SIR BOBBY IS MR MANCHESTER UNITED

SIR BOBBY IS MR MANCHESTER UNITED

As Sir Bobby Charlton turns 80, ManUtd.com features editor Steve Bartram pays tribute to the great man who truly embodies the spirit of Manchester United...

Sat quietly in Old Trafford’s south stand, 15-year-old Bobby Charlton waited patiently outside Jimmy Murphy’s office. United's assistant manager was making a case to Bob Charlton senior that his boy, making his first visit to the stadium, should move to Manchester permanently.When his father finally summoned him into the office to ascertain his wishes, the habitually shy, softly-spoken Bobby was uncharacteristically animated as he blurted his answer out.
“I want to come here, Dad. This is my type of club."
None of the trio could have imagined just how right young Bobby was, as they continued their conversation within the confines of what would later become the Sir Bobby Charlton Stand.
By turns a wunderkind, survivor, hero, mainstay and icon, the sandy-haired youngster from Ashington has gone on to occupy almost every conceivable role at Old Trafford in his time as a player, director and ambassador. Hand-in-hand for the vast majority of the last six decades, the relationship between Bobby and United has outgrown a mere working association. They form a part of each other.
From the very beginning – when scout Joe Armstrong returned to Old Trafford in February 1953 grinning: “This boy is going to be a world beater,” – Charlton had been bound for Old Trafford, rejecting the interest of countless other clubs through a combination of Armstrong’s incessant persuasion and his own memories of watching the Reds win the 1948 FA Cup.
Grandson of Tanner Milburn, whose name spawned five professional footballers, the pedigree youngster swiftly made an impression on his new club; not least Matt Busby. “It was soon shown that the boy had inherited old Tanner Milburn’s gift for hitting the ball with a great thump and for great distances,” recalled the United manager. “That was only one of his many qualities – so many, indeed, that they combined to form a genius. It was very quickly evident that Master Bobby was going to make a considerable impact on football and on Manchester United football in particular.”
From the start of his early seasons in the first team, Charlton’s was a star seemingly destined to burn bright. While eight of his team-mates were claimed by the Munich disaster, Bobby escaped almost without physical injury, found strapped to his seat, 60 feet from the wreckage. He later admitted: “In so many ways I was part of the horror, but I was also, in the strangest way, detached; it was almost as if I was disembodied, a silent, traumatised participant in a terrible dream I could neither act in, nor escape from."
The mental scars ran deep, but Charlton became the poster boy of the crash survivors, missing just two matches before returning to action. “Though the shock must have been profound, this boy Charlton became a man overnight,” opined Busby. “From being one attractive new stone in a mighty edifice he became the foundation on which we had to rebuild over the ruins."
While the surviving Reds were reinforced by a combination of stellar signings and youth produce along the way, Bobby was the figurehead throughout the club’s return to splendour. Charlton’s quest mirrored that of United; bound for the top of the game but sent tumbling back down to the brink, before embarking on the same journey once again. Bruised and bloodied, but not broken. Still only 20 at the time of the crash, Bobby’s rise to become one of English football’s finest players continued unabated. He was a goal shy of 30 in the season immediately after Munich. “A player who could move with the grace of a ballet dancer and yet with dynamite in his boots,” beamed Murphy.
Wherever he played – he was a striker, winger and midfielder – Charlton was central to United’s subsequent successes. An FA Cup winner and two-time league champion, his finest hour came in a two-goal performance in the 1968 European Cup final victory over Benfica; a result which offered a modicum of closure to a player and a club striving to finish the job started by the Busby Babes 11 years earlier.
Seldom injured and perennially possessing his fearsome shooting ability, Bobby went on to establish club appearance and goalscoring records in the remaining years of his Reds career. He was still United’s top scorer in his final season as a player, albeit with a meagre seven goals, with the writing on the wall for a side which would be relegated the following term. Fittingly, Charlton was spared the indignity of being forced to play second tier football.
When he retired in 1973, the curtain came down on a playing career without equal. As Busby put it: “The greatest thrill for a manager who has persuaded a boy to leave home – and his parents to allow it – is when the young seed bursts through and then blooms gloriously. None has bloomed more gloriously than Bobby Charlton. That shot of his has thrilled the world. Never did a boy seem to enjoy his game more than Bobby did."
As the Reds clawed their way back to prominence in the post-Busby years, Bobby came back on board. By now awarded a CBE to accompany his OBE, United’s most famous son became an Old Trafford director in 1984. A decade on he was awarded a knighthood and he now also occupies the role of club ambassador. His duties therein are simple: represent Manchester United. It’s the role he was born to play, travelling across the globe to represent the club he represents.
Father Time is a light-fingered adversary to us all, and recent years have relieved Sir Bobby of his longstanding status as Manchester United’s leading appearance-maker (an honour now belonging to Ryan Giggs) and goalscorer (to Wayne Rooney for club and country).
But, while records may fall with the passage of time, and new rivals emerge to threaten the records of Rooney and Giggs, Charlton’s unique status will be forever preserved in stasis. If Sir Matt was the father of United and Sir Alex its godfather, then Sir Bobby is its favourite son.
He is an emblem of Manchester United and English football, synonymous around the world with both institutions and a walking study in class and grace. While one side of Old Trafford may now bear his name and his bronze likeness watches over the stadium’s forecourt, these are merely physical expressions of a spiritual association formed over six decades and released into eternity.
The 15-year-old boy who sat outside Jimmy Murphy’s office 65 years ago was right: Manchester United really is his kind of club, and never more has there been a more Manchester United kind of player than Sir Bobby Charlton.