He has also written a fine book called Underdogs in 2012, following the historic 1879 FA Cup run of Darwen FC, in those days a team with Football League qualifications and many plays. Dewhurst had Manchester United in his soul and at boarding school he would revel in the Football Pink paper, with all the results and comments of local games and reporter Alf Clarke brought this news to him at school on Saturday evenings, a man reputedly who turned out for United once when they were short at Grimsby!??
Today Dewhurst writes about the Munich Air Crash in which Clarke had perished, his last missive, telling of the delays to their flight home .Ten days later Dewhurst filled Clarke's shoes.
Dewhurst suddenly had access to the club's inner circle and it was there that he saw the marvellous post disaster work of Jimmy Murphy. Here was a coach who liked a drink, smoked, played piano and was a genius in inspiration. It wasn't tactics that he imparted but discipline. In 1958 after the dreadful disaster, he was employed by the Welsh national team to considerable success in the Swedish World Cup where his home nation, Wales reached the quarter-finals.
Dewhurst writes about the success that United remarkably achieved later in 1958, reaching the FA Cup Final, progress in the European Cup and beyond, as the Busby Babes re-emerged. There was Bill Foulkes, who had an Italian tailor in London, Mark Pearson a winner at three card brag, the laundry ladies at the ground, Omo and Daz, and many more personal observations. Busby and Charlton of course "reincarnated".
The memorial service is at Old Trafford today at 1.45pm, remembering the time when Manchester United was suddenly everybody's favourite team (well second favourite then).
http://baileyfootballblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/munich-remembered.html
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