When You Put on a Red Shirt: The Dreamers and their Dreams: Memories of Matt Busby, Jimmy Murphy and Manchester United

by Keith Dewhurst

'If David Lloyd-George was the most charismatic person I ever laid eyes on, Matt Busby was the most charismatic I have known, when he was the manager of Manchester United and I was a reporter travelling with the team.'

Keith Dewhurst first saw United play in 1946. Ten years later he was writing about them for the Manchester Evening Chronicle . Half a lifetime later, he looks back on a passion that helped to shaped his life.

On his journey from the terraces to the press box and then on to the game's inner sanctums, Dewhurst fell in love with a club and a game. A schoolboy fan when Busby arrived at Old Trafford, he was on the terraces as great teams took shape, and there as a reporter to witness the aftermath of the club's great tragedy - the Munich air crash. He was there too on the road with Jimmy Murphy, United's assistant manager and coaching genius, as the team played on during Busby's long recovery. In Busby, he witnessed both the hero of football legend and the darker side of a master manipulator. But in Murphy, he found his hero. It was Murphy who would tutor him in football and dreams, and Busby's ambiguous nature.

The friends Dewhurst made then, the players and the coaches, the lost and the saved, are with him still - in memory, if no longer in life. When You Put on a Red Shirt is Dewhurst's homage to them and to his youth, evoking with vivid brilliance a lost era, and powerfully recapturing a world which is becoming myth.

288 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 1, 2009

About the author

Keith Dewhurst was an English playwright and film and television scriptwriter.

Reviews

[N B · Rating 5 out of 5]

An at times unflinching look at Manchester United which has the truth at heart. There are some details about Munich and the aftermath which you wouldn’t hear elsewhere. This is testament to Keith Dewhurst’s knowledge and connections within the world of Manchester United. Sir Matt was a great man who also knew the value of myth making. It is fine to explore the truth and still admire the man, imperfect as he was at times

[Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't like it as much as expected - it was a bit too autobiographical. A good insight into the innards of United though the Busby and Murphy days.

[Pete daPixie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems to be a very rare thing indeed for a book on football to be written with such sublime flair and wit as Keith Dewhurst's 'When You Put On A Red Shirt'. Published in 2009, with a sub-heading of 'The Dreamers and their Dreams:Memories of Matt Busby, Jimmy Murphy and Manchester United.' Here is a work of heart, written by a true raconteur. Dewhurst was a schoolboy supporter in the immediate post war years, a Manchester Sports reporter who began his Manchester United match reports following the Munich air crash of 1958. For the next few years he had access to the inner sanctum at the club.
Here is a football book that has been put together like a novel, and can be recommended to the reader of sporting memoirs. I entered the theatre of dreams around the time Keith Dewhurst left Old Trafford, which he recalls as a Grecian odyssey with tragedy and myth. Quite unique in this genre. Also included is his insightful critique of English football through the twentieth century, it's development, players, teams, tactical systems and management at club and international levels. All written with fondness and love for a team of footballing ghosts and Homeric dreamers.