Gladstone Edwards rushed home from Sankey’s, the ironworks, as soon as he heard about the Munich disaster.
“There’s been a plane crash,” he told his wife, Sarah Anne, as he came through the front door. The couple headed into the front room and turned on the wireless for news about their only son.
When a list of the dead was read out, Duncan was not among them. “He’s safe,” Sarah Anne cried, and the couple hugged each other. Duncan was indeed alive. But not for long.
There are many terrible cruelties about the death of Duncan Edwards. The timing, after 15 days of seesawing hope and despair, was only one of the torments. In great pain from injuries to his legs and his crushed kidneys, Edwards would see a familiar face walk past his bed and ask: “What time is the kick-off against Wolves on Saturday?” It is said that they were his last words.
There was the agony for his parents of losing their only living child. A daughter, Carol Anne, had died at 14 weeks. Now Duncan was gone at 21. Their mother would live until five years ago, until she was 93. She kept a shrine to Duncan, including the last £5 note he gave her, framed behind glass.
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The loss for English football could never be so profound as for the family but it was felt deeply, and not only in Manchester.
Edwards had quickly become the golden boy of the game. Two questions greeted his death: Why him? Just how good might he have become?
Only 21, he was the youngest international in his country’s history, had won 18 caps and, from left half, was –establishing himself as the driving force of the England midfield. “He was the only player who made me feel inferior,” Bobby Charlton once said of his friend. His skills were impressive but what inspired awe was his stature and his bearing. At 6ft and more than 13 stone, he did not need to kick opponents. They bounced off him.
His contemporaries state with certainty that not only would he have added to his two league championship medals but done so as captain of Manchester United. He was a leader by nature. Perhaps he would have gone on to lift the European Cup.
The most imponderable question of all is what role Edwards might have played in the England team that became world champions in 1966, when he would have been 29, at the peak of his powers. It may be heresy in East London but would he have played instead of Bobby Moore? Would he have been England’s World Cup-winning captain?
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Terry Venables was in the crowd for Edwards’s last game in England, the 5-4 victory over Arsenal when he had scored the first of the match’s nine goals with a typically thunderous drive. “Duncan Edwards played in the same position, No 6, as Bobby,” Venables said. “How could you ever pick Moore, great player though he was, ahead of Duncan?” Edwards was bigger, quicker and more versatile.
The answer is that you could have played them together; Moore at centre half, Edwards farther advanced in midfield, where he could make the most of his range. What none of his contemporaries doubt is that, barring injury, he would have joined that exclusive group of English centurions, the club that David Beckham is so desperate to join. It is one thing to speculate about his accomplishments but how do you commemorate a player who might have won the World Cup, might have been this country’s greatest player? It is not a question that Dudley, his Black Country home, has found easy to answer.
Edwards’s grave in Dudley Cemetery has long been a shrine for passing fans and Matt Busby unveiled a stained glass window in St Francis Church in 1961. But it was only in 1999 that the council decided to erect a statue in the marketplace. It shows Edwards in a classic pose, head down over the ball, thundering forward, thighs bulging. It shows all the power, which was by no means his only asset – he could shoot and pass beautifully off both feet – but that made him such a vision of manliness.
When he came to the unveiling ceremony, Charlton confronted head-on the suggestion that the legend of Edwards was built on tragedy. “Sentiment can throw a man’s judgment out of perspective,” he said, “yet it is not the case with him . . . Duncan Edwards was the greatest. I see him in my mind’s eye and I wonder that anyone should have so much talent.”
Edwards was full of confidence on the pitch but there was no swagger and, despite his size, no overt intimidation. He was an amiable kid who liked going to the pictures. His thick Brummie accent laid him open to occasional mimicry but he loved the banter. He never devoted himself to his studies but nor was he a fool.
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At 21, he was already cashing in on his fame. He advertised Dextrosol tablets – “extra energy makes the difference!” – and had started work on his first book, Tackle Soccer This Way, which was published posthumously. If he was seeking to make a few extra quid, it was understandable given a weekly wage of £15 that would drop to £12 in the summer months.
Aside from that book, we have pictures, old film clips, his England shirts, caps and medals; many of them in an exhibition in the Dudley Museum that awaits a permanent residence.
Near the cemetery is the Duncan Edwards Close that does scant justice to the man. It is a cul-de-sac, a misguided afterthought. There was once a Duncan Edwards pub near his parents’ modest home on the Priory Estate but it burned down.
Most poignant of all is the telegram Edwards sent to his landlady after the second aborted take-off at Munich. “All flights cancelled. Flying tomorrow. Duncan.” If only it had been true, if only they had not clambered back on board for that fateful third attempt, we would never have had to wonder what Edwards might have become.
Of course the manner and timing of his death did, in an odd way, guarantee his immortality. His talent never faded, he never succumbed to old age or injury. He was never a boozer or complacent or jaundiced. Like a James Dean of the football world, he will always be strong and ruggedly handsome.
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Time, the enemy of every sportsman, never caught up with him. As one biographer put it: “He remains bathed in an eternal glaze of youth, vivid in the memories of all who saw him, so big that he almost blocks out the light.”
After Duncan’s death, Gladstone left his job at the ironworks to be a gardener in the cemetery. “His job was just to sweep up the leaves,” Sarah Anne once said, “but really I think he wanted to be close to Duncan.”
Life of promise
Born Dudley, 1.10.36
Died Munich, 21.2.58
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Position Half back Joined United as an amateur in June 1952 Turned professional in October 1953 First-team debut v Cardiff City (h) on April 4, 1953
United appearances 177, 21 goals
England debut v Scotland (h) on April 2, 1955
England caps 18, 5 goals
League championship winner 1955-56, 1956-57
FA Cup runner-up 1956-57
FA Youth Cup winner 1952-53, 1953-54, 1954-55
“Compared to him, the rest of us were like pygmies.” Bobby Charlton
“He remained an unspoilt boy to the end.” Jimmy Murphy
“Even at 15 he looked like a man and played like a man.” Matt Busby
“It was in the character and spirit of Duncan Edwards that I saw the true revival of British football.” Walter Winterbottom
“I can’t remember any other player that size who was quick like that.” Stanley Matthews