Matt Busby was keenly aware of the importance of 'scouts', owing his own career to a Manchester City  'stringer', who spotted his potential in the late 1920's. He quickly enlarged United's network of trusted scouts to help him find youngsters who could be moulded into the kind of players Busby and Murphy could use to take the club to greater victories.

The key men in Busby's network would be Joe Armstrong (assigned the duty of finding schoolboy talent in the north of England), Bob Harper and Bob Bishop(keeping eagle-eyes on potential stars in Belfast), and Billy Behan (taking care of business in Dublin).

Once taken on, youngsters were coaxed and groomed by coach Bert Whalley and trainer Tom Curry. They were winners of the FA Youth Cup tournament, first introduced in the 1952-53 season, for five successive years, giving Busby a formidable and reliable source of new and exciting talent. The Busby Babes had arrived, though no-one yet had coined the nickname.

Matt Busby was the epitome of the 'canny' Scot when it came to the transfer market, as his purchase of the supposedly 'over-the-hill' Jimmy Delaney had proved. That shrewdness became invaluable when, in the wake of the League Championship season, he decided that the veterans in his squad had to be replaced. Good and loyal as they were, many were ready to hang up their boots or move on into coaching jobs, or as players with other teams. In 1950, for instance, Jimmy Delaney had decided to return to Scotland and play for Aberdeen. Shortly before, fellow winger Charlie Mitten Ill-advisedly joined a rebel group of British players who accepted lucrative offers to play in Colombia, even though the league there had been outlawed by FIFA, football's international governing body.

The new wingers Busby signed were Bolton's Harry McShane and Johnny Berry, a Birmingham City player who had impressed Busby a year earlier when he'd hustled, bustled, and scored a delightful goal at Old Trafford. Bought for £25,000, Berry scored six goals in his first season, and went on to make almost 300 League and Cup appearances for United, and to score another 43 goals, until the severe head injuries he suffered at Munich ended his career.

By the end of that Championship season, United also had a new outside-left, the 20 year-old Roger Byrne. The first graduate of Busby's youth training academy, and so the first true Busby Babe, Byrne began his first team career at left-back, but was switched to left-wing for the last six games of the season.

Byrne scored 7 goals in those matches, staking a claim to key roles both in Matt Busby's future plans and those of the English national squad selection. On the club front, he returned to his original left-back position, using his natural speed and strength to start, and take part in attacking moves every bit as ably as he served in defence, a rare range of skills in those days.

He played almost 300 League and Cup games for United before being killed at Munich. He won no less than 33 successive international caps after first being picked for the England team in 1954. Aged only 28 when he died, Byrne had not been told that he was due to become a father for the first time. His wife, Joy, would give birth to a son, Roger, eight months after the crash.

When United lost six of their first 11 games in the 1952-53 season, Busby knew he had to act fast, acquire new players on the open market and bring on some of the youngsters that his scouts had brought to the club in preceding years.

The transfer market (and the sum of £29,999, fixed by Busby to avoid giving the player a £30,000 price tag), yielded the talents of Tommy Taylor, a strong and combative centre-forward from Barnsley to replace Jack Rowley. Like Byrne, Taylor matched his United form with an England international career which produced 19 caps. In the course of representing his country, Taylor scored 16 goals, including two hat-tricks.

At club level, Taylor played 163 League games for United, scoring 112 goals in the process. In 1956, when they regained the League Championship, Tommy Taylor scored 25 times in his 33 appearances, while his tally of 'assists' was formidable as he selflessly helped colleagues to bury the ball in the back of the net.

Roger Byrne's new partner at right-back was Bill Foulkes, who had followed his father down the pit as a youngster in St.Helens, but had been spotted and picked up by United while playing as an amateur for Whiston Boys Club. He became a full-time professional and won his regular first-team place in 1953.

Foulkes proved to be one of Manchester United's most durable players, clocking up some 600 appearances for the club during a  First Division career which lasted a remarkable 18 years, and resulted in a collection of four League Championship medals, one FA Cup winner's medal, and in 1968, when United finally won the tournament, a European Cup medal. As one of the Munich survivors who linked the Busby Babes and later teams, Bill Foulkes also became the team captain for a while.

When he finally retired in 1970,Foulkes was appointed youth coach at Old Trafford before both managing and playing in the United States and Norway. A measure of the high regard in which he was held by his fellow veterans, was his election as the first chairman of the association of ex-Manchester United players when it was founded.

But the 1952-53 season would go down in history as the one in which the most famous Busby Babe of all, Duncan Edwards, made his transition from the youth squad to the first team. His debut, against Cardiff City at Old Trafford on Easter Monday, 1953, was achieved at the incredibly young age of 15 years, 285 days.

Taken into the United fold when he was just 14, Edwards formed a formidable midfield partnership with Eddie 'Snake-hips' Colman at right-half, and centre-half Mark Jones. Born in Dudley, Worcestershire, Edwards was a large-framed and intimidating figure who had played in a number of positions as a schoolboy international, centre-forward, wing-half, centre-half, and inside-forward, with accomplished ease.

Described by Jimmy Murphy as 'the greatest of them all', Duncan Edwards quickly became the midfield rock on which United's first lines of defence and attack depended, a young man able to match controlled aggression in his tackles, with an astute footballing brain capable of creating gaps for others, and delivering the ball to them once those gaps appeared. Few players at any level were able to rob Edwards of the ball once it was at his feet.

During the next five years, Edwards emerged as one of England's most exciting, gifted, and dynamic international players, making the first of an eventual 19 appearances in the national team's 7-2 defeat of Scotland at Wembley when he was just 17, then the country's youngest-ever full cap. It was widely assumed that he would eventually succeed Billy Wright as England captain.

There is no doubt in the minds of those who thrilled to the spectacle of Duncan Edwards in full-flow, whether they be United fans, opposing clubs' supporters or international commentators and players, that his death from the injuries he suffered at Munich, robbed the world of a very special player whose already distinguished career was still in its infancy. He was only 21 when he died, but had already played a key role in United's League Championships in 1956 and 1957, and their achievement in reaching the FA Cup Final in 1957.

Manchester United's regular goal-keeping duties had been given to another youngster by the beginning of the 1952-53 season, as Ray Wood replaced Reg Allen.

Signed as a teenager from Darlington in 1949, he had deputised for Allen and his predecessor Jack Crompton, before Busby decided to promote him.

Wood proved to be as brave as he was able, in the 1957 Cup Final when his cheekbone was smashed in a collision with Aston Villa's Peter McParland. Wood was carried off on a stretcher and, as substitutes were not allowed at this time, United were reduced to ten men. Midfielder Jackie Blanchflower became the goalkeeper and although the team physio Ted Dalton, decreed that the still dazed Wood was unfit to play, he readily returned in an approximate outside-right position , merely to keep United at full numerical strength. His contribution, needless to say, was limited mainly to retaining possession of the ball when it came his way, until someone fit could do something useful with it.

Wood eventually resumed his proper position when Villa were 2-1 ahead, and Matt Busby needed Blanchflower back at centre-half to make the chance of an equaliser feasible. Unfortunately, the gamble, and Wood's bravery, proved to be in vain. United were unable to improve the scoreline, and so missed out on the rare chance of the League and FA Cup double, a feat everyone was sure they would accomplish with easily.

Ray Wood went on to play in all but one of United's 1955-56 Championship games and collected a second League Championship medal in 1957. Edged out of the first team by Harry Gregg shortly before Munich, Wood was in the ill-fated party which went to Belgrade. Fortunate to suffer relatively minor injuries in the crash, he played on, though his long-term future lay with Huddersfield Town, Bradford City, and Barnsley, before he began a coaching career which took him to Cyprus, the Middle-East and Africa. He also won three English international caps.  

 {Duncan Edwards} {Munich air disaster} {The men United lost}
{The Flowers of Manchester}