Ref. the article by Holt posted by
@jrb and commented on by such as
@Bantamgaz.
I agree with you both and am sick and tired of how the dreadful events at Munich in 1958 have been both initially ignored and more recently abused, all in the name of saving, then making money for that awful club across town.
I posted the following a few years back about my observations on this subject ever since the disaster, from being a kid growing up in Manchester, then reading History as a student and up to now, as I approach yet another 'significant birthday'.
It was written in response to complaints about our fans (and other clubs') being derogatory to the memory of Munich. Whilst wanting to condemn this puerile behaviour of some of our fellow Blues, I also wanted to offer observations on United's behaviour as a club down the years, as one who'd 'lived through it', as it were.
Apologies if I bang on in repeating this but the 'brown nosing' right now of that lot is horrendous to observe and I hope younger Blues will understand why so many of my generation are absolutely tamping when we read guff such as this from this Holt goomer..
====================
"One of my earliest memories is being hoiked up onto The Old Man's shoulders to see United's 1958 Cup Final team being greeted at the Town Hall in Albert Square.
To give him a rest, our neighbour from Hulme (who was a season ticket holder at Old Trafford along with his wife, both of them watching United home and away for many years) also let me sit on his shoulders to see above the crowd.
My aunts and uncles were there too, all Blues mixing with their Red friends to honour the team that had defied the odds after that dreadful air disaster.
Because it was the city's disaster as much as anything else.
We shouted for Matt Busby because he had been a Blue in the great City side of but 20 years before, along with Frank Swift who had died in the crash. Nearer to home, my mother had been a babysitter as a young woman to Albert Scanlon, who survived the crash. She would have been devastated if he'd been one of those who lost their lives that day.
Growing up in the 60s/70s, the disaster only came back into our consciousness as growing kids when on February 6th notices would appear in the Manchester Evening News' 'In Memoriam' column. There would always be something from Duncan Edwards' family, together with Roger Byrne's, David Pegg's and Tommy Taylor's families. And we spoke about the disaster with reverence, none of this tribal nonsense..
I recall as a student on the 15th anniversary in 1973 posting a newspaper clipping which had the complete poem 'Flowers Of Manchester' on a university noticeboard. Nobody touched it or desecrated it. Because it was the city's tragedy.
Sadly, United haven't covered themselves with glory in dealing with the tragedy. In the 60s, the treatment of the players and other staff was frankly appalling (forcing players and their families out of club houses, minimal financial support, not even a whiff of a testimonial to generate funds to support those affected and so on and so on).
The initial 'strategy' always seemed to be 'benign ignorance' so as not to allow themselves to be opened up to legal challenges that might cost the club money. 'If we don't mention it, it and everyone will go away..' and our supine press/media was complicit in this, never highlighting what was going on, hardly ever mentioning the Munich disaster until February 6th loomed again and the (over time) diminishing number of messages in the 'In Memoriam' columns reminded us of what had happened.
I spoke with Albert Scanlon on a few occasions in the 70s when I was a student and would occasionally meet my parents in town of a Saturday night for a drink with them at Sinclair's Oyster Bar, when they would often bump into Albert. He was clearly very upset about the way he and others had been treated by United post-Munich. On the other hand, they had put up a clock at Old Trafford, so that was okay, then..
Fast forward to the early 90s. Time had passed, fans from various clubs including our own had long begun the dreadful chanting that referenced the Munich air disaster and football was beginning to gear up for the modern age that we now know, involving not just mega-bucks sponsorships and tv deals but also Stock Market flotations of clubs and the like.
United led the UK charge on all of these things. And that's when the Marketing Johnnies started taking over our great game. It isn't unfair, I believe, to state that this was the time when the Munich air disaster was slowly turned into a marketing tool by these people, becoming part of the legend of the club alone, when it became all about United and nothing and no-one else.
And as usual when people at a distance from the thing get their greedy marketing mitts on something like this, they messed it up, culminating in the farce that was the 1998 testimonial on behalf of those who had lost their lives 40 years before.
The obscene amount of money paid to secure Eric Cantona's involvement in that game when, yet again, ordinary people were asked to dip their hands in their pockets, was grossly insulting. 'Munich' had now become, in the hands of these people, part of the 'branding' to be exploited on behalf of United, that was quite clear.
However, none of United's actions/behaviours justifies anyone chanting vile obscenities regarding the Munich air disaster. When I hear our fellow Blues use this awful event to poke fun at our Red rivals, I despair at their stupidity and crass insensitivity. Like other Blues on here today, I've noticed that it has reduced over recent years (largely, I think, because of the outstanding behaviour of Blues at the 2008 50th commemoration at the OId Trafford derby).
I hope it will disappear completely. And when Munich is commemorated in the future, I also hope it will be the city of Manchester's loss that will be at the heart of it."
