Old Trafford celebrates 4,000-match
Manchester United owe a debt of gratitude to wartime secretary for proud youth record ‘Garton took the No 58 bus to Old Trafford and marked his debut with a pint in the Jubilee Pub in Salford’
Every one of the 279 youth-team players who have been part of Manchester United’s match-day squad in the past 82 years has their own story to tell, and plenty of those will be regaled this weekend as the club prepare to reach an extraordinary milestone.
Take Billy Garton. His big break came in 1984 in a League Cup tie against Burnley. Only 19 and without a car, the former defender took the No58 bus from Ordsall Lane to Trafford Bar as he had done so often as a fan, sneaking in to watch the last 20 minutes of games when the gates were opened, in the hope of a glimpse of his hero, Martin Buchan.
Little could the man sat on that bus reading a back-page headline “Billy the Kid” have known that the story’s subject was looking eagerly over his shoulder and on the cusp of realising a lifelong dream. Boots stuffed in a plastic bag, Garton slipped into the players’ entrance unrecognised. He celebrated a 4-0 win with a pint in the Jubilee Pub on the Salford council estate where he had been raised.
Everton’s visit to Old Trafford tomorrow will mark the 4,000th consecutive game in which at least one youth-team graduate has been included in United’s first-team squad, a run that predates the outbreak of the Second World War and one of which a club arguably more synonymous with youth production than any other are justifiably proud.
It is a storied history, one of the most fabled in sport, a tale of constant renewal and an uncrushable spirit encapsulated by the way they rebuilt in the aftermath of Munich in 1958 when an air disaster destroyed a team of precious home-grown talents destined for greatness.
None of the 10 academy graduates who have been handed first-team debuts by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer this year alone will have to get the bus to Old Trafford like Garton. But, right down to the small details, such as academy players only being allowed to wear black boots, the importance of discipline and humility are impressed on them from an early age and, on the evidence of this season, the production line remains strong. Of the 38 goals United have plundered this term, 34 have been scored or assisted by an academy graduate, with Marcus Rashford claiming
13 of them.
Of course, any discussion of United’s talent factory tends to focus on the sprawling Busby and Ferguson eras, when success and swashbuckling football were underpinned by a nucleus of carefully nurtured local and British talent that produced icons whose surnames alone evoke a mixture of wonder and awe – Edwards, Charlton, Best, Giggs, Scholes and Beckham.
Others, such as Jimmy Murphy, Sir Matt Busby’s long-time lieutenant, and youth-team coaches Syd Owen, who helped usher through the likes of Norman Whiteside and Mark Hughes, and Eric Harrison, a guiding light for the “Class of 92”, were intrinsic figures.
Yet one name is too often overlooked – that of Walter Crickmer and, if nothing else, this weekend’s milestone, dating back to October
1937, offers a timely opportunity to reflect on how different the club might have looked when Busby took charge in 1945 but for the vision and tireless efforts of its secretary during the Second World War.
“He’s one of the true unsung heroes in United’s history,” says club historian Tony Park. “I challenge people who say Busby revolutionised our youth system. It had been in place for seven years before he arrived and it was largely thanks to Crickmer’s genius that he inherited a readymade team capable of performing to that level.”
It was Park, together with fellow United historian Steve
Hobin, who unearthed the statistic about the club’s remarkable youth lineage during painstaking research for their 2012 book Sons of United, an exhaustive chronicle of the club’s youth team. But, as Park explains, Crickmer’s contribution during wartime is a story seldom told.
Even United’s official encyclopedia dedicates just 366 words to that period between 1939 and 1945 when Crickmer had been determined that the war would not deprive the club’s emerging talents of the chance to play football. Only a year before its outbreak, Crickmer, James Gibson, the United owner, and scout Louis
Rocca had created the Manchester United Junior Athletic Club as a gateway for gifted local youngsters by targeting school-leavers, but German bombers threatened to bring that ambitious venture to a premature conclusion. Yet, amid the chaos and loss of players and coaching, secretarial and administrative staff to the war effort that placed an extraordinary burden on his shoulders, Crickmer maintained a MUJACS side.
The masterstroke was an alliance forged at the start of the 1941-42 season with Goslings, an amateur Manchester club run by three brothers, Abraham, Frederick and Clifford, who owned fruit shops in the city.
Recognising that United could not afford to run four teams – the firsts, reserves, an A team and the MUJACS – but not wanting to abandon any of them, Crickmer effectively outsourced the A team to Goslings. “It was an act of brilliance to keep everyone tied to United but at the same time not
have to pay the wages and be able to watch these players progress,” Park says. “All these juniors were getting older so they couldn’t play in the MUJACS any more, so they needed more experience and to be playing against adults, and Goslings provided that.”
The partnership ceased when the war ended but it was because of the Goslings tie that United would unearth goalkeeper Jack Crompton and left-half Henry Cockburn, who both won the FA Cup under Busby in 1948. The Gosling brothers would attend a dinner dance to mark that occasion as guests of United.
Busby bought in wholly to United’s youth culture and his achievements and legacy have few rivals in the British game, but there is little doubting the Scot had the richest of inheritances, and for that, United owed an enormous debt of gratitude to their former secretary. “Crickmer is one of the great visionaries of English football,” Park says.