When You Put on a Red Shirt

‘When You Put on a Red Shirt is the story of dreamers, hard men who wanted to create perfection on the football pitch’ Roddy DoyleKeith Dewhurst first fell in love with Manchester United as a schoolboy in 1946. Ten years later he was the travelling reporter with the team, enjoying unprecedented access to players and management. He was there as great teams took shape under the legendary manager Matt Busby, and as a witness to the aftermath of the club’s great tragedy – the Munich air disaster. He was there too on the road with Jimmy Murphy, United’s assistant manager and coaching genius, as the team played on during Busby’s long recovery. In Busby, Dewhurst witnessed both the genius of football legend and the darker side of a master manipulator. When You Put on a Red Shirt is Dewhurst’s homage to the players he knew then – both the lost and the saved – and to his youth, evoking with vivid brilliance a lost era, and powerfully recapturing a world which has become myth.]]>