| Bob 70-71 Home
Latest
News
70-71
Teams
A-Z
Players
Search
the Site
FAQs
Quiz
Thirty
Years Ago!
Articles
Where
are they now?
Quizlet
Links
Guestbook
E-mail me
Chat
About
Bob 70-71
|
Caught In Time
Featured
in the back of the Sports section of the Sunday Times,
the Caught in Time
series features a picture of a famous team, offers a
profile of each player, and answers the question 'Where
are they now?'.
Manchester
United win the FA Cup, 1963
When Noel
Cantwell hurled the FA Cup 15 feet into the air, his
teammates looked on in astonishment. The Manchester
United captain is still not sure what possessed him to
throw the silverware skywards after United had beaten
Leicester City 3-1 in a stirring Cup final at Wembley on
May 25, 1963.
"It must have been an impulse," he recalls.
"We were very happy. It had been a wonderful
day." But soon afterwards a commissionaire looking
after the prized trophy walked across to him and said,
"Excuse me, sir, but the FA Cup is not to be thrown
into the air." Cantwell replied: "Don't worry,
I knew I would be able to catch it because I play cricket
for Ireland." The United players were in an
exuberant mood. The sun had come out after a bitter
winter that had seen them play only one League match
between Boxing Day and the beginning of March. They had
staved off relegation and then outplayed their favoured
opponents in the Football Association's centenary year to
win the Cup with a goal from Denis Law and two from David
Herd.
Leicester replied with a spectacular late header by Ken
Keyworth, who stooped a foot from the ground to score.
Their virtuoso performance lifted the spirits of a nation
that had shivered through the Big Freeze when football
had come to a standstill for almost two months.
A total of 14 third-round ties were postponed more than
10 times, and the third round took 66 days to complete.
More than 400 League and Cup matches were postponed
during the season, and the pools panel was inaugurated,
with former players choosing all the results on four
successive Saturdays.
When the sun did peek out, United began a Cup run that
saw them beat Huddersfield, Aston Villa, Chelsea,
Coventry and then Southampton in the semi-finals.
Their performance in the final suggested that manager
Matt Busby was again putting together something special
after the 1958 Munich air crash had taken away eight of
his young stars.
1 Tony Dunne (Manchester
United)
A Dublin-bom defender, Dunne became one of United's
greatest fullbacks in his 13 seasons at the club. He was
plucked from Shelboume weeks after winning the FAI Cup in
April 1960 and played only three games in his first
season. But he worked his way through the ranks and
became a regular in Busby's solid backline.
Dunne, who won his first cap for Ireland at the age of
20, represented his country on 33 occasions, playing
alongside his brother Pat. He was an excellent
distributor of the ball and had great speed and a fine
tackle. He turned out in 530 League and Cup games for
United, winning championship medals in 1965 and 1967 as
well' as the FA Cup. However, his crowning moment came in
the 1968 European Cup final when he held firm with a
brilliant performance against Benfica' s strong attackers
to help United win 4-1.
He was released in April 1973 and moved to Third Division
Bolton, where he played for five seasons, winning the
Second Division title in 1978. Then it was off to the US
and Detroit Express before he swapped his boots for his
golf clubs and pursued his other great sporting passion.
He lives in Sale and still looks after his golf driving
range in Altrincham, which he built soon after retiring
from football.
2 Bobby
Charlton (Manchester United)
He nearly didn't make it. A product of United's youth
team, Charlton was thrown 50 yards into the snow at
Munich Airport when the plane in which the team was
travelling crashed on the way back from a European Clip
match in Belgrade. He escaped with a head injury , but
such was the trauma of losing so many of his young
teammates and friends that he wanted to stop playing
football. Persuaded to return, he became one of the
all-time greats.
His accurate passing, ability to beat players and
penchant for scoring goals helped England win the World
Cup in 1966. Charlton, who played in 106 games for his
country, provided the fulcrum for United in the midfield
until he retired in 1974 with three League titles, an FA
Cup medal and a European Cup medal.
He turned his hand to management at Preston, but was not
a great success and came back to Old Trafford. Knighted
in 1994, he is still a member of the United board and
remains a prominent statesman in world football.
3 Noel Cantwell (Coventry City manager)
The FA Cup final was the highlight of his career.
"It had to be," he says. "I was the
captain of the winning team and we had a wonderful day at
Wembley.
" Cantwell was another of the Irish full-backs in
the United team of the 1960s, having moved to Old
Trafford in November 1960 after a happy and successful
time at West Ham, for whom he played almost 250 games. He
brought experience to the Manchester side during his
seven years at the club. , He was a double international,
representing Ireland in 36 football internationals and at
cricket, where he was a left-handed batsman who matched
his skills against New Zealand and West Indies.
He was expected to become the United manager after Busby,
but instead took over at Coventry for five years,
steering them into Europe for the only time in their
history .
He was then offered a job at Peterborough. His first
reaction was:
"Where is Peterborough?" But he lifted them
from the bottom of the Fourth Division during another
successful spell. After coaching in the US, he opened a
pub in Peterborough, where he still lives. He is a scout
for England and will be at Old Trafford today watching
United and West Ham, the two teams he captained.
4 Pat Crerand (Manchester
United)
A strong wing half-back, he had only been at the club for
three mo~ths when they won the Cup.
Crerand had moved south from Celtic to join fellow Scot
Denis Law as United began building a forrnidable side.
"United were a far more progressive team than
Celtic," says Crerand. And success at Wembley was
important. " After winning the Cup, we realised that
we could then win anything. It was the start of our good
run in the 1960s, much like Sir Alex Ferguson's success
in the FA Cup was the start of what has become the
greatest era in United's history."
Crerand had a good Cup final, but says: "Everybody
played well that day, nobody had a bad game, and we
probably should have won by more."
The tough-tackling Crerand won further honours at the
club, taking home two League championship medals and the
European Cup while also playing in 16 games for Scotland.
After retiring, he became assistant to Tommy Docherty at
United and then manager at Northampton. But he found he
wasn't made for management, so he became a PR man for an
engineering company, and then ran a pub. However, he
found a niche in radio as a football pundit in
Manchester, and works for the television channel MUTV.
"You can hardly call it work, though," he says.
"I love it."
5 Albert Quixall
Seen as the golden boy of British football at the time,
he joined United six months after the Munich air crash,
and brought speed and glamour to the team's attack.
Quixall cost a British record fee of œ45,000 when he
signed from Sheffield Wednesday, and enjoyed six seasons
at Old Trafford. He scored 53 goals in his 183 matches,
but was surprisingly overlooked for England while at the
club. A year after the Cup success, Quixall moved to
Oldham and then finished his career at Stockport. He went
into the scrap metal business, but was mugged one day
when carrying a lot of money. He fell into ill health,
and friends say he is uncomfortable among large crowds.
He lives in the Manchester area, but is sadly not seen at
games.
However, his colleagues will remember his mischievous
sense of humour. One evening United were due to play
Tottenham at White Hart Lane, but a thick fog descended
on
the ground shortly before kick-off, and the referee
called the players off the field because nobody could see
more than 10 yards. Quixall stayed on the ground and,
with a wicked smile, was seen urinating on the centre
spot. Afterwards he said: "I always wanted to p***
on Spurs."
6 David Herd (Not yet placed on Bob 70-71
site but could be Stoke City or Lincoln City)
He became only the second League footballer to play
alongside his father when he joined Stockport at the age
of 15 and lined up with 39-year-old Alec, a former
Manchester City player. Herd Jr, who had been overlooked
by both City and United despite growing up in Manchester,
proved himself as a striker at Stockport before joining
Arsenal. His success with the Gunners persuaded United to
bring him home, and he moved to Old Trafford in the
summer of 1961. He struck up a successful partnership
with Law when he joined him in a red jersey, and their
partnership brought a flow of goals.
Although he scored twice in the Cup final, he rates his
two League titles as more satisfying. A broken leg ended
his career at United. and he moved to Stoke City where he
had an enjoyable two years. He decided to go into
management at Lincoln City, but after initial success was
replaced by a promising young manager called Graham
Taylor.
So Herd became a garage owner in Urmston. He retired two
years ago and plays golf four times a week. "I play
on a nine-hole course with lots of trouble on both sides,
so its a good test" he says. Not surprisingly, he
regularly wins prizes when the old United players gather
for regular charity golf days.
From The
Sunday Times 26 January 2003.
Sports Section p.28
Many thanks to
Ken Ainge, for sending me this article to include on the
site
Return to
the Caught In Time Index
|
|
