Old Trafford is 100 years old on Feb 19 2010

JD that caption for that pic is quite wrong mate. The tickets were not sold from little huts they were sold through the turnstiles. Fans had to queue up outside of the ground and often started queing immediately after a saturday match had finished and were there through the night.

The picture that is depicted was actually taken at a reserve team match and is of people queuing for refreshments from the "Bovril stand" at half time.

bloody internet!! it´s not to be trusted!! :p
 
MunichPlaque.jpg

The "original" Munich Plaque erected in 1960. this pic was taken by me on the morning of the Estudiantes game in 1968. The wreath was from the Estudiantes club.

How come you dont post so much?

I bet we could learn a lot from you, this and that great post from the Streford End thread...

A top red old timer, how on earth did you end up in Texas?
 
some fellas standing in the stretford end goalmouth.....:D


From l to r: Tony Dunne, nobby Stiles, Johnny Giles, Albert Quixall, Maurice Setters, bobby Charlton, Denis Law, Pat Crerand, Shay Brennan, David Gaskell, David Herd, Bill Foulkes, Noel Cantwell, Harry Gregg, Ted Dalton (Physio) Jack Crompton (Trainer).
 
How come you dont post so much?

I bet we could learn a lot from you, this and that great post from the Streford thread...

A top red old timer, how on earth did you end up in Texas?

I think if you look around on the Cafe there is quite a lot of my stuff on here. As to how I came to be here in Texas, simple really, I married a Houstonian. I left Manchester on the Saturday after Barcelona in 1999. I still get over a couple or three times a year to watch games.
 
this one is donated by decorativeed from the newbies



Here's one of the old Main Stand and the train station just around the time it was built in 1935. The stand would only last another 6 years as it was hit by Luftwafer bombs in 1941 and destroyed
 
I think if you look around on the Cafe there is quite a lot of my stuff on here. As to how I came to be here in Texas, simple really, I married a Houstonian. I left Manchester on the Saturday after Barcelona in 1999. I still get over a couple or three times a year to watch games.

Nice one mate, I am impressed
 
JD that caption for that pic is quite wrong mate. The tickets were not sold from little huts they were sold through the turnstiles. Fans had to queue up outside of the ground and often started queing immediately after a saturday match had finished and were there through the night.

The picture that is depicted was actually taken at a reserve team match and is of people queuing for refreshments from the "Bovril stand" at half time.

There was also the ticket office which was situated to the left of the megastore, beneath the Munich clock.

And who could forget the 90 pence queue. Supposedly for children, but I've never seen so many children with full beards and speaking in very deep voices in my life.

Saturday morning used to start at 10am when my dad would drop me and my mate John outside OT, and we would hang around the players entrance. Invariably we woud get $1 off one or more of the players. That would buy us in, get us some chips on the way home and maybe leave us a bit for some sweets during the week.

THe money my dad used to give us for the game would be kept back ready for the church club we used to go to on a Friday evening. Not that we were religious, its just there were some nice girls there and they had the best tuck shop you can imagine. $1 would get your enough sweets for a week.

Once we got old enough and started being more rebellious we would have 10 benson and hedges each.... Oh the joys of being 12....
 
That's the old South Bank at Molineux.

Hardly recognisable to the current ground.

But the one thing that is still there is the Subway where many a visiting fan was pounced upon by marauding wolves fans coming out the Wanderer pub.
 
Amid the ruins: workers tackle the job of rebuilding Old Trafford after Second World War bombing.

sport-graphics-2008_689499a.jpg


Four decades into the future, Alex Ferguson would be moved to describe Old Trafford as the "Theatre of Dreams" as he gazed round in wonderment following his appointment as manager of Manchester United, but when Matt Busby turned up for work on his first day on Oct 22, 1945, the once-magnificent stadium lay before him as a Second World War bomb site.

It was the latest masterpiece of architect Archibald Leitch, who had previously designed Hampden, Ibrox and Parkhead, and when the 80,000-capacity marvel opened in 1910 one smitten scribe on The Sporting Chronicle hailed it as "the most handsomest, the most spacious, and the most remarkable arena I have ever seen. As a football ground it is unrivalled anywhere in the world".

During a visit by the Luftwaffe on the night of March 11, 1941, however, Old Trafford took several direct hits as a result of a raid aimed at the nearby Vickers munitions factory and the Ford Motor Company, where the Rolls-Royce Spitfire engines were assembled. It was a scene of utter devastation that met the eyes of the recently demobbed Company Sgt Major Alexander Matthew Busby, of the Ninth Battalion of the King's Liverpool Regiment.

The spectacular main grandstand lay in ruins, what was left of the vast, sweeping terracing was overgrown with weeds, a thorny 6ft high bush had sprouted in the middle of the scorched pitch, a couple of threadbare Nissen huts served as dressing rooms and offices, and the 'training pitch' was a levelled-off area of rubble behind the Stretford End; the 'Theatre of Dreams' was a landscape of nightmares.

Even before being visited by Herman Goering's bombers, United, champions in 1908 and 1911 and FA Cup winners in 1909, had fallen on lean times. In the years leading up to the outbreak of war, their league record read: 1930 - 17th; 1931 - relegated (a 'crowd' of 3,969 watching the last home game of the season against Middlesbrough); 1932-35 - division two; 1936 - promoted; 1937 - relegated; 1938 - promoted; 1939 - 14th. The most popular team on earth? United were not even the most popular team in Manchester, where arch rivals City could justifiably claim to be the bigger attraction. Indeed, if you had stopped the average Mancunian in the street to ask directions to Old Trafford, in all probability you would have found yourself watching cricket.

That United were still enjoying any form of existence, however parlous, was due to the passion of two men, director/sometime chief scout/sometime manager/perennial 'Mr Fixit' Louis Rocca, and chairman James W Gibson, who had amassed a vast personal fortune through the manufacture of army uniforms.

Rocca, an Italian immigrant ice-cream tycoon, had already played a significant role in the club's history during a board meeting in 1902 called to decide on a change of name from the original Newton Heath. Manchester Central was rejected because it conjured up images of railway stations and steam trains, while Manchester Celtic was thrown out as sounding too Scots/Irish. "Gentlemen," as legend records Rocca's flash of divine inspiration, "why don't we call ourselves Manchester United?"

Come the desperate second division days of winter 1932 when, with bankruptcy looming and a crowd of less than 5,000 scattered around Old Trafford to witness once-mighty United's 1-0 defeat by bottom of the table Bristol City, it was Rocca who convinced club secretary Walter Crickmer to call upon the kindly Gibson at his Cheshire mansion to plead for deliverance from extinction.

During their summit, it was agreed that Gibson, who would become club president and chairman of a new board of directors, would inject an immediate £2,000 (about £90,000 at 2008 values) to guarantee the wages of players and staff, while guaranteeing a further £40,000 (£1.8 million) to pay off debts brought about by the Great Depression.

Although Gibson's arrival at Old Trafford would have little impact on the pitch, where United embarked upon a yo-yo period alternating between the first and second divisions, his far-sightedness would have repercussions long after he died of a heart attack in 1951 (his widow, Lillian, would continue to be the largest shareholder until her own death in 1971).

With little money available to buy players, Gibson launched the Manchester United Junior Athletic Club - a precursor of today's academies - to nurture local talent. As testimony to Gibson's initiative, when the first of the three great United sides Busby would build during his 25 years as manager won the FA Cup in 1948, four of the brilliant forward line - Johnny Morris, Jack Rowley, Stan Person and Charlie Mitten - had been raised on the cobbled streets surrounding Old Trafford.

As shrewd in business as he was genuinely concerned for the fans' welfare, Gibson's next intervention was a stroke of marketing genius, persuading the Midland Railway - who operated express trains from Manchester Central (now the site of the city's famous international convention centre) to London St Pancras - to make an unscheduled stop at the tiny Old Trafford station on match days, thereby depositing supporters from outlying areas within a five-minute walk of the previously inaccessible stadium.

Gibson, whose memory is commemorated on plaques in the players' tunnel and above the railway bridge in Sir Matt Busby Way (formerly Warwick Road North) was also responsible for cajoling the Government during the last months of the war into agreeing financial support for the 10 clubs whose stadiums were in need of rebuilding work because of bomb damage.

A licence was duly granted in November 1944, but, football being understandably low on the priorities of new Prime Minister Clement Attlee, it was not until March 1948 that the War Damage Commission released the designated funds. The 'new' Old Trafford would not be ready to open its gates for the first time in 10 years until Aug 24, 1949, and so, with league football scheduled to resume at the start of the 1946-47 season, Gibson signed a contract with Manchester City to rent Maine Road for the not-inconsiderable charge of £5,000 a season, plus 10 per cent of all United's 'home' gate receipts.

As United prepared to embark upon a new era for club and country, only one outstanding issue remained to be resolved: the position of team manager, jointly filled in the months preceding war by the omnipresent Rocca in tandem with the willing but equally under-qualified Walter Crickmer. Having come to trust Rocca implicitly on all matters football, Gibson handed his lieutenant the responsibility of finding the right man to inspire United to greatness.

Rocca had been thwarted in his pursuit of Matt Busby once before, in 1930, when the then 20-year-old Manchester City reserve had been placed on the transfer list with an asking price of just £150, a seemingly paltry fee but a sum far beyond the means of United in those pre-James Gibson days; this time Rocca was not to be denied, whatever the cost.

Wise beyond his 36 years but with no managerial experience whatsoever - although he was still registered as a player-coach with Liverpool, whom he had joined in 1936 - the uncompromising Busby demanded unheard-of powers over the appointment of coaches and scouts, the buying and selling of players, tactics and training in an era when the directors' rule was as all-encompassing as the Roman Senate.

Neither Gibson nor Rocca flinched; Manchester United had found their man and if Busby wanted to be the Emperor of Old Trafford, then so be it.

"He will build up the team and put it where it belongs," proclaimed Walter Crickmer. "At the top."
 
I can't believe Estudiantes gave us a wreath. They kicked the shit out of us in both games. I was at OT for the second game when Kiddo had a good goal disallowed right at the death. We got shafted by refs twice that year, the next time being against AC Milan when Law had a goal disallowed.
 
OldTrafford1935.jpg

Old Trafford in 1935

February1958.jpg

This picture depicts Old Trafford on the morning of February 7th 1958. Notice the flags at half mast. The little hut type building twoards the bottom right of the picture was Manchester United's Ticket Office! To the left of that little building you will notice a drain pipe. This was where Duncan used to tie his bike up before disappearing inside to the dressing rooms.
 
This is turning into an amazing thread. A big thanks to all the contributors.
 
this ones not from old trafford but i just wanted to post it.



Manchester United test out the new lights installed at the Cliff training ground in Salford in 1951. Manager Busby joins in a practise match with the younger players. Busby was 42 when he played this match-looked fit as a fiddle!.
Would you like to comment?
 
if anyone wants links to galleries on flickr with huge collections of all things united where most of the pics in this thread have come from here´s the links....

Flickr: decorativeed's Photostream

Flickr: manchesterunitedman1's Photostream

the first link belongs to a poster from the newbies and anyone who has a collection like that should be promoted to the mains in my opinion (he´s called decorativeed)
 
this ones not from old trafford but i just wanted to post it.



Manchester United test out the new lights installed at the Cliff training ground in Salford in 1951. Manager Busby joins in a practise match with the younger players. Busby was 42 when he played this match-looked fit as a fiddle!.
Would you like to comment?

Yes, Jimmy Murphy played in that game as well.
 
Just imagine the magic & sadness over the years that the stadium has gone through.

What a truly amazing experience it would be to have bare witness to so much.

Shouts of Attack ATTACK ATTACK against Milan, that game against Barcelona, Dennis, Bobby & Georgie. Big Dunc, Sir Matt, Sir Alex, Giggs, Beckham, Scholes, O'Shea, Ronaldo, Hughes, Robson, Foulkes... Amazing.
 
Are you sure, it looks like the Old Den to me????

Brilliant thread buy the way.

Yes, I'm quite sure. You can clearly see the huge patch of grass to the east of the Molineux pitch, but I can see why it reminded you of The Old Den.