'Wembley ’68 cost me my job ... but it was worth it!'

The latest fan to feature in our matchday programme's iconic United Review handshake illustration, Addy has been going to Old Trafford since he was just five, and has been a season ticket holder for more than five decades.

 

And if you want a demonstration of just how deep his resolve to follow United runs, just go back to 1968 and the day the Reds became the first English team to lift the European Cup, beating Benfica 4-1 at Wembley.

 

Addy was a callow 15-year-old coppersmith apprentice back then, but nothing was going to stop him getting down to London to watch one of the most momentous nights in our club’s 145-year history. Not a lack of money, a lack of holiday allowance... nothing.

“I hitched it there and jumped the special on my way back,” he chuckles. “Did I ask for my parents’ permission? No. There were three of us and we were so lucky. This wagon picked us up in Hazel Grove [a suburb of Stockport]... a right nice bloke with a pipe.

 

“It took us longer to get to Hazel Grove than London! Tuesday teatime we hitched it to Hazel Grove after work and then he brought us all the way down and dropped us off near Arsenal’s ground. I’d queued up all night at Old Trafford with my token sheet to get a ticket. 

 

“The whole day was so exciting. We were dropped off in London about five in the morning and got a bus to Wembley. Then we got to the ground and hung around there all day. I remember meeting the Malta branch and them giving us cans of pop. We were in the ground for about half five – I think it kicked off about half seven. After the game, when we’d won, it was just unbelievable.”

The match was an era-defining one for United. But there was a sting in the tail when Dearnaley returned to work the following lunchtime.

 

“I still had all my scarves tied together... my white butcher’s coat on,” he continues. 

 

“I walked in and all the lads were banging on the benches with their hammers, because we’d won the European Cup. I went to clock in and my card wasn’t there, and was summoned to the foreman. I got sacked, because I’d been told I couldn’t have another Wednesday off college – as an apprentice, I also went there. But it was well worth it!”

Addy has since hit upon more conventional means of travel, but the thrill of those early days is clearly still very vivid in his imagination.

 

“I was born in Scotland but brought up in Rhodesia, before it became Zimbabwe,” explains Dearnaley. 

 

“When the war started there, my dad brought us home – he’s from Stalybridge. My dad took me to some games when I was 11 or 12, but the first match I remember going to on my own was when David Herd scored and then broke his leg against Leicester [18 March 1967].

 

“Every game was an adventure. I started going home and away; my first Euro away was Waterford in ’68. Believe it or not, we jibbed the ferry! They were brilliant days. I used to wag school and go into town and stand outside Bestie’s shop, or go outside the ground. Matt Busby shouted at me once, saying I should be at school and shouldn’t be playing truant! There’s so many stories.”

Indeed there are. Far too many, in fact, to include in a short-ish article like this! During a half-an-hour chat, Addy tells us about the time Eric Cantona and Keith Gillespie attended his 40th birthday party at Old Trafford; the drinking session he had with George Best, Paddy Crerand and Denis Law at an event he arranged as chairman of the Stalybridge supporters’ club; a death-defying trip to Millwall in the Second Division. Perhaps we’ll get round to some of them further down the line! 

 

But the really moving thing about talking to Addy is that there is no sense of his passion and excitement levels dropping. At 70 years old, and 58 years on from his first game, he still beams with a child-like enthusiasm for his beloved Reds.

 

“I still get nervous before games, even two days before,” he grins.  “I’m picking the team in my head before I go to bed! I still get the shakes at matches sometimes, with the tension of it all. I’ve never lost that, even though I’m 70. United is part and parcel of everything I do.”