It started with a 20 minute walk, 75% of which was uphill. We tried to time it so that we didn’t have more than five minutes to wait for the bus and, in fairness, got it right more often than not.
After the short wait the number 112 bus would come lumbering around the bend by Moston Lane Junior School and come to a halt at the bus stop outside Langhorns, the Ironmongers. We would board the bus and then I truly got the feeling it was match day.
Forty five minutes later we would disembark and join the crowd walking down Warwick Road to Old Trafford. Upon reaching the Stretford End turnstiles we would queue up and wait for our turn to enter the ground. Occasionally, usually due to a breakdown or an absent bus, we would be too late to get into the Stretford End and so would have a frantic run round the ground to the Scoreboard End where, as it wasn’t covered back in the day, we invariably got wet. This was Manchester after all.
Then we would wait. Eventually the teams would be announced and each player name would be met with cheers or groans depending on his current performance level!
Then the teams would emerge, the kickabout would be completed, the coin tossed and kick-off time would finally arrive.
The ‘we’ in question here was myself and my father as, back in the 60s, I was deemed too young to attend a match with friends of my own age. (Rather perversely, the first match I went to at Old Trafford with a mate of my own age didn’t even feature United. It was the 1968 FA Cup semi-final between Everton and Leeds United and we stood in the Stretford End with thousands of Evertonians. Quite why my parents judged this to be safer than going to a United game is still beyond me to this day).
Anyway, the point of this long-winded tale is to try and describe what it was like to watch Bobby Charlton live.
He wasn’t even my favourite player at the time. That was Denis Law. Probably because we both had blond hair, almost certainly because my father was Scottish so I probably identified with Denis more than the others. Second favourite was George Best because…well…because he was George Best!
Bobby came in third in my eyes and it is worth remembering that, at this stage, he hadn’t won the World Cup or the European Cup so he didn’t have any major achievements that made him stand out.
What DID make him stand out was his effortless ability on the ball. Bobby could shoot with equal power and accuracy with both feet. He could bring the ball out of defence and just glide past the opposition players before sending a forty or fifty yard pass out to George Best on the right or John Connelly on the left.
He had a presence on the pitch like no other player I had seen live and the only ones who came close were Pele and Bobby Moore.
What set him above my two favourites at United was his statesmanship and gentlemanly conduct at all times.
George Best was not the most well behaved individual either on or off the pitch. Even Denis Law was occasionally sent off and he even had his fall outs with Sir Matt Busby, which once resulted in him being transfer listed!
But Bobby Charlton? I never read anything detrimental, I never heard anything detrimental and I never saw anything detrimental. I am sure he had his moments but there was never anything in public, never any negative press and certainly never any scandal.
In a playing career that began a few days before his 19th birthday against, coincidentally, Charlton Athletic in 1956 and ended in the mid-1970s, Charlton was never sent off and picked up only two bookings, one of which was for England in the bad-tempered World Cup quarter final against Argentina in 1966.
He deservedly won the most important trophies while at United and he deservedly won the big one with England. In fact, had it not been for Charlton, England wouldn’t have reached the final in 1966!
There are no English players around today who are as good as he was either at football or as a role model and now he’s gone to finally join the rest of the babes he felt so guilty about leaving all those years ago.
There will never be another.
WHY SAY ANYTHING? 