Obituary: Kenny Morgans

international. He prospered in United’s junior teams, playing in the FA Youth Cup-winning teams of 1956 and 1957. He was so good that he captained the side in his second year. As Harry Gregg once said, “Kenny Morgans could play on concrete and run circles round everyone.”

Kenny was in fact good enough to squeeze the experienced Johnny Berry out of the team at outside right, when he made his debut as an 18 year-old against Leicester City on 21 December 1957.

As that shrewd judge, the late John Doherty, put it in his book reviewing fellow former United players, “Kenny Morgans burst on to the scene as a slim, pacy, tricky right winger deemed good enough by Matt Busby to remove the far more experienced and combative Johnny Berry from the team. He held his place during a run of much improved performances leading up to Munich.

“He escaped from the disaster with his life but in football terms he was horribly unlucky. The impetus of his career was halted brutally. He was only a kid and the trauma must have been overwhelming for him.”