My Story : Matt Busby

I picked this up the other day. It's no more than the usual Souvenir Press ghosted autobiography of a manager or a player. The journalist involved in pulling this one together, David R Jack, presumably adopted the use of the middle initial to distinguish himself from his namesake, the famous Arsenal player. He worked for a now defunct title called Empire News (a Manchester based Sunday, which was bought by Thomson in 1959 and sold and merged with the northern edition of the News of the World the following year). His other ghosted works included "Finney on Football" and "Mr Cricket", the latter apparently the life story of an earlier Fergie, W H Ferguson, a famous Australian scorer.

What makes this book so different is that it was put together in 1957, just after United had won their second championship in succession, failed in their first bid for the European Cup and been robbed of the first double of the twentieth century by Peter McParland's dreadful clattering of Ray Wood. It is Busby's thoughts without the distortion of hindsight that affected all that came later. The copy I have was given to someone called Robert by his parents as a present for Christmas 1957. Just six weeks later, of course, the author was in intensive care, a majority of his team were dead and nothing he said about football could ever again be free of that shadow.

There was a second edition of the book published in 1958, with a chapter about Munich added. I don't imagine the publishers could resist the opportunity, but as I read the book the whole relevance and weight of it seemed to be given by the absence of the knowledge of what was to come.

It is interesting, for example, how little space is given to Duncan Edwards. In later years, the size of Edwards has seemed to overshadow that team, but from 1957 he seems to be just a component part.

There is a photograph in the book of Busby walking through Nice with four journalists. Three of them died at Munich and the other, Frank Taylor, survived and wrote a book about the crash. But whoever chose that photograph didn't know that would happen.

And the book ends, "I am convinced that the future will prove even brighter.... There is no reason why Manchester United should not remain in the forefront of English - and European - soccer for at least another ten years. I hope to be at Old Trafford to see it, because as I believe I mentioned before, this is the finest club in the world."

Well, so it is, of course, so it is.

Matt Busby, My Story, As told to David R Jack, Souvenir Press, London, 1957; Second edition, with additional chapter, Souvenir Press, 1958; Sportsman's Book Club edition (of 1958 edition) 1959.