Connor - The lost babes: Manchester United and the forgotten victims of Munich

First of all, a confession. In what amounts to a small lifetime since 19 February 1958, I have only been to one football match at Old Trafford. What is more, I havent lived in Manchester for almost four decades and in that period have been back to the city on maybe five occasions, and never for any length of time. In many red-tinted eyes this will immediately place me in the same dubious category as Zoe Ball, Eamonn Holmes, Angus Deayton, Simon Le Bon and the millions of other surrogate fans worldwide who have chosen to attach themselves to Manchester United, the part-time supporters reviled in terrace song and on the multitude of websites devoted to the club.

But theres worse: when I did return to Old Trafford as an employees guest, in October 2002, it was to join Roy Keanes despised corporate spectator brigade in the clubs Platinum Lounge where we scoffed, not prawn sandwiches, but paupiette of plaice, stuffed with cockles, and washed down with a bottle of Chteau Guirauton 2000.

The sixty-or-so current and potential sponsors dining there that night included a smattering of semi-famouses headed by Angus Statto Loughran and Derek Deggsy Hatton and we had been met at the doorway by the Platinum Lounges extremely famous, and very canny, host (Dont I know your face? asked Paddy Crerand of me). Over coffee, a liveried waiter took my order for your halftime drink, sir before someone remembered there was a football match on that night and I retired, in the company of executives from Boots the Chemist, Fuji Films and Ladbrokes the Bookmakers, to my comfy, padded seat in the North Stand to watch Everton dispatched 3-0.

The atmosphere, even when United scored the three goals in quick succession to secure a late victory, was curiously antiseptic, particularly among the support around me. True, clenched fists were occasionally raised selfconsciously, but no one once left their seats, even for a goal. The representatives of Fuji Films seemed more concerned with the number of times play went close to their one million pounds a year revolving trackside advertising hoarding than the quality of the football, and the only evidence of real passion came from a large Liverpudlian accompanying Deggsy, whose language was what you would expect from a large Liverpudlian in the company of Deggsy.

The evenings entertainment had cost me 5, the price of a ticket to park my car in a vast, fenced-off area of waste ground on John Gilbert Way close by the stadium, and in the rigidly defined terms of the terraces I plainly do not qualify as a supporter, although the current plc may be happy to learn that I have stayed in a nearby hotel partowned by Manchester United, spent money in the Old Trafford Megastore, eaten three meals in the Red Caf and paid two visits, at 5.50 a time, to the club museum. It all depends how you define support.

Before the subscribers to Red Issue, Red News, Totally Red and Red-whatever-else start to compile the threatening letters, let me say that despite those forty years spent elsewhere, if people ask me where I am from I always give the answer Manchester. If pressed further I may add (and a northerners habit of revealing only one item of information at a time has never gone away): North Manchester and, perhaps, Harpurhey. I may also, if I sense a football audience, reveal that Beech Mount nursing home was 100 yards from where Nobby Stiless father ran a funeral parlour and close by the birthplace of Brian Kidd. If anyone else (and this is always the next question) demands to know where my football allegiances lie I always insist United, and if the more erudite look at the evidence of late middle agegrey hair, nascent jowls and alarming waistlineand venture a little further to enquire if I saw the famous Busby Babes in action I can truthfully reply: Yes, several times. They are the reason why the colour red and the place-name Munich represent only one thing to me; why I still feel unreasonably happy when Manchester United win and unreasonably churlish when they lose (even though I feel little or no affinity with the current crop of players, or their manager).