THE
STORY OF
MAn UTD“ GOALSCORER SUPREME, TAYLOR
n OTCHED 131 GOALS In 191
APPEARAn CES An D WAS STILL
O nLY 26 WHEn HE DIED”
Above Jimmy
Murphy (left)
was an
indispensable
assistant to
Matt Busby for
many years
Top left Tommy
Taylor, David
Pegg and Roger
Byrne enjoy
some downtime
Above left
Matt Busby
at training
with (left to
right) Wilf
McGuinness,
Dennis Viollet,
David Pegg and
Tommy Taylortoo quickly. But whenever he wavered, Murphy was quick to reassure
him that he was doing the right thing.
The Busby Babes were a bunch of young players who were so
exceptional it’s difficult to assess quite how good they were some 70
years on, especially as so little TV footage of them remains. But what
we do have is accounts of matches they played and, above all, the
opinions of fellow stars who played against and alongside them.
Roger Byrne was the captain and a born leader, described by Bobby
Charlton as “somehow set apart... with a wonderful confidence in his
own talent and he passed it on so effortlessly. You only had to see
him at work to feel a surge of belief spreading through the team.”
John Doherty, a teammate and frequently a roommate, said simply
that Byrne was “as good a left-back as has ever played the game.
Players like Roger operate in their own world. You just have to let
them get on with it, and then marvel at what they achieve.”
Byrne arrived at Unite d a little bit before most of his fellow ‘Babes’,
which perhaps gave him a natural authority, but he was swiftly joined
by Eddie Colman. Nicknamed ‘Snakehips’ for his sinewy movement,
Colman was the heart and soul of the team. If Byrne was a bit of a
loner away from the pitch, Colman was an extrovert who wanted to
live life to the full. Murphy said of him that “he was an original. He had
things you couldn’t teach,” while Bill Foulkes – hardly known for his
gushing appraisals of fellow players – said “he always made you feel
happy to be alive. He was somebody you couldn’t begin to replace.”
And what of Tommy Taylor? Goalscorer supreme, Taylor notched
131 goals in 191 appearances. Still only 26 when he died, Taylor could
reasonably have expected to play for another four seasons at the
highest level. If he’d maintained a similar scoring rate, he would have
ended up close to being United’s all-time leading goalscorer. As he
also notched 16 in his 19 England games, it is clear that Taylor was a
goalscorer on a par with the very best of the best. Taylor was actually
happy playing for Barnsley, but his hometown club desperately
needed the money a transfer to United would bring, and he turned
out to be the signing that crystallised the buzz that was building at
the club. Murphy described him as “the final piece in our jigsaw”,
while Jackie Blanchflower, perhaps Taylor’s closest friend at the club,
recalled that, “[We] were having trouble with the centre-forward
position before Tommy Taylor arrived. We needed a big, strong
centre-forward and Tommy was ideal.”
The hard-working Taylor was a fanatical trainer, and any rough
edges he had as a result of not coming up through United’s junior
ranks were quickly ironed out. Teammate Ian Greaves recalled that
Taylor was always doing extra heading practice despite already
being the best header of the ball at the club. “That was dedication
for you. He was never satisfied to be good, he strived to become the
best. Tommy Taylor was the best striker I ever saw, never mind
having the good fortune to play with.”
At the start of the 1955–56 season, Duncan Edwards was on
National Service and travelling to and from United games, home or
away, from his base in Shrewsbury. Edwards was irreplaceable. His
heading ability, talent to play with his back to goal and hold the ball
up, his long, raking passes and his dynamic presence galvanised the
team in a way that nobody before – or arguably since – had done.
Bobby Charlton has always maintained that “I totally believe Duncan
Edwards was the best player I ever saw or am likely to see. Yes, I
know all about Maradona, Best, Law and the others, but if you asked
great players like Tom Finney and Stanley Matthews who was the
greatest, they would tell you, as they did me, they hadn’t seen
anything like Duncan.”
Back-to-back league titles in 1955–56 and 1956–57 were just
reward for a United team that swept all before them. They also
reached the FA Cup final in consecutive seasons. In 1957, they
disappointingly lost 2-1 to Aston Villa, though the score doesn’t16 The Story of Man Utd FourFourTwo.com