one. Was it possible to see the stained glass window we asked the lady behind the counter and we were taken to a gentleman who escorted us into the church to tell us the story of the window that had been made to celebrate the life of this young sportsman who had grown up within sight of the church. What a treat as this quietly spoken elderly man retold a story that he has no doubt told a thousand times before but with such quiet enthusiasm and respect for who and what he was describing. I told him that I had seen Edwards play once – and his response took us both by surprise when he replied that he had been at school with Duncan Edwards and played football with him as a boy. For me, this was really touching the past and again, a poignant and gentle reminder that this young man who achieved some kind of immortality in his short life time and who elicited such fond memories in people of my generation was in the end an ordinary human being, but through good fortune, his great talents and above all his human qualities achieved mythical status and importantly the respect of his home town. At the back of the church was a selection of booklets about Duncan Edwards so we put our £5 in the little box and took one and as we did so another man came into the church also seeking out the stained glass window – and the old gentleman began his tale again – while we crept out to enjoy a cup of tea in the cafe and to buy some jars of home-made jam and pickles to boost church funds. What a welcoming treasure house is St Francis’ church, Dudley.  

And so home. I had thought of visiting Duncan Edwards’ grave – a place which still today is very much a shrine and much visited - but I wanted to remember the player as I saw him that once so it was back on the motor way and through the Birmingham rush hour traffic on the road home to Nottingham, my mind still filled with what I had seen and what I remembered of this truly local hero.

In this celebrity, super star obsessed world in which we now live, where the ordinary, the trivial or the unpleasant  is so often deemed good or worthy or valuable we perhaps need more than ever genuine heroes to look up to and aspire to. Heroes are not heroic because they live in a mansion, or have untold wealth, or move in high circles. Nor is being a hero about being brave – too often we mix up the words; being a hero is far more than simple bravery no matter how laudable that might be. Being a hero is about being the best of what man and womankind can be and can be aspired to; to be someone that the rest of us can, and want , to look up to, strive to emulate. A true hero is  someone whose qualities are self evidently good and worthy. Today, I read about the death of the great scientist Stephen Hawking, yesterday we read of the death of the comedian Ken Dodd; neither of these two would, I think, class themselves as heroes, but in my book they certainly were. The qualities that they displayed in their very different lives and their contribution to mankind, made the lives of ordinary people just that little bit richer and their presence on this earth  and their simple humanity - with all its strengths and weaknesses - makes them, I believe, heroes. We might not be able to tell jokes like Ken Dodd or have the huge mind of Stephen Hawking but we can all try to live the sort of worthy life that they seem to have led and aspire to the same things that they aspired to. When we think of heroes we think of the Ancient Greek heroes; true, they were often brave in battle, but more importantly in the myths and legends of Ancient Greece they were also honourable people whose qualities as a human being set them apart from the ordinary. It was the same with the Mediaeval Knights who were granted their knighthood on the basis not only of their bravery in battle but of their honour, their chivalry, and how well they kept their various promises to fulfil their role in the best possible way throughout their lives.

A  well spent £5.00 in St Francis' Church

I wonder what kind of sporting hero we need today? Is it the thoroughly unpleasant  Jamie Carragher spitting from his car window; is it the player who scowls and pours forth obscenities when he misses a chance to score or when someone tackles him or the referee gives a decision against him, or is it someone like the England Rugby manager Eddie Jones who  today has been forced to apologise after making foul and abusive comments about his Welsh and Irish counterparts? I might be accused of looking through rose coloured glasses - maybe so. It is quite true that there were "hard men" playing football at the time of Edwards and Finney, it is also quite true that "sportsmanship" was not universal at that time, nor was everyone in football a saint. But these unpleasant individuals and undesirable behaviours were recognised and frowned upon by wider society. The culture of verbal abuse of fellow players and referees,  cynical fouling, unsportsmanlike behaviour and the rest was  the exception and not endemic as it is today's football.  Like the foul language we see on our TV screens or in social media, or on every street corner we now accept it as alright, normal, everyday, acceptable; it has become  part and parcel of life and sport, it has become the norm.  And that is a sad verdict not only on sport but on the world that we have allowed to be created . Players like Charlton, Edwards and Finney rose above it and everyone recognised their qualities and accepted that these players were  firstly "gentlemen of the game" and secondly great players - they were the players against whom all others were judged be it with regard to their footballing skills or their personal qualities.  

Schoolboy football in Dudley

So what kind of player should be our hero? For me it is unquestionably someone who displays more worthy values – fair play, thoughtfulness, hard work, respect for fellow players................someone who can enjoy and celebrate victory but still smile in defeat, someone who has extraordinary skills and fame but still has the common touch – not common, but able to communicate with all (I am reminded here of Rudyard Kipling's; great poem "If"). Duncan Edwards, like Finney, was such a  person. He was a great footballer but like other sporting greats he had other personal as well as sporting  qualities so beautifully displayed in my visit to Dudley. Sportsmen and sportswomen have a vital role in encouraging the best in people – especially the young – to coin a modern phrase they are role models. Tom Finney, Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore, Duncan Edwards and many other football greats (and other sports men and women) are and were sporting heroes not primarily for their great footballing skills – but rather for the sort of people that they were.

The cover of the football magazine

which brought a terrible twist to the death of

Duncan Edwards - and brought me my

home made Duncan Edwards football shirt.

On the plinth below the statue of Bobby Moore at Wembley are the words “Lord of the game. Captain extraordinary. Gentleman of all time"; Henry Winter sports writer for the Daily Telegraph said of my Preston hero Tom Finney: “Finney will forever be associated with fair play, for showing respect to an opponent, for dignity and gentlemanly conduct both on the pitch and off it”. Of Bobby Charlton, Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson said: “Bobby is a great example in how he kept his feet on the ground and kept his humility all his life.  What a solid human being he is  and a person you’d trust with your life.” And of Duncan Edwards the Manchester United coach Jimmy Murphy said: " The greatest? There was only one and that was Duncan Edwards. He was more than a great player, he seemed like some bright light in the sky.”  Quite,  "a bright star" - something  for us all to look up to.

I liked Dudley, this little anonymous town in the middle of England’s industrial heartland. Not only did I enjoy my viewing of all the Duncan Edwards memorabilia but the museum was a beautifully arranged treasure house – from prehistoric fossils, to dinosaurs, to Roman soldiers and Norman knights in chain mail, to industrial history and to the area’s famous sons and daughters. The museum, the town and St Francis’ Church, too, had a sense of tradition and past; proud of their heritage and their place in the great scheme of things. People who we talked to were pleased to tell us about their town and their hero, this young man born with a huge talent to excel at football but above all a huge gift to be the someone that everyone looked up to – “some bright light in the sky”. So why should the people of Dudley and the rest of us not be proud to honour their history and the good and worthy things that Duncan Edwards represented in his short time on earth?

Duncan Edwards: footballing giant and

a giant as a human being - a true local hero

When, after almost two weeks, this young gentle giant lost his fight for life in February 1958 one newspaper said “People are mourning the loss of this young man not just because he held such sporting promise but [because] he was someone who you would want to call your son or for your daughter to marry”. When, in August 1961, the Manchester United manager Matt Busby unveiled the two stained glass windows dedicated to Duncan Edwards in  St Francis’ Church he said: “There will only be one Duncan Edwards, and any boy who strives to emulate Duncan, or take him as his model, won’t go far wrong”.

At Arsenal for his last game before the

Munich air crash

Now that’s being a hero - "...any boy who strives to emulate Duncan or take him as his role model won't go far wrong" and it is why my little trip to Dudley meant so much to me. It reminded me of my growing up years in Preston, it gave me space to recall a long gone day in my past when I saw two of the greatest footballers and sportsmen ever – Edwards and Finney - play on the same pitch, it reminded me of why, after all these years away from Preston (I moved to Nottingham in the early 1960s), it is still North End's result that I await anxiously every Saturday afternoon at 4.45 pm; in short it is an important part of me and who I am. As Matt Busby suggested, Duncan Edwards was a role model, a hero; this ordinary lad from an ordinary town was  a hero for little boys like me; he was instrumental in making me what I am and even though I saw him play only once the way he played the game and how he behaved were formative features of my own life.  And it reminded me, too, of the one and only prize I ever won at school.! In the summer after Munich I was awarded a prize for coming third in history in my class at Fishwick Secondary Modern where I was a pupil. The local bookshop - Sweeten's in Preston - brought a display of books and we prize winners  could choose one as our prize, to be handed out at the end of term Speech Day. I can remember walking along the tables filled with books and suddenly spying "Tackle Soccer My Way" by Duncan Edwards. It was a coaching manual and of course that was the prize for me. Maybe, I reasoned, if I follow the instructions I'll be the next Duncan Edwards! Of course it didn't work but I treasured that book until it got lost in time in the house moves of adulthood but boy, was I pleased a year of so ago when I discovered that it had been reprinted and was available on Amazon. It now has pride of place on my office bookshelf! If you haven't read the book do so - the coaching may now seem old fashioned but the comments and the advice reflect perfectly the huge sense of decency and sportsmanship that this young man represented to those of us who looked up to him and others like him.

But above all my little trip to Dudley allowed me to think of what I believe were more honourable - perhaps better - times when terms like "gentlemanly conduct", "decency", "sportsmanship" or "honest endeavour" could be used without fear of being thought old fashioned or quaint or twee -  and more, it gave me food for thought about what is important to value and praise when we look at ourselves and others. In a modern world where the trivial,  the crass, and the grotesque are all too often thought to be worthy, good or attractive  my little trip down memory lane helped me to be able to know the difference  - and perhaps to know who are the true heroes.