TWO: UNITED 3 SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY 0
FA Cup | Old Trafford | 19 February 1958

“The first game after the Munich Air Disaster. At that stage of my life, as a young boy, this was the greatest tragedy I’d ever seen. There were four of us schoolboys that used to go regularly and we sent flowers to all the funerals, and then the emotion of that game… getting there and the programme had 11 blank spaces for United’s team, because we were signing players up until a couple of hours before kick-off. It was a very emotional night, of course. A lot of the youngsters played and Shay Brennan scored twice, once directly from a corner. I was stood on the Stretford End and the first two goals were scored at the Scoreboard End, and then the third was in front of us.

“It was just amazing that this young team had emerged, and with Harry Gregg and Bill Foulkes, of course – the two survivors who played in that match. Regrettably, I haven’t got the programme any more. I saw recently one going online for around £100, not that I ever would have sold mine. I’d been piling all the programmes in the garage and my dear and late mother at one stage decided she needed to tidy up. She got rid of them, much to my ultimate regret. But to get to the final [after the disaster] was just amazing. I remember another game in the run, against West Brom, where we won 1-0 with Colin Webster scoring in the last minute, again at the Scoreboard End. That was the biggest crowd I’d ever seen in my lifetime, at that point. We came straight from school to queue, because there was no ticketing.” 

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