Manchester United are on a post-season tour for the first time since 1986 when the team also ended up in Hong Kong and played in front of a mere 4,575. Sir Alex Ferguson became manager six months later and put a stop to them — though he always accepted the commercial need for United tours.
Before that, post-season tours were semi-regular from the end of the Second World War and United visited places unimaginable today, away for weeks and in conditions that would do more than raise eyebrows.
As the current team continue a tour that began with defeat, boos and an open-top bus, Andy Mitten looks back at United’s previous post-season tours, including an armed robber, an offer to move to Colombia, and the time they joined up with Spurs as “Tottman”.
Ireland, 1948
Following victory in the 1948 FA Cup final, Sir Matt Busby took his team on a mini-tour where they played a Bohemians XI (which included six Blackpool players who had taken on and lost to United in the cup final) at Dublin’s Dalymount Park in front of 37,500, with my great-uncle, winger Charlie Mitten, scoring the only goal in a 2-1 defeat.
United stayed in Dublin to play a Shelbourne XI, which included several guesting English Football League footballers, four days later, winning 4-3 in front of 25,000. United played Linfield at Belfast’s Windsor Park on the same tour, a 4-3 win. My grandfather gave me a copy of the match programme, which is worth hundreds.
United went back to Ireland after the following season. The club have always been popular in Ireland and have played several post-season games there over the years.
United States and Canada, May and June, 1950
United have toured the U.S. multiple times, playing to huge crowds. The training facilities, security, opposition, match fees and organisation appeal and the team will return in July, but it’s a far cry from United’s first visit in 1950.
The players sailed to New York on the Queen Mary for a mammoth post-season tour, travelling tourist class and causing excitement among admiring passengers. However, the glamour faded soon after the team docked in Manhattan. Results were poor and the travelling, mostly by train, wore the team out. Expenses of $5 a day had to be spent on meals, denying the players the opportunity to spend their hard-earned money in this consumer paradise.
United played in Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, St. Louis, Massachusetts, Randall’s Island in New York, New Jersey and Los Angeles. There were highlights, notably meeting actor Clark Gable in Hollywood’s MGM studios.
Actor Clark Gable pictured in 1952 (Allan/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
The night before the team were due to sail back to Southampton, Great-Uncle Charlie received a call from Neil Franklin, England’s centre-half who had just left Stoke City for Colombia along with George Mountford — two stars of English football causing a huge stir by moving to cash-rich Colombia. Franklin was with Luis Robledo, the main man at Sante Fe who offered to fly Mitten to Bogota to see if he wanted to make a similar move.
Mitten was on £10 per week at United and the offer from Colombia was a £5,000 signing-on fee and £5,000 per year, plus bonuses. Mitten told Robledo he had like to visit Colombia, then went to speak to manager Matt Busby. “He was angry and upset,” recalled my great-uncle, who died in 2002, in a 1995 interview.
His contract was due to expire, but Busby said United were going to re-sign him. “There was an assumption we would sign as usual,” said Mitten. “They took us for granted. I said to Matt: ‘Listen, I’m 29 and it’s about time we started getting something out of life now’. Matt quietened down. When I told him the salary, he said: ‘Do they want a manager?’. We had a good chat. I was always one of his favourites. I went back to what I’d told him before the (1948) FA Cup final, that if we were to finish right now, we’d have nothing, you couldn’t even buy a house.”
My great-uncle opted to go to Colombia and eventually spent a year playing there before returning to England, but he never played for United again.
On the day he left Manchester for South America by ship, there was only one person to see him and his family off from the old Manchester London Road (now Piccadilly) train station: Billy Meredith, a past United and City legend and stalwart of players’ rights. He told Charlie that if he’d had a chance to go to Bogota on that money, he would’ve walked.
Charlie Mitten, pictured in 1950 (S&G/PA Images via Getty Images)
Australia, New Zealand and the United States, 1967
“We viewed those huge post-season tours like an end-of-season holiday and we visited amazing places,” midfielder Paddy Crerand recalled to me in his 2007 autobiography Never Turn the Other Cheek.
“We played a series of exhibition games and United were billed as ‘the champions of England’. It was our job to advertise the English game and all its virtues to the world. Over 250,000 paid to see us play over the dozen matches.”
United visited New Zealand and Australia on the same tour. While on tour in Sydney, Crerand recalls an incredible situation in the Coogee Bay Hotel overlooking the Pacific. Having spoken to his wife back in the UK on the phone, Crerand decided to head to the other players’ room one night for a drink.
“When I got there, the door was half open. I thought, ‘That’s funny’. I crept in on tiptoe. Then a man leapt out from behind the door. It gave me the fright of my life, he brushed past me and rushed down the corridor. ‘Thief!’, I shouted, waking everyone up. ‘He’s a f****** robber’.”
Crerand, pictured in 1968 (Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Crerand chased after the man and caught up with him.
“‘Come here, you bastard!’, I shouted. ‘And I’ll f****** kill you!’. He suddenly stopped and turned. He looked at me. Rather than jump on him, I stopped too, because he was holding a revolver and pointing it at me.
“‘If you come any closer, I’m going to kill you’, he said. I didn’t back off, but turned and sprinted. I ran straight back to the lads’ room. John Fitzpatrick had been robbed of a few dollars, but nothing else was missing.”
Iran, 1975
Unthinkable now, but in 1975 United travelled to pre-revolution Iran to commence a global summer tour. Unlike some, defender Arthur Albiston remembered it fondly, as quoted in my book We’re the Famous Man United.
“We were away for 38 days, although a lot of the older players didn’t like it one bit. They were away from their families for 38 days and played 10 matches.”
There were 14 flights and 32,000 miles to fly for United as the team went to Iran, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Bangkok, and Australia. Tommy Docherty, the manager, had to come on as a sub in one of the games — and he got sent off. Jim Holton and Alex Forsyth, two of the players, missed the births of their kids.
“It would never happen now. But for the younger lads who were shielded from the arguments, it was a great adventure and we loved the trip. I saw the world at 17,” said Albiston.
Docherty and his Second Division champions in 1975 (Gerry Crowther/Mirropix/Getty Images)
United drew 1-1 against Persepolis in front of 40,000 and Tony Veys, one of a handful of travelling fans, tells me: “Tehran was a sprawling, dusty, hot city. The Iranian people were very hospitable. Few others travelled, although four lads from Swindon got a train. It took them eight days.” Veys, who still sells merchandise near Old Trafford, drove from Manchester to Iran.
From Iran, United went on to Bangkok (where Docherty was sent off), Hong Kong, Jakarta, Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland and Los Angeles. Their reward, a week after their return, was to begin pre-season training.
Swaziland, 1983
United’s players had barely finished celebrating the 1983 FA Cup win before they flew to Swaziland for a post-season tour. The tiny landlocked country in southern Africa — now called Eswatini — was used because political sanctions prevented United from playing in neighbouring South Africa. Ticket prices were more expensive than the FA Cup final.
“The stadium was full of wealthy South Africans,” Andy Markely, one of the few travelling fans, tells me. He reached his destination via Madrid, Nairobi and Johannesburg.
United played Tottenham Hotspur twice in the Lobamba National Stadium, winning one and losing one. The crowds were 6,000 and 8,000. In between those games, United and Spurs combined to form a single team: ‘Tottman’. This bizarre entity beat a Swaziland XI 6-1.
“After the tour, (manager) Ron Atkinson went to Mauritius,” former defender Albiston recalled to me. “And we were unable to get back to Johannesburg for flights home because fans had booked them up. The Tottenham lads had flights, so Glenn Hoddle rented us his hire car — after some hard bargaining. I drove Gordon McQueen, John Gidman and Kevin Moran 400 miles to Johannesburg, where we had a few days enjoying ourselves.”
Trinidad and Jamaica, 1985
United played post-season in Hong Kong, Sydney and Melbourne in May 1984 and a year later, the day after parading the FA Cup in Manchester’s Albert Square, the victorious United team left for Montego Bay in Jamaica as a treat from the United chairman Martin Edwards.
“Everyone was happy, not just because we had won the cup but because we were loaded with bonus money, and money from selling tickets too,” recalled full-back John Gidman in We’re the Famous Man United.
The games would be against Southampton in Port of Spain, Trinidad, where United lost 1-0 in front of 19,000 fans, and against a Jamaica XI, who United beat 3-1 in Kingston, watched by 15,000.
“Me and Arthur Albiston were injured, so we got a few beers and sat on the bench,” said Gidman. “The Jamaican Air Force were putting a show on and one of their top men stood in the centre of the pitch by a giant cross that had been marked out.
“He proudly told the crowd the match ball was going to be delivered to the centre circle by a parachutist, who would land on the cross. I bet Arthur £100 that he couldn’t land in the centre circle. This bloke seemed like he was going to make the stadium until a gust of wind blew him off course. We could already see a second parachutist above him. Arthur said, ‘Double or quits’, but he landed far away. A third and final parachutist was coming in and we went double or quits again, agreeing that all he had to do was land inside the stadium.
“The bloke came closest, but became tangled in the roof. He was injured, yet all we could do was argue about the technicality of whether he’d landed inside the stadium or not. The game started, only to be stopped 10 minutes in when the fire brigade turned to cut the bloke free. I won the £400.”
(Top photo: United after winning the 1983 FA Cup; Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)
