‘Snakehips’ had all the tricks 50 years before Ronaldo
The small men always walked like giants in eddie Colman’s household. The 5ft 6in right-half would mark Alfredo di Stefano for Manchester United against Real Madrid in 1957, but no one needed to teach him about humility.
his grandfather served in the First World War in one of the bantam battalions, formed by men who were less than five feet tall. his father had been out of work for five years when he scored a hat-trick in the Salford Unemployed Cup Final in 1933. Somehow, it earned him a job as an engineering firm’s plate layer, which he clung to for life.
The family lived at No 9, Archie Street, Salford — a house that would become famous as the fictional Coronation Street home of elsie Tanner, but which, in the mid-1950s, was just eddie’s place, crackling with life and warmth.
Bobby Charlton would be invited to stay every Christmas eve, which was hazardous on the year he had an 11am Christmas Day kick-off for the reserves. Charlton suggested an early night might be wise, though that would mean missing eddie’s Uncle Billy — ‘a fine singer, who arrived in full voice,’ as Charlton remembered it. The Colmans were having none of it. ‘To fuel the celebrations, at short intervals, someone went to the off licence with a white enamel bucket to be filled with beer,’ Charlton related.
Colman lived like he played: off the cuff. he bore a scar on his mouth, having once dived for a tennis ball in the house and crashed into the sideboard. It made his smile more pronounced.
Charlton had never seen a dragback until he saw Colman destroy his marker with a dummy then head off the other way. he could control the ball with either foot and his agile feints earned him the nickname ‘Snakehips’.
he’d roll the ball back and forth with the sole of his boot, 50 years before Cristiano Ronaldo made it a fashion. Matt Busby’s assistant Jimmy Murphy also felt he was the best tackler in British football.
Colman was the foil and supply for Duncan edwards, with whom he had played in United youth teams from the age of 15. edwards would become the emblem of incalculable loss when British european Airways Flight 609 crashed at Munich-Riem airport at 3.04pm, 60 years ago today. Yet Colman was the one local player among those who died.
he loved to watch Salford’s rugby league side, the original Red Devils. ‘how have Salford gone?’ was one way he’d deflect questions about United, the journalist John Roberts relates in his book The Team that Wouldn’t
Die, which has been republished to mark the anniversary. Colman was also a member of the legendary Salford Lads’ Club, where he was known as a fine basketball player.
he sang, like his Uncle Billy, though it was the jazz of Kid Ory and Sidney Bechet that Colman loved. he wore drain pipes and three-quarter-length jackets before they were at the frontline of fashion. he would go to Manchester’s clubs — the Cromford, the Continental or the Spare Wheel — in David Pegg’s Vauxhall Victor.
‘he was always pulling Duncan edwards’ leg, dancing with his girl, Molly, and cracking jokes,’ his cousin Albert Valentine told Roberts. Colman’s girl was Marjorie and they were close to becoming engaged by the time he had become a mainstay for Busby, playing 51 times in the 1956-57 season when United won the league and made the FA Cup final.
Busby had no doubt about giving him the role of marking Di Stefano in the Bernabeu in the 1957 european Cup semi-final. The new horizons of european football excited him. ‘he loved flying,’ said Valentine. ‘he’d have travelled from Salford to Manchester by air if he could.’
The team lost 3-1 in Madrid. A year later, a 3-3 draw at Red Star Belgrade would see them reach the last four again, the day before fate intervened on the runway after refuelling in Munich. When Bill Foulkes returned to the wreckage, he found a cap belonging to Colman, bearing the name of the Continental club. To this day, the Salford Lads’ Club have kept his membership card. It records the Archie Street address and, next to the space for ‘employment’, are two entries charting the career path which had so delighted him: ‘Manchester United Football Club groundstaff’ and ‘Professional Footballer.’ he was 21 when he died with the world at his feet.