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Supported by Anne Newbury |
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Duncan Edwards
| Category: | Male Player |
| Year Inducted: | 2002 |
Profile by Robert Galvin, the author of The Football Hall of Fame, the official book of the National Football Museum Hall of Fame:
Duncan Edwards was the youngest player to represent England. Stanley Matthews, the oldest man to win a cap, would later describe the ‘Busby Babe' as the most complete footballer of the immediate post-war era.
‘You can play him anywhere and he would slot into that position as if he'd been playing there season after season,' Matthews wrote. ‘When the going gets rough, Duncan is like a rock in a raging sea.' Bobby Charlton described him ‘as simply the greatest footballer of all time'.
Tragically, the Manchester United left-half would never be able to fulfil his full potential. At the age of 21, Edwards died from injuries sustained in the Munich air crash of February 1958. For 15 days he had fought tenaciously for life. Only a month before the tragedy, Matt Busby had described him as ‘the best all-round player in Britain, if not the world'.
At the time of his death, Edward had already won nine England schoolboy caps, three FA Youth Cup medals, two First Division championship medals, an FA Cup loser's medal, and 19 full caps.
‘When he first came to Old Trafford I tried to find fault with Duncan,' Busby recalled in 1974, ‘but I couldn't find one. He was never really a boy; in football terms, he was always a man.' At the age of 16, Edwards was six foot tall and weighed more than 13 stone.
As a left-half, Edwards had the freedom to both attack and defend. Exceptionally versatile, he also played at inside-forward for England and both centre-forward and centre-half for Manchester United.
His England debut came at the age of 18 years and 183 days against Scotland in 1955. He had already played at Under-23s level at the age of 16, by which time he'd already been a Manchester United regular for a year.
Billy Wright was taken aback at the maturity Edwards displayed on his debut against Scotland. Afterwards, Walter Winterbottom, the England manager, told his captain that day: ‘Billy, I think we've uncovered a gem.'
On tour that summer, Edwards capped a barnstorming display against West Germany, the World Cup holders, with a memorable individual goal. The German newspapers nicknamed him ‘Boom Boom' in celebration of the ‘Big Bertha shot in his boots'.
‘The name of Duncan Edwards was on the lips of everybody who saw this match. He was phenomenal,' wrote Wright. ‘There have been few individual performances to match what he produced in Germany. He tackled like a lion, attacked at every opportunity and topped it all off with cracking goal.'
It was taken as read that he would lead England into the next decade and possibly beyond. ‘I am convinced that Duncan would have been a fixture in the England team well into the 1970s,' Busby said. ‘Whatever was needed in a player, he had it.'
At the funeral, five thousand people stood outside the church in his native Dudley. Three years later St Francis's Church was full again for the dedication of a stained glass memorial depicting him in action as a player.