By Ashley Houghton
Ex Manchester United and Nantwich players have been reminiscing over the record-breaking 23-0 victory the Red Devils inflicted on the Dabbers in the FA Youth Cup 60 years ago.
The match is being commemorated on Tuesday when United’s current young guns take on Jimmy Quinn’s side at the Weaver Stadium.
Most of the surviving players from that 1952 game will be re-united on the evening.
United’s Ron Cope will be there along with Nantwich’s Gordon Baxter, Ken Bebbington, Maurice Capel and Frank Stubbs.
Cope, now 77 and still living in Crewe, captained the United youth side that included the legendary Duncan Edwards.
He recalls: “The match was unbelievable really. Every time we went down we scored.
“Almost everyone scored that day apart from the goalkeeper and me! I reckon it was the best youth team United ever had.”
Gordon Baxter, who lives in Sound near Nantwich, said: “Duncan Edwards was untouchable.
“I remember him letting fly with one shot and I was glad to get out of the way of it.
“It rattled the crossbar like you’ve never seen and if I’d got in the way I think it would have taken my head off!”
Ken Bebbington, of Minshull Vernon, also remembers Edwards’ brilliance that night at United’s old training ground at The Cliff in Broughton.
“We were little more than schoolkids but Edwards seemed huge. He’d really filled out and had legs like tree trunks. It was an honour to be on the same pitch as him.
“We were 10-0 down at half-time and I remember going into the changing rooms and saying to the other lads, ‘Well at least it can’t get any worse than that!’
“I was wrong, of course, as they scored 13 in the second half.
“I just remember the ball kept going past me,” recalls Maurice Capel, from Crewe.
“We couldn’t get anywhere near them.”
However, the local match report at the time said that Capel had an ‘outstanding’ game!
The score would have been greater but for fine saves by Ben Thorley in the Nantwich goal, who impressed United manager Matt Busby so much he signed him.
Edwards scored five – his first goals in a United jersey – in what was the first ever competitive match sanctioned by the FA to be played under floodlights.
Among the crowd of 2,600 was a young Nobby Stiles and teenage Wilf McGuinness who went on to play for and manage the Red Devils.
And Wilf’s son Paul now manages the Manchester United Academy side that is visiting the Weaver Stadium on Tuesday.
Mayor of Nantwich, Cllr Graham Fenton, will be in attendance as will Jack Crompton, one of Manchester United’s oldest surviving players.
Now aged 90, Jack kept goal for United in the 40s and 50s and is also Club President of Curzon Ashton FC.
The match kicks off at 7.30pm and admission is pay on the turnstiles (£9 adults, £6 concessions & £2 children).
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