TRIBUTES TO HARRY GREGG
HARRY GREGG’s favourite seat was a big armchair by the picture window at the front of his house on the hill in Castlerock, an hour outside Belfast.
On his coffee table were his football books, autobiographies mainly, and his newspaper. Close at hand were his cigarettes.
Towards the back end of his life, Gregg would sit and watch the football on television. Manchester United were still his team.
‘Here at home, when United have a new manager or player, I just look at it like any other fan,’ he told me. ‘My simple little head asks itself, “Is he a good player or is he a pillock?”.’
Time spent with Harry Gregg was never wasted. It would involve plenty of listening and at times a little patience. But he, of all those who were there that dreadful day in Bavaria, had plenty to say.
Gregg never escaped the shadow of Munich. He wanted to, but he couldn’t. As he was prone to say: ‘I know what happened. I know what I saw. I was there.’
For many years — too many years — those details seeped into his dreams.
As a goalkeeper, he was imposing and charismatic. In his case, sport mirrored life. even in his later days, he stood tall. Conversations took place at his pace and followed his path. Often, confrontation would be central and it would not always be in jest.
I was lucky to know him a little towards the end. An afternoon spent at his house for an interview in autumn 2017 was quite possibly the most treasured of a 20- year career with this newspaper.
Much of that time was spent persuading him to let me turn my tape recorder on. Another chunk was spent eating his wife Carolyn’s sandwiches.
Carolyn — graceful, charming Carolyn — was the gatekeeper at Castlerock. Nobody got to Harry without her say so. she was, understandably, ever suspicious of people’s motives.
Gregg’s life was pockmarked with great tragedy. He lost his first wife and his daughter to cancer. Without Carolyn, he wondered to me out loud, he may never have recovered.
It is true that Gregg’s relationship with United over the years was not straightforward. Unlike some of the 1958 survivors, he did not get the chance to square the circle when the european Cup was won at Wembley 10 years later.
He had been sold to stoke City in 1966 and never won a medal. This perhaps bothered him more than he would ever concede.
He felt that some of his old teammates were too quick to tell their stories of Munich, including some who were not there.
As for sir Bobby Charlton — one of several he pulled from the wreckage — the two men were not close. Given what had passed between them on the runway, it was a remoteness that did not sit easily with Gregg throughout his years of retirement.
But then Harry Gregg did not purport to be everybody’s cup of tea, nor did he wish to be. He liked to say of himself, ‘I am not a nice man.’ This was not true but it was his own way of acknowledging the sharp edges that could cut when they needed to.
The truth is that his place at the centre of this most tragic football story was one he never wanted. He carried it with grace and due responsibility but he suffered with it, too. ‘I never wanted to be John Wayne,’ he told me.
Ours was a relationship sustained occasionally by telephone. If he had something he wanted to say, usually about Manchester United, Carolyn would call. Then he would ask me questions about football he knew I would not be able to answer.
‘I think I will tell your editor about this,’ he would rasp.
The last day I saw him, two Februarys ago, I watched as he walked slowly to his seat at Old Trafford ahead of the 60th anniversary commemorations of the disaster.
He hadn’t been sure that he wanted to come. He almost cancelled. He had not been back for years and was, in all honesty, a little afraid of what he would feel.
On the day, the organisation failed him a little. He was almost the last man to appear at the service and was left to walk — alone and self-conscious — to his seat. It was snowing and he looked hollow and vulnerable.
several hours later, he asked me to meet him in the bar of the hotel across from the road from the stadium. When I got there, the fire had returned to his eyes.
‘ Where have you been?’ he cracked. ‘Did you have something better to do?’
He was glad the day was almost over, glad he had come. He was among his family and friends now and a weight had been lifted. That morning, at United’s training ground, his grandson had met Zlatan Ibrahimovic and he had exchanged a word with manager Jose Mourinho.
‘Do you think he knew who I was?’ Harry asked. It was not a joke.
Most importantly, though, Gregg and Charlton had spent time together after the ceremony. Charlton’s opening line had disarmed him a little. ‘Hello big man,’ he said. ‘How you doing?’
For Harry Gregg that simple exchange — a moment of civility between the two remaining survivors of that abysmal winter’s scene — closed a chapter of his life. It drew a line under something that had troubled him for far too long.
‘Aye, I am glad I came,’ he said to me. ‘I think I had to come here. Just one last time.’