THE LOST BABES: Manchester United and the Forgotten Victims of Munich
by Jeff Connor
HarperSport, £14.99; 306pp



THE CRASH ON FEBRUARY 6, 1958, when an aeroplane carrying the footballers of Manchester United back from Belgrade failed to clear a runway at Munich airport, has become (after England’s 1966 World Cup victory) the most significant moment in postwar English football. Eight players perished and the legend of Manchester United, the self-styled “most famous club in the world”, was born.

It would be misleading to suggest that the crash, by itself, propelled United to international renown as a British “marque” that has been compared with Rolls-Royce and the Old Vic. Torino, the Italian club, lost their entire team in an air disaster nine years earlier and they are not even the most famous club in Turin.

United owe their worldwide fan- base to the way that they regrouped under their manager, Matt Busby, after the crash, and won the European Cup in 1968 when their goal-scorers in the final included Bobby Charlton, who survived Munich, and George Best, who symbolised the youth and brilliance of the new side.

Put like that, it is a tale of triumph. Despite 26 long years without winning the championship, from 1967 to 1993, United have established themselves as the most successful club in England, and far and away the best-supported (and therefore, as night follows day, the most detested). To be a Manchester United player is to inherit a unique tradition, as the author of Jeff Connor’s readable book, The Lost Babes, makes clear. What is less clear is whether the club let down the dependents of those who lost their lives on that terrible day in Bavaria, and that lack of clarity robs it of the emotional charge that Connor hopes for.

As a social document it is undoubtedly useful, even if the pen portraits of the players are part of a familiar story: John Carey, captain of the 1948 FA Cup-winning side, puffing away on his pipe as he took the bus to Old Trafford; Eddie Colman kicking a ball about in the Ordsall street where he was born, a mile away from the ground that he adorned with his dapper midfield play — a street where, today, footballs are seen rather less often than drugs and guns. This was an innocent age when players lived among those who watched them, an age of real hardship but also of true “community”.

Those times couldn’t last. Until the maximum wage was abolished in 1961 footballers were mere chattels. Still, it is instructive to look back on the days when the links between supporter, player and club were more binding. What would Roger Byrne, the lost leader of that lost team, make of Gary Neville, his successor as full back and captain, “celebrating” a goal against Liverpool by charging half the length of the field to thrust the club badge on his shirt towards the fans who had been goading him and then hiding behind “passion” as an excuse?

Equally, what would he make of Rio Ferdinand, having collected £80,000 a week for doing nothing during a period of suspension caused by his own forgetfulness, demanding a hefty pay increase to stay at Old Trafford? Or the player who, after a night in a London nightclub, paid a taxi driver £1,000 to drive him back to Manchester? When Byrne was leading United to the championship in 1957, as a regular England international, he didn’t earn £1,000 in a year. But he would certainly recognise players such as Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes, local lads who became outstanding pros and tip-top players.

Connor, a rugby journalist who grew up in north Manchester, would also, one imagines, recognise such men as keepers of the flame. But it is odd, to say the least, that the author, a “fan”, has visited Old Trafford to watch a match only once since 1958. Nor is it remotely good enough to quote his father saying, apropos the crash, that “things will never be the same again”. They were not, but the 1960s, with Charlton, Best and Denis Law playing the best football of their gilded lives (not to mention the supplementary work of Nobby Stiles and Pat Crerand) were glorious.

When Connor eventually gets to his argument — that the club failed the families of the dead players — it is easy to sympathise but hard to see what they could have done that would have brought satisfaction to all parties. United were not a rich club in 1958, indeed they have only become rich (as opposed to famous) since the stock market flotation of the 1990s. It is unfortunate that a benefit match in 1998 brought the families £47,000 each, while Eric Cantona cleared £90,000 for gracing Old Trafford with his presence, but nobody said that a football club was a philan-thropic institution. It was a mess, not a scandal.

There isn’t a lot here that is new, which is not to say that the book lacks interest. Harry Gregg, the Irish goalie who hauled bodies from the wreckage, remains a hero. Busby, great manager though he was, remains a flawed man, opportunistic (as managers have to be) and less than truthful. Byrne, Colman, Duncan Edwards, Liam Whelan, Tommy Taylor, Mark Jones, David Pegg and Geoff Bent, the “flowers of Manchester” remain mourned by fans the world over.