came across this ...pretty much sums up what happened.... <a class="postlink" href="http://gaaboard.com/board/index.php?topic=6652.10;wap2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://gaaboard.com/board/index.php?topic=6652.10;wap2</a>
Sorry folks the Irish Times link is no use if you don't subscribe, here's the full story.
--- Quote ---Disaster leaves bitter legacy
For those who survived that terrible night, the treatment they received from the club left a bad taste. Mary Hannigan reports.
Their deaths in Munich immortalised the names of Liam "Billy" Whelan, Duncan Edwards, Roger Byrne, Tommy Taylor, Eddie Colman, Geoff Bent, Mark Jones and David Pegg, the eight Manchester United players who died in February 1958, seven of them instantly, the eighth, Edwards, 15 days later from his injuries.
Many of those who survived, though, were so scarred by the disaster, physically, emotionally or both, the memories of what happened that day haunted them. And for some their bitterness towards the club for the lack of support or recognition they received merely added to their pain.
Harry Gregg, the Northern Ireland goalkeeper, was heroic in the aftermath of the crash, climbing back in to the burning wreckage of the plane to drag team-mates Bobby Charlton and Dennis Viollet clear of danger, as he did, too, for the wife and baby daughter of the Yugoslav air attache in London, Vera and Venona Lukic.
To this day, though, Gregg remains deeply ill at ease with his portrayal as a hero, admitting that he has suffered from "survivor's guilt" ever since. "I've never been comfortable about being portrayed as some kind of John Wayne or the hero of Munich," he said in his book Harry's Game.
"I couldn't face meeting Joy Byrne, Roger's widow, Geoffrey Bent's wife, Marion, David Pegg's family and many others. I couldn't look those people in the eye knowing I'd lived when their loved ones had perished."
Little wonder Gregg was so haunted by the experience, bearing in mind what he saw when he clambered back in to the plane. "Roger Byrne didn't have a mark on him and his eyes were open, but he was clearly dead. I've always regretted that I didn't close his eyes. When I found Jackie Blanchflower, the lower part of his right arm had been almost completely severed. It was horrendous, a scene of utter devastation."
Blanchflower, a close friend of Gregg since the days they played for Northern Ireland schoolboys, survived, but never played football again.
"I've never got over it," he said in an interview with the Irish News before his death in 1998. "It was around eight or nine months after the crash when they told me I couldn't play again. I went to see a specialist in London who told me to pack it in. It was shattering - I can't really describe it any better."
At the time Blanchflower lived in a house owned by the club. Once it was determined that he would not play again he was asked to vacate it. "It was made pretty clear we had to leave," his wife Jean told the London Independent eight years ago, "they were very cold, very harsh, after the crash."
"I didn't get any counselling," said Blanchflower, "and ironically, when I was 54 and looking for a job, I applied for a job as a counsellor but they told me I had no experience or university training. That just made me more sceptical than ever.
"I'd not made any plans and then there I was left on my own in the big, ugly world," he said. "I'd been cocooned playing football and then all of a sudden it was gone."
United director Louis Edwards offered Blanchflower a labouring job in his meat packaging factory. Blanchflower declined the offer and attempted to earn a living from a number of jobs over the years, briefly owning a newspaper shop, working for a bookie, then getting a job in a pub, before "going to school and becoming a finance officer". He ended his days as an after-dinner speaker.
Like Blanchflower, Johnny Berry never played again, having suffered a fractured skull, broken pelvis and broken jaw, that necessitated the removal of all his teeth, so seriously injured he received the last rites in the Munich hospital. He received his end-of-employment notice from the club by post. He, his wife and eight-month-old son were asked to vacate their United-owned home. He died in 1994.
United goalkeeper Ray Wood, who died in 2002, was another survivor of the crash. In 1998 he and the eight other players who survived Munich were invited by Uefa to that year's European Cup final in the German city.
"I had tears in my eyes," he said, "this was recognition, after 40 years, which we never had in all that time from United."
Albert Scanlon, who fractured his skull in the crash, resulting in the scrapping of his previously agreed transfer to Arsenal, was equally bitter. "The only compensation we received was a few hundred pounds from BEA (the airline). The club did pay our wages while we were injured, but apart from that they gave us nothing. Nowadays, I even have to pay, just like anybody else, to watch United play."
When he was discharged, on crutches, from the hospital in Munich, Scanlon returned to Britain, understanding that the taxi he used in the following weeks was being paid for by the club. Club secretary Les Olive, however, advised him to stop using the taxi, informing him that the club wasn't, in fact, footing the bill.
It wasn't until 1998 that the club staged a benefit match for the survivors of Munich. After expenses each of the living survivors, or their immediate families, received £47,000. Eric Cantona, the star attraction that night, and his European X1 received £90,555 for travel and miscellaneous expenses.
"We feel that we helped to build Manchester United," said Wood. "They received massive international support following the disaster but they didn't treat people properly then, did nothing for us all those years, and they're still making money out of it directly now."
Wood wasn't wrong. When the club raised a banner at Old Trafford last week to commemorate the Munich Air Disaster the supporter's association asked them to remove their sponsor's logo. They turned down the request.
A magnificent football club, no doubt, just one that forgot what it owed to those who helped make it what it is today.
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