The father of Old Trafford... and its big brother

Category: Football

Publish Date: 12-18-2010 07:00 PM -0500

They were both Scottish and they were shaped by the harshness of Scotland; Matt Busby in the mines of Ayrshire, Alex Ferguson by the shipyards of Glasgow. Both were given an early indication of what that meant. For Busby it was the General Strike of 1926 that saw the teenage miner and the rest of the pitmen of Bellshill forced hungry and penniless back to work. Eamon Dunphy, who played for Manchester United under Busby and would write his biography, said: "He had learned a lesson about trust and loyalty, about rhetoric and promise, about family and community but most profoundly about power and powerlessness."

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