DUNCAN EDWARDS STILL THEY COME...

MIKE FENTON RECALLS THE AWESOME ABILITY OF DUNCAN EDWARDS AND REPORTS ON HOW THE TOWN OF DUDLEY HAS REMEMBERED ITS GREATEST FOOTBALLER...

IN FEBRUARY 1958, my life-span was not yet in double figures and I’d only been to one football match, Middlesbrough v Lincoln City the previous November.

Although I hadn’t been back to Ayresome Park to repeat the dose, it had stimulated an interest in following football via the pages of the Daily Telegraph every Sunday morning, reading through the weekend’s scores and absorbing the statistics of each match of the four divisions of the Football League.

Seven decades later, I still do it, same paper, same ritualistic perusal, same avid appreciation of the juxtaposition of numbers on the results page concisely telling the story of each match - half-time scores, scorers, times at which goals went in, attendance, and league tables.

And every February, every anniversary of Munich, merely by picking up the daily paper, I’m transported back to a fortnight in my childhood, when all I cared about was the hope that Duncan Edwards might survive the disaster that decimated Matt Busby’s vibrant young Manchester United team.

I am not a Man United supporter, but my young life was deeply affected by the tragedy of Munich, and I’ve never forgotten how for two weeks that winter my existence hinged around news reports on the progress of United’s talisman in hospital in Germany.

I recall that it seemed the whole country was riveted by Duncan’s plight, and there was, I think, some optimism that he might recover, although resuming his playing career was considered unlikely.

His death was such a crushing blow for so many, and I recall my mother informing me: “It’s awful, that young footballer’s died.”

I’d never been to see Duncan play, of course. We grew up in our house with no TV, but I’d seen him in an England shirt on a Pathe News broadcast at the Elite Cinema in Middlesbrough, still in his teens and already an experienced international.