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

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СКАЧАТЬ United team. There was even speculation about an England place. John Giles, who joined United in 1955, is full of admiration for him at this time. ‘He was only 19 but he was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Even amidst all that talent at United, he stood out for me because he could do it on his own, instinctively. He was a very instinctive player. He had such natural ability, with pace and beautiful balance. I have to admit that he was not always so enjoyable to play with as to watch. It was hard to relate to him on the pitch, in terms of working together on the ball, because he would be doing his own thing. When I first went to Old Trafford, I was taught by Matt and Jimmy: “As soon as you get in a nice position, find another player, let the ball go simple and quick.” But playing with Bobby, I found that, sometimes, when I got in a good position, I did not get the ball from him. And I would be thinking, “Oh come on Bobby.” Then I saw that he had suddenly gone past three or four players and was threatening the goal. He could break all the rules because of his individualism.’

      Giles also remembers Bobby, in this period, as a ‘shy individual but always friendly. We got to know each other because we were both young, living in separate digs and, in the evening, there was often very little to do. So we would wander up to the park and play bowls. In the right company, with people he trusted, he was one of the lads, enjoyed a drink, a game of cards, a song – he loved Frank Sinatra and had a good voice. He could be funny as well, with a dry sense of humour. Yet if a stranger came into the group, he would switch off immediately. He just would not be the same. And he could also be moody. If someone said what he considered to be the wrong thing, then he would take it to heart. Again, he was not a big drinker, but he liked a beer.’

      Wilf McGuinness, one of his closest friends at this time, agrees about his shyness. ‘Bobby used to come in to Mrs Watson’s, just pick up a paper and start reading it. He did not converse that well, partly because he had a very strong Geordie accent.’ But, for all his shy nature, Bobby should not be thought of as a loner. For he revelled in the company of the Babes. It is no exaggeration to say that this period was probably Bobby’s happiest in football, when he was surrounded by friends of his own age and was enjoying the first freedom of adulthood. In later years, he would use the word ‘paradise’ to describe the pre-Munich years he spent with Duncan Edwards, Eddie Colman and the other United greats of that era. He was particularly fond of the streetwise Eddie Colman, as he told Eamon Dunphy: ‘I had come from the north-east which was, I suppose, a bit parochial and Eddie was the flash little townie. He was the first person I ever saw in drainpipe trousers. But he was brilliant. I was very close to Eddie. We were all close at that time. At Christmas I would stay with him. We’d play in the morning, then go back to his place for the turkey. His family were nice, lived in a tiny little street, where there was a real community spirit.’

      The Babes also enjoyed the Manchester nightlife, going to the Bodega jazz club or the Plaza, run by Jimmy Savile, or the Continental, run by Eric Morley. Bobby’s Manchester in the 1950s was a much more exciting place than Jack’s Leeds. Wilf McGuinness recalls: ‘We were just ordinary lads. We’d go to the Plaza, have a bit of a snogging session, if we were lucky. Maybe we would see them again, maybe not.’ A more sedate activity was going to the pictures. As one of the perks of being on the staff, United players had free passes to all the cinemas in the city, as well as to the dog tracks at Belle Vue and the White City. ‘You’d be in the cinema on Saturday night, and suddenly you’d hear an “aaah” and a big “uggh”. It was the sound of footballers with cramp in their thighs and their hamstrings. We didn’t have rubdowns as they do today,’ remembers McGuinness. Bobby adored the cinema, according to Albert Scanlon: ‘A perfect day for Bobby would go: training, lunch in town, and then, in the afternoon, a visit to the News Theatre on Oxford Street to watch cartoons. He loved cartoons and would watch any that were showing. He regularly went into town two or three times a week, even by himself.’

      Bobby could be high-spirited as well. Ronnie Cope, who was at United between 1950 and 1961, told me, ‘Bobby was a cheeky little kid. He, Wilf and Shay Brennan were so close, they always liked a joke, taking the mickey out of someone. We used to call them “The Three Musketeers”.’ Twice as a young player Bobby was hauled up before Matt Busby for rather puerile offences. The first occurred when he and some other young players, travelling through Manchester by bus, started firing off water pistols at pedestrians in the street. In fact, according to Ronnie Cope, the toy guns contained urine rather than water, which made the incident all the more serious when it was reported to Old Trafford. The second difficulty arose when, still under the legal age limit, he was reported for having a beer in a pub. As Busby wrote in his memoirs, Soccer at the Top: ‘When he was a mere lad, I had to put him right. He was very young and I heard he had been seen to have a drink of beer. So I sent for him and I told him, “If I ever hear you have been drinking beer again before you are old enough, you will be for it.” It was a long time before he had his next glass of beer.’

      On a more sophisticated level, Bobby further incurred the disapproval of Matt when the manager found out that he, Shay and Wilf McGuinness were planning to open a nightclub in Manchester. McGuinness explains, ‘Wherever we went, there were always a lot of girls around, especially because Shay was a good looking lad. We thought we could make some money out of our popularity.’ So in the summer of 1959 negotiations were started with local businessman Nipper Leonard to take over his nightclub in Queen Street, with an agreement concluded late one night. Yet when McGuinness turned up at training the very next morning he was confronted by an angry Busby: ‘What’s this I’ve heard about you buying a nightclub?’ McGuinness continues, ‘I could not believe how he knew because it was after midnight when we had reached the deal. By 9.45 the next morning it had got back to Matt. But he had a lot of informers all over the place. He warned me: “I think you three go into enough nightclubs without owning one. Just take a look at your contracts.” We had to have permission if we wanted to go into another business. That was the end of it. It was never discussed ever again.’

      Nor, in his less serious youth, did Bobby always show the commitment that was later to mark him out as a model professional – especially if he was not being supervised by Jimmy Murphy. ‘I used to clown around with Dave Pegg and Eddie Colman. Even when we were training we used to lark about. Our trainer, Tom Curry, was getting old and he couldn’t get around with us kids. He used to have a terrible time with us ducking out of training periods,’ said Bobby in an interview in 1961. John Docherty says that Bobby, for all his quietness, was just like any other young lad. ‘He would sometimes get pissed out of his head. I remember after a European Cup game, in 1957, we were in a nightclub, chatting up a few birds. Then an argument started and all of a sudden we’ve wrecked the place. Bobby was involved in that. He was no different.’

      Interestingly, Jack and Bobby were probably closer in this period than they were at any other time in their lives. After years of moving in different directions, their lives were now dominated by the same adventure into professional football. At last they had something truly in common, and they began to enjoy each other’s company. Jack would travel over to Manchester or Bobby to Leeds. Sometimes, they would go to David Pegg’s house in Doncaster. Together, they played golf, went to the pictures or the pub, listened to Bobby’s collection of records, took girls on dates or even went fishing, more happily than they had ever done in childhood. On occasional Sundays, Bobby would drive with Jack to Ashington to see their parents – this was when Bobby, before the rift with his mother, was still very happy to visit his home town. In a reflection of this better relationship, when Jack got married to his girlfriend, Leeds shop-worker Pat Kemp, in January 1958, Bobby was his best man at the wedding. As Jack told the journalist Norman Harris, ‘It was not through convention but because he was my best friend.’ Yet even in the new mood of harmony, some still detected a sense of distance between them. Laura Crowther, the daughter of Jack’s landlady in Leeds, saw Bobby on his regular visits and knew the Charlton family well. She told me, ‘Bobby came over a lot and stayed here the night of the wedding. But I’ll tell you something, he and Jack never appeared close. He was very quiet, still seemed a bit of a mother’s boy and that would get on Jack’s nerves.’

      With Leeds having won promotion in 1956, Jack and Bobby played regularly against each other in the СКАЧАТЬ