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

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СКАЧАТЬ stamina. On Sundays, when everyone else had a day off, Jimmy took Bobby into the middle of the training ground, then proceeded to kick balls to all four corners of the field and demand that Bobby chase them. Even when Bobby was an exhausted, breathless wreck, Murphy carried on smashing his long balls out of the centre-circle, yelling, ‘No-one has died of a heart attack on the pitch with me.’ One Sunday, Bobby had grown so sick of this routine that he dared to challenge Jimmy.

      ‘Why are you always on my back? Why don’t you get on to the others?’

      ‘Listen, son,’ said Jimmy, putting his arm around Bobby’s shoulder, ‘we’ve got a lot of good young players here. Some of them will make it; some of them won’t. We feel certain you will. That’s why we give you so much of our time. Listen and learn.’ Bobby never argued with Jimmy after that.

      As a schoolboy, Bobby had been renowned for the power of his shooting and though he was naturally right-footed, he had been almost as devastating with his left. But this was another aspect of his game where Jimmy Murphy felt that there was room for improvement. Emphasizing the need for equal strength in either foot, he made Bobby spend hours kicking a ball from long range at a wall behind the Stretford End at Old Trafford. By drawing a line on the wall at a height of three feet and telling Bobby to hit below it, Jimmy taught Bobby to keep the ball down as he shot. But he never tried to stifle Bobby’s urge to shoot from long range. In an article in 1991, Bobby explained how he developed his scoring potential under Murphy’s tutelage. ‘Most of my goals came from outside the box – I was always encouraged by Jimmy Murphy to have a shot if the window of opportunity presented itself. I used to practice against a brick wall at Old Trafford. I spent my afternoons perfecting my timing and building up my confidence.’ It is a tribute to Bobby’s diligence that many of those closest to him could not even tell that he was born right-footed. His own brother Jack wrote in his autobiography, ‘People often ask me, “Which was your Bobby’s natural foot in his playing days?” And I tell them, “I simply don’t know.’”

      One of the great falsehoods about Bobby’s shooting, beloved of hysterical commentators, was that he was able to ‘pick his spot’ in the goal. The truth is that all he tried to do was hit the ball on target and hope that, occasionally, one of his shots might be wide of the keeper. Again, it was Jimmy Murphy who was responsible for this approach. ‘I was given a lovely piece of advice by Jimmy. He said, “The goals don’t move. You know the general direction they are in and so, if you get the space, just smack the ball towards them.” The principle was sound. I just concentrated on making the proper contact and then hoped that the ball would scream into the net. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn’t.’

      As well as working on his technique, Jimmy Murphy also tried to educate Bobby out of some of his more immature behaviour on the field. John Docherty recalls, ‘Bobby had this habit of indulging in gestures, or shouting at himself, if he had hit a bad ball or was disappointed with his play. Jimmy would say to him: “What’s all this arm waving? We know you hit a crap ball. Now just get on with the game.” And Jimmy told me, “That’s the schoolboy coming out. He throws a tantrum because he doesn’t want people to think that he can’t do better. As soon as we can get rid of that, we’ve got a chance with him.’”

      For all Jimmy Murphy’s tutelage, it should not be thought that Manchester United had attained perfection in its coaching. In truth, the system was disorganized and the facilities poor, particularly at the United training ground, The Cliff. Wilf McGuinness recalls: ‘Looking back, it was bloody awful. The floodlights were dreadful, you could hardly see. The training kit was the worst imaginable. It was never washed, no-one knows what disease could have spread all over the place. When you arrived you just grabbed what you could from the table. Those big woollen sweaters, and the shoes, big heavy things. Afterwards you’d get in the bath – 40 of you – it was black within two minutes. When you got out you’d have to have a cold shower to get the muck off.’ Equally disturbing were the informal practice matches organized by the players themselves on an old plot of land at Old Trafford, wedged between the back of the stadium and the railway line. These sessions were epics of almost gladiatorial savagery. Anyone who could not take a pummelling would not last long. ‘Oh, those games were rough,’ remembers Joe Carolan. ‘We would be kicking the hell out of each other. Jeff Whitefoot once got cut very badly on his head and all the trainer, Tom Curry, did was give him a towel. That’s the way it was. Bobby was as brave as anyone. He gave as good as he got.’

      Increasingly tough and skilful, Bobby soon began to work his way up the hierarchy of United. He had started in the fifth team, which played in the Altrincham League and, thanks largely to Bobby’s shooting, regularly scored 15 or 20 goals a game. He then graduated into the ‘A’ team, which was effectively the thirds. As Bobby recalled: ‘They played in the Manchester Amateur League. You were 16 and this was open-age football with big dockers and guys from factory teams kicking lumps out of you. But it was another fantastic education.’ In May 1954, Bobby was elevated to Manchester’s youth team. With names like Duncan Edwards, Eddie Colman and David Pegg – and now Bobby Charlton and Wilf McGuinness – it was by far the best junior team in the country, winning the FA Youth Cup five years in succession from 1953 to 1957. The fluent approach, based on Busby’s philosophy of skill and simplicity of movement, captivated the public. Huge crowds would gather to see the young players – now christened the ‘Busby Babes’ – wherever they went. 30,000, for instance, turned out at Molineux for the second leg of the 1954 Youth Cup Final against Wolves.

      The reputation of ‘the Babes’ now spread beyond Britain’s shores. That summer, the team travelled to Switzerland for a youth tournament. They won it easily, remaining unbeaten in their seven games, scoring 21 goals and conceding just two. They won it again the following year in equally emphatic style. By this time, Bobby was a key member of the side, as Nobby Lawton, who went with him on that 1955 Swiss trip, recalls: ‘We absolutely dominated the competition. We always seemed to be about 3–0 up after 10 minutes, with Bobby getting most of the goals. I could hardly believe how good he was. He was sensational. The way he struck the ball was so much better than anyone else. His timing was beautiful. He was a superb athlete, so quick on his feet. Don’t forget that there were a hell of a lot of players who were trying to kick him. It was a very physical game when he started. People really went out to clatter him but they could not catch him. He would just skip away.’ Reg Hunter was another who went on a youth trip to Switzerland. Like so many others, he was immediately struck by Bobby’s talent: ‘My first sight of Bobby was when he was playing for the reserves against the first team, and he scored two tremendous goals. I did not know then who he was and when I asked, I was told “Bobby Charlton”. And I thought to myself, “Superb. He is really going places.” Both the goals were classic Bobby, from a distance. He seemed to glide over the ground, and all of a sudden he would be away in one flowing movement. Bobby was inspirational on those youth trips abroad. You could tell that he was a special player, destined for great things, not just by his performances on the field but also by the way Jimmy Murphy and Matt Busby looked after him. They spent a lot of time with him. He was a good leader in the youth team, though he was very quiet. But when he had to make a point on the pitch, he made it.’

      Bobby’s famous body swerve, which bewitched so many opponents throughout his career, was in evidence in the youth team. Ian Greaves, who also joined United in 1953, gave me this description of Bobby in action: ‘Close your eyes, and picture Bobby Charlton with the ball, attacking a defender, dropping his shoulder, and going the other way. Now that is very simple. It is done every Saturday afternoon but never in the way Bob did. We would play against him in training every Tuesday and Thursday morning. Bob would use that trick four or five times. We knew the bloody trick was coming but we could not stop him doing it. He had this wonderful way of approaching you with the ball. You were quite confident. You were on two feet. The next thing you knew, he had sent you the wrong way. To do that at League level and at international level was remarkable. The other great feature of his play was that he was never frightened of going for goal. Some of the goals he scored led us to gasp, because he had no right to be shooting from there. He had such a powerful shot on him, especially with that left peg. If СКАЧАТЬ