Product Description

The rich history of Manchester United has never thrown up a more colourful character than Wilf McGuinness. There is virtually no emotion that he hasn't experienced during a lifetime in the game. Wilf has: played for his beloved United and his country at every level; won a championship medal with the Red Devils; suffered a cruel injury which cut short his career at the chronically premature age of 22; succeeded Sir Matt Busby as manager of Manchester United - and been sacked by the club to which he was so passionately devoted; lost all his hair, probably as a result of the shock of his demoralising dismissal; played a key role in England's 1966 World Cup glory under Sir Alf Ramsey; and, coached at York, Hull and Bury, and in soccer outposts around the world...all without losing his exuberant outlook on life in general and football in particular.As Sir Alex Ferguson said: 'There is never a dull moment with Wilf. There is no more cheerful man in football!' One of the original Busby Babes, Wilf grew up alongside the likes of Duncan Edwards and Bobby Charlton, and but for injury would have been aboard the plane which crashed at Munich, killing 23 people including eight of his team-mates and friends. Now for the first time he tells the full story of his incident-packed lifetime in the game, revealing the joy and the injustice, the sorrow and the controversy. "Man and Babe" is a moving tale of excitement, anguish and redemption, with humour never very far from the surface. It includes over 100 photographs from Wilf's personal collection, including the pre-Munich crash Busby Babes and exclusive pictures of Posh & Becks at the party to celebrate United's 1999 treble!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #182805 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Review
Wilf McGuinness, with Ivan Ponting, (Know The Score) is, of course, an autobiography, but the true voice of this wonderfully-animated feature of the Manchester United landscape narrates his fascinating story. --Paddy Barclay, The Telegraph

Wilf McGuinness is Manchester United through and through. And in Manchester United Man And Babe he details his journey from fan to player to manager at Old Trafford recounting the joy, injustice, sorrow and controversy along the way. Through it all, his sheer enthusiasm shines through and McGuinness comes across as a man with boundless energy and humour. Such is McGuinness' rich experience of life at Old Trafford, he gives an insight into the days when players used to walk to matches but is also able to reflect on the modern-day greats who have succeeded the likes of Charlton and Edwards. It's certainly must-read for United fans of any age, but should also interest anyone who simply loves their football, as McGuinness patently does. --SportingLife

About the Author
Ivan Ponting has written more than 30 books on football, including Manchester United Player By Player, and has penned the autobiographies of Bill Foulkes and Gary Pallister. He also supplies obituaries to The Independent newspaper, and his joint effort with David Foot, entitled Sixty Summers: Somerset Cricket Since The War, won Best Cricket Book at the 2007 National Sporting Club awards.

Customer Reviews

MY GOODNESS! McGUINNESS!
With a generously bubbly 1200 word Foreword penned by the author's good friend and former team mate, Sir Bobby Charlton, and no fewer than 140-plus photographs within its 316 page format, it is quite unbelievable that, 13 months on from its original publication date in October 2008, Manchester United Man and Babe, the long-awaited autobiography of Wilf McGuinness of Man U and England, has received nary a mention in the local or regional press. Because there must be thousands of north Manchester folk and Reds, too, inquisitive about their team's past, who would love to get their hands on this story of a local boy done good. This is a book I would not be without. Well, not permanently at any rate. Because, though I had been aware that Wilf was planning to write his autobiography (see above, the reference to the old advertising slogan I suggested as a title), I knew not (for reasons already mentioned) of the book's existence for fully 6 months after its publication date. Moreover, an additional 6 months would then pass by during which time this same book has been devoured hungrily by yours truly and assorted alumni of Shepherd Street University (aka Mount Carmel, Blackley) who gleefully borrowed it from me. Not the least of whom is my good friend John Gilligan of Moston, photographed on page 21 herein alongside the boy McGuinness himself, the late Tommy Seale (younger brother of Fr Brian Seale of St John Vianney's), and other assorted reprobates from Blackley and White Moss who made up the school's U-15s' football team in the early 1950s yet whose names escape me for the present, Tony Burgess apart.
As ghost writer to his autobiographical task the author has recruited Ivan Ponting of The Independent, and the guy makes a good journeyman's job of it, particularly with regard to the boy's professional career -- playing days sadly foreshortened due to injury; life-span happily extended because of it (Wilf being unfit to travel to Munich). So Man and Babe is certainly a better title than my own suggestion. But I really do wish there had been a bit more detail here about Wilf's north Manchester roots, as indeed there is about Collyhurst and Ashington, respectively, in the Nobby Stiles and Bobby Charlton autobiographies ghosted by The Independent's James Lawton. (See Life, April 2007.)
Notwithstanding this single reservation, however (and my preference for the inclusion of an index), the generous provision of photographs of local characters (long since dispersed; not forgotten) will surely conjure up a vibrant north Manchester yesteryear for anyone who may care to recall it . . .
Witness the likes of headmaster John "Mickey" Mulligan (Snr.) . . . Canon F W Kershaw, who famously berated broadcaster, Gilbert Harding at national level . . . Wilf McGuinness with hair (a quiff I recall being jealous of) . . . Mrs May McGuinness, too, the loveliest of womankind: deaf as a post, she had a voice like a corncrake and a heart of gold . . . and Wilf's elder brother Lawrence, practising the trumpet (or cornet: I never did know which) in the front parlour of their house on Westleigh Street . . . trumpet-playing that was accompanied by a persistent drumbeat: BULUNG - skit, skit, skitter! BULUNG - skit, skit, skitter, as Wilf and his pals kicked a Size 5 ball against the gable end, halting just occasionally for our boy to essay a throw-in technique that would take the ball all of 30 feet to the apex of the roof, the chimney pot beyond . . . and the practitioner of such art to a career at Old Trafford, an opportunity that many would die for and, sadly, some have.