The Munich Disaster: A Personal Recollection

Review by Mark Hinton, Goal.com

The 50th anniversary of the Munich disaster on February 6th brings back some vivid childhood memories and is a poignant reminder that life is an impermanent lottery and none of us ever know what lies around the next corner.

I am a lifelong Arsenal supporter, from a family of Gunners' fans, and on February 1st 1958 my father took my brother and me to Highbury to see Arsenal play Manchester United, the famous, pioneering Busby Babes. I was six-and-a-half at the time, but besotted with football and passionate about Arsenal.

My Dad had imbued me with a sense of wonder for the Gunners with tales of the legendary Chapman era in which he’d grown up, and of the post-war years under Tom Whittaker when the Arsenal were still a force to be reckoned with.

But the 1957-58 team were no great shakes, and a month earlier had been dumped out of the FA Cup at the third round stage by Northampton Town of the old Third Division South. Still, I'd been taken to three games at Highbury already, two of them involving the first-team, and had not yet seen them lose by the time of United's visit.

However, on February 1st we travelled more in hope than expectation because Matt Busby had built a remarkable young team. They were defending League champions, having won the title in 1955-56 and retained it in 1956-57, when they just missed out on the (then) elusive double of League and FA Cup, losing 1-2 to Aston Villa in the Wembley Cup final after being effectively reduced to 10 men early on when their goalkeeper Ray Wood broke his cheekbone in a sickening collision with Villa winger Peter McParland. The Ulsterman went on to score both Villa goals, but today would have been red-carded without hesitation for his challenge.

That Christmas (1957), my prized present was "The Big Book Of Football Champions", a popular annual in the 1950s, and while there was little in that particular edition to stir the emotions of an Arsenal fan, United featured prominently, with full-page colour pictures of the likes of Duncan Edwards, Roger Byrne and Jackie Blanchflower. Believe it or not, I still have that book.

United's two consecutive League championships had earned them entry into the embryonic European Cup, and Busby had the vision and the guts to defy the archaic English football authorities who were opposed to an English club participating in the competition for reasons of short-sighted self-interest and xenophobia.

United's pioneering exploits in Europe, followed by most people vicariously through the black-and-white footage of newsreels shown each week in local cinemas, had added to the aura of the Babes.

But the basic appeal of that team, even among fans of other clubs, was that they were extending the boundaries, breaking the mould. Busby had proclaimed in the mid-fifties that his emphasis was firmly on youth, and at that time that philosophy was heresy, the stuff of revolution.

But he had made it work. United were playing the game with youthful exuberance and an attacking swagger that was captivating, and what was more, they were making a big impression on the continent with their particular brand of football.

So when they came down to Highbury, ahead of a midweek trip to Belgrade to take on Red Star in the second-leg of a European Cup tie, we were both expectant and apprehensive. It would be something to see them in the flesh; but they were likely to give my team a battering.

The playing surface was as much rolled mud as threadbare grass: par for the course at the time. And, in a way unimaginable today, when the players came out for the pre-match warm-up or "kick-in" (no elaborate, co-ordinated stretching and jogging routines back then), youngsters could take their chances by running onto the pitch with their autograph books and trying to collar their heroes.

I looked on enviously from the front of a packed terrace, too young and small, and probably too timid, to scamper over to the god-like Jack Kelsey or David Herd with pen in hand.

But there is a memorable and poignant photograph from that match (which Arsenal reproduced in their next club handbook), of the great Duncan Edwards happily signing for an awestruck lad with Brylcreemed hair and a duffle-coat. I have sometimes wondered since what emotions that lad experienced over the next few weeks, or indeed years.

The game itself turned out to be a classic, United confirming all their advance publicity by racing into a three-goal lead through Edwards, Bobby Charlton and Tommy Taylor. It was a chastening experience for a young Arsenal fan, but you had to admire United's football.

However, in an amazing three-minute spell after the break, Arsenal drew level with goals from Herd and Jimmy Bloomfield, who scored twice.

But as an unlikely victory suddenly seemed possible, United showed their class with two more goals, Dennis Viollet and Taylor making it 5-3. Then Derek Tapscott pulled one back and for the remaining 13 minutes United were on the back-foot, defending stoically to win 5-4.

It was an awesome football match - one which, had it been televised then as now, would be regularly re-run like that famous Liverpool-Newcastle game of the mid-1990s. Indeed, had the match been captured on film, it would be a priceless artefact now, given what was about to befall. But I had the match programme, now one of the most valuable in my collection because events invested it with unique significance.

We went home disappointed to have lost but knowing we'd been privileged to see such a game, to see our players nearly hold such a team; and we were full of admiration for Duncan Edwards in particular.

In the middle of the following week we heard that United had drawn with Red Star in Belgrade and were through to the European Cup semi-final.

But what I remember most vividly was coming down to breakfast on the morning of Friday, February 7th and finding my Dad in tears in the kitchen with the newspaper in front of him. It proclaimed that the plane carrying the United party back from Yugoslavia had crashed on its third attempt to take off from Munich airport after a refuelling stop. Twenty-one people were already dead, including seven United players. Duncan Edwards was still alive, but in a critical condition, as was Matt Busby. It was all too much to take in, especially for a six-year-old. But the photographs on the front page of the paper were graphic and removed any doubt that something devastating had happened. So did the sight of my Dad crying. I was soon a weeping mess myself.

The next two weeks were surreal. The age of instant and mass communications was still some way off. News dribbled through and my Dad kept me updated. It seemed that Edwards, fighting bravely for his life, would survive. Busby, though, was twice given the last rites, so poor was his condition.

In the event, Busby survived. But 15 days after the crash, Edwards died. It was in some ways the biggest blow of all.

At school on the outskirts of London, people were becoming Manchester United fans overnight. There was never any danger I would waver from Arsenal, but I felt great sympathy for United and willed them to succeed, along, I know, with most of the country.

Their immediate problem was to find eleven players to fulfill their next fixture, an FA Cup fifth round tie at home to Sheffield Wednesday. With a team composed of a couple of Munich survivors, a couple of emergency buys and a string of second and third team players, United beat the Owls 3-0 in what was surely the most emotional football match ever played at Old Trafford, and quite possibly at any ground anywhere.

A few years later we moved to Surrey, and I found that my next-door neighbour, a good six years older than me, was a huge Manchester United fan. He'd supported them since Busby had first started assembling his team, and he had an impressive collection of programmes and memorabilia that inspired me to take up collecting seriously myself.

He showed me the match programme for that Sheffield Wednesday cup tie, with eleven hauntingly eloquent blank spaces where the names of the United team should have been. The club, being managed by Jimmy Murphy in Busby's absence, simply didn't know who might be available at the time the publication went to press. That too has become a valuable collectors' item, for obvious reasons.


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Things change. My own feelings of empathy towards the United of 1958 gradually faded as the club rebuilt, though as a sixth-form teenager ten years later I enjoyed their eventual triumph in the European Cup final - Busby's fitting tribute to the team that had died.

Over the last three decades the likes of Louis and Martin Edwards, Peter Kenyon, Ron Atkinson, Alex Ferguson and sundry United players, not to mention their great rivalry with Arsenal, have removed the positive feelings I once harboured towards the Red Devils.

But I still have great respect and affection for the original Busby Babes, and I desperately hope their memory is respectfully observed in a dignified way this week, particularly before the Manchester derby at Old Trafford. For me personally, and I suspect others of my generation, it will be a deeply evocative and moving minute of silent reflection.

They were a truly great team whose football, as much as their tragedy, deserves its place in any hall of English football fame.