Jack and Bobby: A story of brothers in conflict. Leo McKinstry

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СКАЧАТЬ him to see the headmaster. Now Bobby was always a shy, nervous man – throughout his career at Old Trafford he hardly dared to approach the patriarchal figure of Sir Matt Busby. But he was rarely more apprehensive than the day he had to explain his situation to the headmaster. ‘Shaking like a leaf, I said I had no ambition to be an intellectual, that I was going to be a footballer and that I wanted to leave Stretford. He answered in four memorable words, “You are perfectly right.’”

      Bobby never had any doubts in his early years that he would make it as a professional. It is yet another striking difference between them: Jack the loud bombastic teenager, inwardly plagued by insecurity, and Bobby the quiet, retiring youngster who was certain of his talent. ‘I was good and I found it easy,’ he once said. After leaving Stretford Grammar, he would have loved to have become a full-time professional at Old Trafford, but his was impossible because he had not yet reached the age of 17. With his mother still reluctant for him to join the ground staff, Bobby had to find a job for a year. He therefore enrolled as an apprentice electrical engineer at the firm of Switch Gear, whose owner was a football enthusiast. If his schoolwork had been difficult, this position was just dull. Dreaming all the time of soccer, Bobby wasted his day filing pieces of metal, making tea and running errands. Like so many trapped in the dreary routine of the workplace, he indulged in clock watching, frequently going to the lavatory to gaze at the clockface on the top of Stretford Town Hall, willing the hands to speed up so he would be free to go for training.

      What made up for the tedium of the job was the atmosphere in Mrs Watson’s house. He shared with seven other Busby Babes, including Billy Whelan, David Pegg and Duncan Edwards and they brought him out of his shell. He remembers: ‘At first I was a bit homesick and inclined to keep to myself but the others soon accepted me for what I was. It was good fun. Everybody ribbed everyone else and the gags rattled off like machine gun fire. Mark Jones’ idea of looking after us was to take us to a horror film in town and then march us all of five miles home. I shared a room with him for a time and then I roomed with Billy Whelan – he was like a big brother to me.’ In fact, Bobby felt a far greater affinity to Billy than he did to his real elder brother, for Billy, a devout, teetotal Catholic from Dublin, shared Bobby’s qualities of self-effacement and reticence. It is a reflection of the kindness of his fellow lodgers that they would give him articles of clothing and other presents, knowing that he was only earning £2 a week, barely half of what the ground staff apprentices were paid. Once Duncan Edwards gave me a new shirt which he said was too small for him. I don’t think it really was, but it was a very welcome addition to my sparse wardrobe,’ recalled Bobby. Albert Scanlon, the left wing who became a United professional in 1952, thinks that Mrs Watson’s was the ideal environment for Bobby. ‘When he came to Old Trafford, he was very shy and quiet, though he was a different lad if his mother turned up – he was much more open with her, and she always had such a loud, laughing presence. But Mrs Watson’s house did the world of good for him, because he was mixing with other players. They had a great social life together, going to the films in Manchester, or playing football and tennis in the park. Bobby was always comfortable with that group.’

      When he reached the age of 17, Bobby was finally able to give up his hated engineering job and become a full professional with United. The morning after he had signed, he went down to the United ground full of enthusiasm. The first person he saw was the trainer, Tom Curry, who gave Bobby a response he did not expect.

      ‘What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at work?’

      ‘I’ve just signed my forms,’ replied Bobby, expecting a word of congratulation.

      ‘Stupid lad. You should have stuck to your trade. Don’t you know what a hard game football is?’

      The realities of Curry’s remark were soon brought home to Bobby. Until now, at school, in Ashington, and in the county and England junior sides, he had been the dazzling star of the show. But at United, a club already awash with talent, he was just another young pro trying to make his way. Moreover, because he had never received any proper training before, Bobby had fallen into some poor habits. At the highest level, his reliance only on instinct and natural ability would not be enough. Bobby Harrop, who also joined United in 1953, told me: ‘Bobby was just another player to me when I joined United. Most of us thought we were equally good. He had his good shot and pace, but he did not seem anything exceptional. In practice matches, we were usually as good as him. He did not stand out.’ It is a point reinforced by Albert Scanlon: ‘The turnover of youngsters at Old Trafford was phenomenal. Hundreds of lads came through its gates every year, and for every one who signed as a professional they probably let 50 go. With so many good players around, it was hard for someone like Bobby Charlton to shine. When I first saw him, I knew he was good but it would be false to say I knew he’d be one of the greats. He lacked consistency and would run around, trying to do everything at 400 miles an hour.’

      Fortunately, Bobby Charlton’s training was in the hands of Jimmy Murphy, one of the toughest and shrewdest taskmasters in British football. Like Busby, a practising Catholic born in a coalmining village, Murphy hailed from the Rhondda valley. He had been a ferocious wing-half for Wales and West Brom in the inter-war years before Matt brought him to Old Trafford as his assistant. Murphy could have been a great manager himself, as he proved in taking Wales to the quarter-finals of the World Cup in 1958 in Sweden, but he preferred to remain at United, turning down lucrative offers from Arsenal and continental sides. Ex-United player John Docherty says that he made the right decision: ‘Jimmy was magnificent but he was a natural number two. I think he would have found it hard to be under the constant glare of the press. He liked working with players, being with kids, knocking the shit out of you on the training ground to make you into a better footballer. All the players of my time will tell you that Jimmy Murphy was our greatest single influence, because he could make or break us.’ It is a sentiment echoed by Bobby Charlton himself, who once wrote: ‘There have been few better teachers of the game and I am greatly in his debt. Alf Ramsey helped me a lot when he became manager of England and so, of course, in many ways, did Matt Busby. But Jimmy got to my guts.’

      Murphy could hardly have been a greater contrast to his serene, dignified boss. He was a man of dark Celtic passion: fiery, temperamental, aggressive, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed, ‘with a voice like a cement mixer in full throttle’, in the vivid phrase of Busby’s. ‘He shuffled these little steps,’ says John Aston, ‘a bit like Jimmy Cagney. He looked like a gangster. But he was a very warm, emotional man.’ His favourite expression, which summed up his philosophy, was ‘get stuck in’. Nobby Lawton, another contemporary of Bobby’s, gave me this memory: ‘He toughened us up, taught us to stand up for ourselves. When we played five-a-side at the training ground, Jimmy would join in and kick you to the ground. “What’s going on here?” “That’s what it’s like in professional football,” Jimmy would reply. His team talks were inspiring. After listening to one of them, I could not wait to get out on the pitch. All the managers I met in my career after Jimmy were ordinary.’

      Several of Bobby’s contemporaries say that he was a favourite of Jimmy’s. But this was only because Jimmy, who was as brilliant a judge of a player as Matt Busby, knew that Bobby had a unique gift. He therefore gave individual tuition to Bobby in the evenings and on Sunday mornings, putting him through a rigorous training schedule to mould him into a true professional. In the Sun in 1975 Murphy explained: ‘Bobby was loaded with talent but it needed harnessing. He was one of the hardest pupils I ever had to work on. He had so much going for him, perhaps too much. We had to bully him.’ For example, one of Bobby’s biggest weaknesses was his love of hitting long, 50-yard balls, and then standing to admire the result. Jimmy kept drumming into him the need to be part of a cohesive team build-up, moving with other players, being prepared to make a quick pass and then getting ready for the return. ‘Keep it simple, give it to a red shirt,’ Jimmy would remind him. As Bobby explained in a Sunday Telegraph article in 1972: ‘I thought that the first thing I had to do as an inside-forward was to show how I could pass. But the full-back would cut it off and three or four people would be put out of the game. I was just showing off. Jimmy showed me the importance of the short game, СКАЧАТЬ