A story of "what if"? In darkest Lanarkshire a worse than non-descript football team start turning in some sensational results. The local psychic & a former peripheral Busby Babe from Cardiff know what's happening - but the beer filled, domestically chaotic players have no idea. Leave your reality at the front cover and enjoy this hilarious trek thro' the ghost ridden team's progress through the season.
This book tells the story of 18 players plus Assistant Manager, Jimmy Murphy, who made up the main squad of the famous Busby Babes. There is still as much an aura about them now as there was before the tragedy of Munich. The Busby Babes. What a great name
Manchester United have enjoyed more than their fair share of great players down the years, but none has been more committed to the cause than the subject of this biography, Roger Byrne. Brought up in Gorton, a working-class suburb of Manchester, Byrne was at first a promising wing-half, later even turning out at centre-forward, but he came into his own as a left full-back fir United and England. Indeed so committed was he to his position that he threatened to leave United unless Matt Busby returned him to the position following an experimental period on the left-wing. footballers were woefully underpaid. Indeed, Byrne and his team-mates refused to take part in a BBC film under the working title 'training with the Champions' because the players were not going to paid enough. However despite these clashes with authority, Byrne remained fiercely loyal to his manager, team-mates and the club's growing army of supporters. By 1958 he and Matt Busby had forged a team of great talent and great resource only for the Munich air disaster to take the Babes away. Who knows how good Roger's team could have become if fate had not intervened?
A moving story of how a legendary football team was lost to tragedy – and how this disaster irrevocably altered the lives of the survivors and the bereaved families, and ultimately brought shame on the biggest football club in the world.
On 6 February 1958, a plane took off from a snowy Munich airport carrying probably the finest club side the world has ever known. Moments later, the aircraft crashed, killing some of the most legendary names in British football. This book is dedicated to those players - Roger Byrne, Tommy Taylor, the mighty Duncan Edwards and the others whose lives were cut off in their prime - and their indomitable manager, Sir Matt Busby. Max Arthur has sought out all the players who survived the crash and spoken to the relatives and friends of those who died. From these interviews, sometimes serious but often humorous, he has captured their remarkable spirit and created a unique portrait of all the Busby Babes.
When Cylin Busby was nine years old, she was obsessed with Izod clothing, the Muppets, and a box turtle she kept in a shoebox. Then everything changed overnight. Her police officer father, John, was driving to his shift when someone leveled a shotgun at his window. The blasts that followed left John's jaw on the passenger seat of his car-literally. While clinging to life, he managed to write down the name of the only person he thought could have pulled the trigger. The suspect? A local ex-con with rumored mob connections. The motive? Officer Busby was scheduled to testify against the suspect's family in an upcoming trial. Overnight, the Busbys went from being the "family next door" to one under 24-hour armed guard, with police escorts to school, and no contact with friends. Worse, the shooter was still on the loose, and it seemed only a matter of time before he'd come after John-or someone else in the family-again. With few choices left to them, the Busby family went into hiding, severing all ties to the only life they had known.
'For me, he is England's greatest ever player' Gary Lineker 'Sir Bobby was a hero to millions, not just in Manchester or the United Kingdom, but wherever football is played around the world' Manchester United FC Sir Bobby Charlton was Manchester United through and through. He was a member of the original Busby Babes and devoted his career to the club, playing in 754 games over 17 years. During that period he won everything the game had to offer, played alongside some of the greats such as Best and Law, suffered devastating defeats and was involved in one of the greatest football tragedies of all time. Here is his story of those United years in his own words. With his beloved Reds he tasted FA Cup victory in the emotional final of 1963, won three first division championships and in 1968 he reached the pinnacle of club success, winning the European Cup. Inevitably, such highs are balanced with no less dramatic lows, such as the 1957 European Cup semi-final, the highly charged 1958 FA Cup loss which followed only weeks after the horrors of the Munich Air disaster, and the 1969 European Cup defeat by Milan. He was one of the true gentlemen of football and the legacy that Sir Bobby Charlton gave to United is beyond compare. RIP Sir Bobby Charlton 1937-2023
One of the greatest players of all time, Duncan Edwards's story is one of tragic heroism. From a working class Dudley upbringing, Edwards rose to great heights at Manchester United. In only five years, he helped United to win two League Championships and to reach the semi-finals of the European Cup. Edwards made his England debut in a game against Scotland at the age of 18 years and 183 days, becoming the youngest player for England since WW2 - a record which stood until Michael Owen's debut over forty years later. He went on to play 18 games for his country, including all four of the qualifying matched for the 1958 World Cup, in which he was expected to be a key player. Sir Bobby Charlton described him as 'the only player that made me feel inferior' and Terry Venables claimed that, had he lived, it would have been Edwards, not Bobby Moore, who would have lifted the World Cup as captain in 1966. Page-turning and poignant, author James Leighton tells a story of a magnificent sportsman and great man - the perfect antidote to the headline-grabbing footballers of today.
The Great Depression was defined by poverty and despair, but visionary American filmmaker Busby Berkeley (1895-1976) managed to divert the public's attention away from the economic crash with some of the most iconic movies of all time. Known for his kaleidoscopic dance numbers featuring multitudes of performers in extravagant costumes, his musicals provided a brief respite for an audience whose reality was hard and bitter. Buzz: The Life and Art of Busby Berkeley is a revealing study of the director, drawing from interviews with his colleagues, newspaper and legal records, and Berkeley's own unpublished memoirs to uncover the life of a Hollywood legend renowned for his talent and creativity. Jeffrey Spivak examines how Berkeley's career evolved from creating musical numbers for other directors in films such as 42nd Street (1933) and Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) to directing his own pictures, such as Strike up the Band (1940) and The Gang's All Here (1943). Though Berkeley claimed he was no choreographer, his movies revitalized the public's waning interest in musical pictures. While other popular filmmakers advertised their works specifically as nonmusical, Berkeley embraced his niche, eventually becoming the premier dance director of his time. However, the happy face Berkeley presented publicly did not necessarily reflect his life. Offstage and away from the set, the director met with scandal, and his fondness for liquor and women was well known. In September 1935, he was involved in a car accident that left three people dead and four others severely injured. Accused of driving under the influence, he was put on trial for second-degree murder. The accident significantly changed the nature of his stardom.
