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brought into the team for the next round, against West Bromwich Albion. Having drawn at the Hawthorns 2–2, United then had a replay at home. Such was the excitement that United were now generating, such was the willingness of the city to identify with a club still in mourning, that not only was the ground again packed to capacity, but no less than 20,000 people were locked outside. It was in this game that Bobby demonstrated how quickly he was developing. Playing on the left wing instead of his usual position as inside-left, he produced a piece of magic that was to linger in the memory of all who saw it. The match was heading towards another stalemate – this one goalless – when, in the 89th minute, Bobby received the ball from the tiny forward Ernie Taylor, who had been signed by Jimmy Murphy from Blackpool just six days after the crash. In the Daily Herald, Bobby gave this description of what happened next: ‘Before I knew it I had the ball and was flying down the wing. I seemed to be tackled a dozen times, but somehow I got past all of them, full speed ahead. Now I was coming along the byline, now I was cutting back a low centre across goal, somehow beating the entire defence. And there was Colin Webster, thundering up the middle, side-footing the ball in full stride into the empty net. They say I just kept on running and running until I reached Webster, then grabbed him and hoisted him in the air.’ Bobby later called it the greatest Cup tie he had ever played in. Frank Haydock, a United player, says of that goal: ‘It was such a wonderful move, I could not get over what he’d done, the way he beat people with both pace and the body swerve. That was a real eye-opener for me, showing what sort of player he would become.’

      Though United fell behind in the League and were knocked out 5–2 on aggregate by Real Madrid in the European Cup semi-final, Bobby’s superb form ensured that the team went all the way to Wembley in the FA Cup. Bolton, however, showed none of the sentiment that had swayed the nation after Munich, winning an undistinguished match 2–0. Their cynical professionalism was summed up by their second goal, when Nat Lofthouse barged Harry Gregg into the United net. Yet United’s inadequacy had also been exposed, as Bill Foulkes recalled: Our forwards had never been in the game. Bobby, who had played so brilliantly between the disaster and Wembley was jaded on the big day. He had been required to play in too many matches – because there could be no thought of dropping him. He was too good a player to rest, and who could replace him, anyway?’ In public, Bobby said he did not really mind losing to Bolton. He was more relieved that the team had not disgraced itself, that it had achieved something for the battered manager. He wrote later, ‘What mattered was that we maintained our position in the game, the glamour and identity in being a top-class club. Matt, who had only recently come out of hospital, came to give us a pep talk at Old Trafford before the final. He couldn’t. He just cried. Those fellows who died were his family.’ In private, however, Bobby was dispirited after the Final, as Ronnie Cope recalls. ‘There was some mix-up at the ceremony and Bobby, by mistake, got a winner’s medal. Afterwards, he just threw it on the floor in the dressing room. It didn’t mean a thing to him. He had a tremendous love for United and the club was everything to him.’

      Up until the Cup Final, Bobby’s form for United had led to a national clamour for him to be selected for the England team. This mood, as Bobby understood, was tinged with a degree of sympathy for what he had been through. Nevertheless, there was a genuine recognition that here was an outstanding young talent who could be one of the saviours of English football. The early and mid-1950s had been a dire period for the national side, with the successive 6–3 and 7–1 defeats by Hungary in 1953 emblematic of England’s lack of vision and organization. Bobby Charlton represented hope for the future.

      When Kevin Keegan was dropped by England in 1982, he complained bitterly that he had only learned about the decision through the press. ‘Bobby Robson should have had the guts to tell me to my face,’ he wailed. But Keegan’s case is hardly unique. This is the – way so many players have been informed about international selection or exclusion, particularly in the pre-Ramsey days when an FA committee chose the England side. And so it was with Bobby Charlton. On one of his visits to Ashington he had been to the pictures with Jack in the late afternoon. As they came out of the cinema, Jack picked up an evening paper. There was the news, in the stop press column, that his younger brother had been selected for England. True to their natures, Jack was much more demonstrative, letting out, in his words, ‘a whoop of joy’, while Bobby just smiled. Jack says that his elation was completely genuine. ‘There was no jealousy. There couldn’t be. He was the great player of the two of us, and I never in my wildest dreams thought I was good enough to play for England. I was just proud and thrilled for him.’

      Six years later when Jack contradicted his own prediction by winning his first cap for England – coincidentally against Scotland as well – Bobby’s response was very different. In April 1965 Leeds and Manchester United were playing in an FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough as the news came through to Leeds boss Don Revie that Jack had been picked for the England squad. He told Jack after the game, a typically stormy Cup tie which Leeds won narrowly. Unable to contain his glee at the news, Jack ran along to the United dressing room to see his brother, who recalls: ‘I was sitting slumped when our kid came beaming through the door. “Go away,” I thought, “we don’t need you at this moment.” But Jack just stood there, the smile getting wider and wider. “Hey,” he said, “I’m in the England team with you.’” The announcement was greeted with a resounding silence, only broken for a moment by Bobby’s brief two words of congratulations, ‘That’s terrific,’ Then another United player said, ‘Now fuck off out of here.’ Jack then knew he could not have chosen a worse time to tell his brother, walking into the dressing room of the team he had just helped to knock out of the FA Cup. ‘But that’s the kind of tact I’m famous for,’ he once joked.

      Interviewed in 1959 about his selection for England, Bobby made the predictable noises about achieving his childhood ambition. ‘This is what I have been dreaming about since I was nine. I’ve never wanted to be anything else but an England footballer,’ he told the Daily Mail. As always, Cissie loomed large in his thoughts: ‘I know who will be happiest of all – my mother,’ Interestingly, however, he said later that he was so emotionally focused on United’s Cup run that he felt indifference towards the game. ‘I went up to Scotland completely unworried, with no pre-match nerves at all.’ Now this was very different to the way Bobby Charlton was to feel throughout the rest of his career. Though a master on the field, he would usually be gripped by pre-match nerves off it. Nobby Lawton game me this description of Bobby in the dressing room before a big game: ‘At ten to three, Bobby was like a great performer, waiting in the wings, building himself up as he prepared to go out on stage. “This is me, this is what I’m good at,” you could see him saying to himself. Bobby would be shaking. That was how much he cared about his performance. That’s why he was great – every game mattered. He would often have a cigarette before the game, his hands shaking. Jimmy Murphy would sometimes put a bottle of whisky on the table in the dressing room, and Bobby and a few others would take a swig. It wasn’t like a drink, really just a gulp, Dutch courage before the conflict. He was always the same before every game at Old Trafford, very, very nervous.’

      The selectors thought he would be anxious so they made him share a room with Billy Wright, the Wolves and England captain. Intriguingly, Bobby, who always had such respect for authority throughout his career, was not especially impressed with the leadership of Billy Wright, the ultimate ‘establishment’ man. ‘He was a nice fellow but I didn’t feel he had much influence as captain other than by his example as a player. There was such a turnover in those days in the team that he was reluctant to criticize players in case they thought it was his fault,’ says Bobby.

      Bobby had an excellent first game for England, making the first goal and scoring the last in a 4–0 win at Hampden. His strike came in the 85th minute, when he hit a thunderous volley from a cross by Tom Finney. So impressed was Scottish goalkeeper Tommy Younger at this shot that he actually ran out of his area to congratulate Bobby, something that would be unimaginable today. ‘Well done, son, that was a fantastic goal,’ he said. Players on both sides were amazed at Bobby’s spectacular effort. Tommy Docherty, later to be Charlton’s last manager at United, recalls: ‘It was one of the greatest goals ever seen at Hampden. I was on the receiving end. Bobby left me flat-footed as he met a cross from my Preston teammate Tom Finney. The ball came in at hip height and Bobby caught it on the volley. Our goalkeeper was still diving

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