Re: Arguement ref United and their treatment of Munich surviours
As a young lad in the early 60's Jackie Blanchflower lived near me in Peel Hall, (the posh houses not the council ones)!!
Inside football: Munich disaster: the myth and the misery
Independent, The (London), Feb 3, 2000 by David Conn
THE ANNIVERSARY of the Munich air disaster falls this coming Sunday, 6 February; a time, as ever, to remember the injured and the 23 people, including the eight "Busby Babes", who lost their lives. This year, though, the anniversary takes place in the context of angrier memories, an account of hard struggles and bitter realities, from bereaved relatives and survivors, many of whom are only now beginning to tell their stories.
For 40 years, few publicly challenged the telling of Munich as a tragic football story; the loss of eight brilliant young players at Matt Busby's family club, which Busby, usually portrayed as a father figure, then painfully rebuilt and ultimately led to a heroic and cathartic European Cup victory 10 years later. However, former players, and relatives of those who died, now say there was a near- conspiracy of silence over what they saw as United's failure to look after them following the crash, a feeling in part that it would be disloyal to the players who died.
This silence began to be breached only in the summer of 1997. The nine former United players who survived the crash were invited as guests of honour by Uefa, European football's governing body, to the 1998 European Cup final in Munich between Juventus and Borussia Dortmund - a mark, Uefa said, of the enormous contribution the men had made to European football. "I had tears in my eyes," says Ray Wood, the former United goalkeeper. "This was recognition, after 40 years, which we never had in all that time from United."
At that Munich match two years ago the players talked more concertedly about United's treatment of them following the disaster. As surviving players fit enough to play, they were given no financial compensation by United. Those Busby wanted - Harry Gregg, Bill Foulkes, Bobby Charlton, Dennis Viollet - were put back to work. Others - Wood, Albert Scanlon and the 18-year-old wing prodigy Kenny Morgans - who never regained their form were sold soon afterwards without ceremony.
United were insured against the expense of losing players; this amounted to pounds 112,000, which was shared by the club and the dependents of the players who died. A public appeal launched by Manchester's Lord Mayor raised pounds 52,000, distributed to dependents according to their financial needs. United's court case against the airline was settled in January 1963 for pounds 35,000, which led to further payments, including small amounts to the surviving players.
Two players, Johnny Berry and Jackie Blanchflower, whose wife was pregnant at the time, survived but were too badly injured to play on. Insurance payments were shared between them and the club and they received some money from the two other funds.
Contrary to some suggestions, the payments to the families of the dead players and to Berry and Blanchflower were, for the time, not insubstantial. The widespread anger and bitterness against United springs not only from a sense that more could have been done financially; there is a deeper feeling of betrayal. Many now say that United's reputation as a family club, Busby as its father figure, was a myth. After Busby's return in 1959, and with Louis Edwards on the board then chairman from 1962, United went back to business with players to sign and success to hunt. For many of the families of those who died, contact with United after the funerals and payouts was scant.
Jackie Blanchflower, who like most of the players, lived in a house owned by the club, had to vacate it. "It was made pretty clear we had to leave," says Jean, his wife. "United were very cold, very harsh, after the crash." By January 1959, Blanchflower was on the dole. Louis Edwards offered him a job in his meat factory, loading pies on to lorries, but he declined, working in a succession of jobs until he later had some success as an after-dinner speaker. When the winger Berry found he could never play again, United sent him his employment cards in the post. Berry moved away to Farnham and cut off all contact with United.
"It wasn't about money," says a relative of one of the families, who preferred, still, to remain anonymous. "It was about much more than that. For all the talk about the crash, the wave of sympathy which flooded into United, the club did no more than fulfil a cursory financial obligation towards the families. There was no more, no human compassion. It was a business, at a time when football clubs treated players like chattels, and the men who ran it, Busby as much as Edwards, were hard and ruthless."
Andrew Blanchflower, Jackie's son, says: "My Dad still loved Manchester United, but he was bitter and very sad. I don't even accuse them of treating him badly, only that they didn't treat him well."
The Munich benefit match, finally held after 40 years on 18 August 1998, was combined with Eric Cantona's farewell Old Trafford appearance, in a European XI. As if to underline its lateness, only two weeks after the match Jackie Blanchflower died, aged 65. Six months later Dennis Viollet died, also 65, tended by his devoted wife Helen, of a brain tumour that grew on the same, right-hand side of the head as the injuries he sustained in the crash.
