Duncan Edwards was the jewel in the crown of the young and gifted Manchester United side that Matt Busby fashioned in the 1950s - the “Busby Babes” as they became known. Edwards came into the side as a halfback, but his athleticism and all-round ability meant that his influence spread all over the pitch. His tragic death from injuries sustained in the 1958 Munich air crash robbed football of what undoubtedly would have been one of the most outstanding players in the world game in the i 960s; he would probably have figured in the 1966 World Cup, when he would have been 29 years old.
Honours came early to Edwards. He made his debut for Manchester United at the age of 16, winning two championship medals, in 1956 and 1957 with Busby's talented team. When he won his first England cap in 1955 in a 7-2 victory over Scotland, he was just 18 years and 183 days old, a record which stood for more than 40 years until Michael Owen’s England debut against Chile in February 1998. In his sadly short career; Edwards notched up 18 caps and scored five goals.
Above: Duncan Edwards, one of the central figures in Matt Busby's new team. United won the league in 1952 but Busby looked towards the future, devoting attention to finding a new crop of juniors who could be moulded to make formidable unit. By 1956 this new team was ready to compete on the world stage, and Busby had bought Just three players: Taylor, Berry and Ray Wood.
Left: Members of the Manchester United team travel from Blackpool to London in 1957 (l-r:McGuinness, Foulkes, Jones, Colman and Wood).
Opposite left: The young Chelsea player, Jimmy Greaves, in training for his match against Wolverhampton in October 1957. Opposite right: 1957: At Goodison Park engineers of the Merseyside and North Wales Electricity Board lay the first turf-warming system six inches below the surface of the pitch at a cost of 7000.
Chelsea’s decision to decline to enter die 1956 compedtion meant that Manchester United became the country’s first champions to contest the European Cup. Busby’s team earned the right by romping to the 1955-56 title by 11 points, equalling the biggest wanning margin in the league’s 68-year history. When Dennis Viollet scored the only goal of the match against Portsmouth on 21 April 1956, United were uncatchable.
By now the pieces of the jigsaw were all in place. Duncan Edwards had made his debut as a 16-year-old m 1953, with Tommy Taylor moving to Old Trafford from Barnsley in the same year for ?29,999. Busby dehberately pitched the deal just short of makes his debut ?30,000 to try and ease the anxiety that might
Have accompanied a big-money move. Mark Jones, Eddie Colman, David Pegg and Bobby Charlton were others among the precociously talented crop of young players that Busby had assembled. In four years he had transformed a veteran side into one in which the average age was just 22.
World History
