FREE DUNCAN EDWARDS: THE GREATEST PDF James Leighton | 304 pages | 31 Jan 2013 | Simon & Schuster Ltd | 9780857207821 | English | London, United Kingdom Duncan Edwards: The greatest footballer who ever lived? | The Independent There was no way, not then, that you could divide and quantify the grief in the streets that filled with mourners when it came to the burying of the brilliant young football team that perished in Munich 50 years ago today. Some said that even the sky wept for Manchester United, but really there wasn't so much demand for tragic hyperbole. You couldn't easily exaggerate the pain or the sense of loss, because the footballers known as the Busby Babes had done more than merely accumulate astonishing success in a few brief years: they had painted a future filled with promise, the idea that anything could be Duncan Edwards: The Greatest. For the city, which had sustained so many scars in its time, and for a nation Duncan Edwards: The Greatest to emerge from the rigours and insecurities of war, they represented so many things that could not be contained by the borders of a football pitch. They were youth, and colour, and beautiful accomplishment, and swaggering self-confidence. And when they are remembered tonight in an executive suite at Old Trafford, the space-age stadium which some will always swear has grown directly from the mystical impact of the lost team, and on the terraces of Wembley, where England play a friendly match against Switzerland, the sadness of many who remember 6 February will inevitably be Duncan Edwards: The Greatest personal. It will be a reminder of that first shock of mortality, of that time Duncan Edwards: The Greatest a grey afternoon when winter used to be winter, when you knew suddenly, heartbreakingly, that you, no more than your heroes, would not be allowed to live for ever. Tonight, though, the perspective of all the years since the British European Airways charter plane slewed off the end of the slush-piled runway of Munich airport and killed eight players, four of them members of the national team, along with officials, journalists Duncan Edwards: The Greatest crew members, will carry many back to the moment that they have always felt brought the Duncan Edwards: The Greatest crushing blow of all those that came in the tragic episode they will never forget. An extraordinary — and utterly impractical — hope was snuffed Duncan Edwards: The Greatest when the news came in; news that Sir Bobby Charlton, a survivor who was rehabilitating among his own people in the North-east, still describes as the worst moment of his life. The fiercely communal dream born of Duncan Edwards: The Greatest pain was that Edwards would win his battle against terrible injuries and would, soon enough, return Duncan Edwards: The Greatest the fields he had come to dominate so profoundly that some argued — and still do — that he was potentially the greatest Duncan Edwards: The Greatest who ever lived. When Charlton's mother Cissie put her hand on his shoulder and said: "Big Duncan has gone," he said they were the words he dreaded most, because as long as the big man, still just 21 years of age, was alive, it was as though the worst had not happened, could not Duncan Edwards: The Greatest. This flew in the face of the words of the German doctors, who said it was Duncan Edwards: The Greatest he had survived the first impact when the plane swept through perimeter fencing and smashed into a house — and that he should survive 13 days was evidence of a staggering will. That belief in himself, and his destiny, was still evident beneath the oxygen tent where Charlton found him when he walked up the stairs to the emergency ward. Charlton said this week: "The other day, I came upon a picture taken of the United youth team which won the FA Youth Cup, and once more I caught Duncan Edwards: The Greatest breath. Duncan was twice as big as any other player. If he survived, so might we all in our spirit and our willingness to fight on. Of course we would always grieve for the lads who had gone, great players and men we loved, but Duncan seemed to go beyond everything. You see, he was so good; when he was around you thought anything Duncan Edwards: The Greatest possible. He was a giant, and even today his loss is the hardest thing to bear. In fact, Edwards was less than 6ft tall, but everyone agrees that his aura was immense. When he joined the England team for the first time he was Duncan Edwards: The Greatest 18, but a picture taken on the training pitch makes a mockery of such tender years. It shows three players chatting jovially as they run around the pitch. One is Billy Wright, the England captain who would win caps. One was Stanley Matthews, a forward of already legendary skills. Edwards is in the middle. Duncan Edwards: The Greatest might Duncan Edwards: The Greatest chatting with teenage friends on Duncan Edwards: The Greatest way to the cinema. The England player Tom Finney recalls: "He was so strong people could only see the power, but he had a most delicate touch. Manchester United came back and prospered after the crash, but they never had better than the boys of ' It is very sad to think what he might have done if he had been allowed. Unquestionably he would have been in the very highest rank. Such was the authority and passion of Duncan Edwards on the field that it is hard to believe that his place in the game was once threatened by an interest in folk dancing, at which he excelled so much in his secondary school in Dudley, West Midlands, that he had to choose between a national competition and a trial with the England schoolboy football team. After much persuasion, he chose football — and Manchester United were so relieved that they sent their trainer Bert Whalley who also died in Munich to sign him in the small hours of the morning. In those days, financial inducements were illegal. So the legend is that Edwards signed for United, and resisted the overtures of the powerful neighbouring club Wolverhampton Wanderers, simply because he saw the promise of the Manchester club's youth policy. It thus may have been entirely coincidental that his mother, Sarah, soon owned one of the finest washing machines in England. It may, however, have been her reward for listening to the advice of onlookers when she saw her son, then nine, playing in a pitched battle of a game against much bigger boys and some men on a patch of waste ground. She walked into the fray, with the same determination with which she confronted a burglar shortly before she died at the age of 93 five years ago, and was Duncan Edwards: The Greatest to drag her son home. But she was told that no boy had ever so dramatically announced his right to play against any opponent, however large, however old. Munich meant that we will never know how good Edwards would have proved, but the adoring Charlton, for whom Edwards scoured an army camp in Shropshire for a decent mattress when he joined his older team-mate for national service, is scarcely an isolated witness. Don Revie, the star of Manchester City who would emerge as one of England's most successful managers with Leeds United, was stunned when Edwards joined him in the England team. Said Duncan Edwards: The Greatest "You don't hear many professionals talk lightly of greatness because it is so rare, but that is what I saw in Duncan Duncan Edwards: The Greatest the first time I set eyes on him. He reached the same fabulous standard at left-half, centre-half, inside-left and centre-forward. He is the kind of player managers dream about. Certainly Jimmy Murphy, the man who stood in for the badly injured Matt Busby, shared Revie's belief the moment he saw the boy easily produce his power and his control. When the tough Murphy, a wartime army instructor, was found sobbing in a back corridor of the Munich hospital, there were many reasons for his pain, but no one doubted that it was the loss of Big Duncan that had left him most stricken. When the year-old Charlton had arrived in Manchester, Murphy met him at the railway station and drove him to his digs. All the time the old football man talked of Edwards, the diamond he was polishing as though it was Duncan Edwards: The Greatest great vocation, the great gift, of Duncan Edwards: The Greatest life. Charlton recalls: "I was tempted to say, wait a minute, no one's that good. I'm glad I didn't, because Duncan was everything Jimmy Murphy said Duncan Edwards: The Greatest was. I was convinced we were going to win the trophy against Real Madrid at the second time of asking, and I believed that, with him, England would march Duncan Edwards: The Greatest to win the World Cup later that Duncan Edwards: The Greatest in Sweden. Pele stole everyone's Duncan Edwards: The Greatest in that tournament, but if Edwards had been there I swear he would have had a challenger. He had strength and character that just spilled out of him on the field. I'm absolutely sure that if his career had had a decent span he would have proved himself the greatest player we had ever seen.