Among the questions that can never be
answered is whether England - with international
regulars Edwards, Tommy Taylor and Roger (and
possibly Jones and Pegg) from United's 1956 and
1957 championship-winning team - could have
won the 1958 World Cup in Sweden instead of
bowing out in the group stage after a 0-0 draw with
eventual winners Brazil? And come 1966, when
Edwards would only have been 29, would it have
been his hands or those of Bobby Moore that held
aloft the Jules Rimet trophy? On the day of his
funeral, more than 5,000 people lined the streets
of Dudley, following which Jimmy Murphy offered
the following valediction: “If I shut my eyes now
I can see him; the pants hitched up, the wild leaps
of boyish enthusiasm as he came running out of
the tunnel, the tremendous power of his tackling,
always fair but fearsome, his immense power
on the ball. The greatest? There was only one and
that was Duncan Edwards.”Duncan Edwards is
buried in the Borough Cemetery, Dudley, where the
inscription
on
his
headstone
reads:
“A day of memory,
Sad to recall,
Without farewell,
He left us all. . .”
** The Writer is an Official Member of Manchester United and lifelong United fan.
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