LITMIR.BIZ

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didn’t have any fear. It was an adventure for me. I just wanted to play professional football,’ Bobby once explained. Like Jack, Bobby had rarely been away from home when he began his adventure in soccer aged just 15 in the summer of 1953. And, just as Jack had been disappointed by his first sight of Elland Road, so Bobby was surprised at the grime and ugliness of Manchester when he arrived in the city. ‘When I got off that train at Exchange Station and looked around me, I saw all the buildings completely covered in a thick layer of black. There was so much smoke belching out of all the factories and mills that it clung to the buildings. Ashington, though it was a mining town, was never like that. It wasn’t black,’ said Charlton in a recent interview.

      In the 1950s Manchester was notorious for its thick smog, so dense that it frequently shrouded the city in darkness and made even the shortest journey a nightmare. Joe Carolan, who joined United in 1956, told me, ‘The pollution was unbelievable. I remember once getting off the train with some other players, and trying to walk through the centre of the city to my home. There was not a taxi, bus or car to be found anywhere because of the smog. It was so thick and black we could hardly see a thing in front of us. So we walked down the middle of the Stretford Road, and every few hundred yards, one of us would go off to the left or right to check if there was any landmark we might recognize.’

      When he disembarked from the train, Bobby was met by Jimmy Murphy, Manchester United assistant manager, who was to have a bigger influence than Matt Busby over the development of Bobby Charlton as a footballer. Murphy, who never learnt to drive, took Bobby by taxi to digs run by a Mrs Watson near the Old Trafford cricket ground. Throughout the journey, as Bobby later recalled, Murphy spent the time extolling the virtues of Duncan Edwards, ‘Great left foot, great right foot, strong in the tackle, great in the air, reads the game, can play in any position, is fast and has tremendous enthusiasm.’ Bobby was in awe of Duncan before he had met him.

      Unlike Jack, Bobby was not appointed a member of the club’s ground staff when he joined United. And this again highlights the difference in the treatment of Bobby and Jack. For Cissie had been quite happy for Jack to join the Leeds ground staff at 15, even if it meant tedious and degrading work. But very different standards were applied to Bobby. ‘My parents had been told that all you had to do on the ground staff was sweep up and clean toilets and all that, and my mum and dad didn’t want me to do that,’ said Bobby later. It was a classic case of favouritism, where the elder brother had to carry out duties which were seen as too demeaning for the younger.

      Instead of acting as an orderly, it was arranged for Bobby to carry on with his education. Bedlington Grammar, which had strongly disapproved of Bobby’s move into League football, had persuaded his parents to transfer him to Stretford Grammar in Manchester, so he might be able to gain some GCE (General Certificate of Education) qualifications. But the move turned out to be a disastrous one for Bobby, as both his studies and his football suffered. He rose at 7.30am, got to school at 9am, and then, as soon as his classes were finished, he went to Old Trafford for three hours of training. Returning to his digs at about 9pm, he then tried to do his homework. The task was beyond him. ‘I was making a complete fool of myself in lessons; they were totally different from the work at Bedlington because the GCE papers were different. I hardly knew what time of day it was and I found myself going to bed at midnight with unfinished homework which I just could not do. I was only 15 and I was in a terrible quandary because on one hand I could not go on living like that and on the other I did not want to let down my mother,’ he wrote. As usual, he was much more concerned about his mother’s judgement than his father’s.

      What made the problem worse was that Stretford Grammar had not been informed about Bobby’s decision to sign for United. Understandably, given Bobby’s talent, the school expected him to turn out for their side, while Bobby had his commitments with the Old Trafford youth teams. Conflict was inevitable. Within three weeks of the start of term, Bobby had been picked for two different matches on the same day. The moment of truth had arrived, he knew. So he rang his mother to tell her that he wanted to leave the school. Cissie proved understanding, agreeing that there was no point in struggling on at Stretford, and advised him to see the headmaster. Now Bobby was always a shy, nervous man – throughout his career at Old Trafford he hardly dared to approach the patriarchal figure of Sir Matt Busby. But he was rarely more apprehensive than the day he had to explain his situation to the headmaster. ‘Shaking like a leaf, I said I had no ambition to be an intellectual, that I was going to be a footballer and that I wanted to leave Stretford. He answered in four memorable words, “You are perfectly right.’”

      Bobby never had any doubts in his early years that he would make it as a professional. It is yet another striking difference between them: Jack the loud bombastic teenager, inwardly plagued by insecurity, and Bobby the quiet, retiring youngster who was certain of his talent. ‘I was good and I found it easy,’ he once said. After leaving Stretford Grammar, he would have loved to have become a full-time professional at Old Trafford, but his was impossible because he had not yet reached the age of 17. With his mother still reluctant for him to join the ground staff, Bobby had to find a job for a year. He therefore enrolled as an apprentice electrical engineer at the firm of Switch Gear, whose owner was a football enthusiast. If his schoolwork had been difficult, this position was just dull. Dreaming all the time of soccer, Bobby wasted his day filing pieces of metal, making tea and running errands. Like so many trapped in the dreary routine of the workplace, he indulged in clock watching, frequently going to the lavatory to gaze at the clockface on the top of Stretford Town Hall, willing the hands to speed up so he would be free to go for training.

      What made up for the tedium of the job was the atmosphere in Mrs Watson’s house. He shared with seven other Busby Babes, including Billy Whelan, David Pegg and Duncan Edwards and they brought him out of his shell. He remembers: ‘At first I was a bit homesick and inclined to keep to myself but the others soon accepted me for what I was. It was good fun. Everybody ribbed everyone else and the gags rattled off like machine gun fire. Mark Jones’ idea of looking after us was to take us to a horror film in town and then march us all of five miles home. I shared a room with him for a time and then I roomed with Billy Whelan – he was like a big brother to me.’ In fact, Bobby felt a far greater affinity to Billy than he did to his real elder brother, for Billy, a devout, teetotal Catholic from Dublin, shared Bobby’s qualities of self-effacement and reticence. It is a reflection of the kindness of his fellow lodgers that they would give him articles of clothing and other presents, knowing that he was only earning £2 a week, barely half of what the ground staff apprentices were paid. Once Duncan Edwards gave me a new shirt which he said was too small for him. I don’t think it really was, but it was a very welcome addition to my sparse wardrobe,’ recalled Bobby. Albert Scanlon, the left wing who became a United professional in 1952, thinks that Mrs Watson’s was the ideal environment for Bobby. ‘When he came to Old Trafford, he was very shy and quiet, though he was a different lad if his mother turned up – he was much more open with her, and she always had such a loud, laughing presence. But Mrs Watson’s house did the world of good for him, because he was mixing with other players. They had a great social life together, going to the films in Manchester, or playing football and tennis in the park. Bobby was always comfortable with that group.’

      When he reached the age of 17, Bobby was finally able to give up his hated engineering job and become a full professional with United. The morning after he had signed, he went down to the United ground full of enthusiasm. The first person he saw was the trainer, Tom Curry, who gave Bobby a response he did not expect.

      ‘What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at work?’

      ‘I’ve just signed my forms,’ replied Bobby, expecting a word of congratulation.

      ‘Stupid lad. You should have stuck to your trade. Don’t you know what a hard game football is?’

      The realities of Curry’s remark were soon brought home to Bobby. Until now, at school, in Ashington, and in the county and England junior sides, he had been the dazzling star of the show. But at United, a club already awash with talent, he was just another young pro trying to make his way. Moreover, because he had never received any proper training before, Bobby had fallen into some poor habits. At the highest level, his reliance only on instinct and natural ability would not be enough. Bobby Harrop, who also joined United in 1953, told me: ‘Bobby

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