It is a question that has haunted some of the greatest players who have ever played the beautiful game.
Just how much would Duncan Edwards have achieved had he survived the Munich air disaster?
To his teammates, his opponents and the thousands who witnessed the swashbuckling raids that launched him from Dudley’s Priory Road Junior School to Manchester United and England in the space of a few, precious years, the answer was never really in any doubt.
They believe he would have been the best player the game has ever seen.
Manchester United went on to great things without him. With him, they would have undoubtedly been greater. Would Duncan have led England to glory in 1966 and not Bobby Moore? Indeed, would he and the other lost Busby Babes have helped their country win more than a solitary World Cup trophy?
It’s a mouth-watering thought – the United of Best, Law, Charlton…and Edwards.
Reading through the extensive research lovingly compiled by my friends Jim Cadman and Iain McCartney for the 60th Anniversary Duncan Edwards Tribute’s fascinating new book ‘Black Country Boy to Red Devil’, I couldn’t help thinking just how ahead of his time Duncan was as a player.
At a time when positions and formations were often set in stone, Duncan broke the mould. He often played in midfield but he was equally comfortable in defence or attack. He was the supreme modern footballer generations ahead of his time. What Jose Mourinho could have done with a player like Duncan!
The more I read about the past, the more I thought about the impact such a footballer would have had on the game we love. What if I could offer new generations of football fans the opportunity to enjoy his play, currently preserved only in a couple of grainy black-and-white YouTube videos, through the death-defying medium of a novel?
Even better, what if a frustrated, over-the-hill pick-up player like me could step into his shoes…or Duncan’s Boots?
Every Sunday morning at the unearthly time of 7.15am, I kick-off a game with a group of friends on a sunny hill in Laguna Beach in California. It is about as far away from Old Trafford as you can get.
Where Manchester United’s ground is ‘The Theatre of Dreams’, we call our bumpy, pock-marked pitch the “Field of Broken Dreams.” We play less to make memories than to keep them alive. We remember what we should do but, for the most part, our bodies are now several steps behind. On second thoughts, make that yards.
This is the unlikely backdrop I chose for my novel, ‘Duncan’s Boots and the Field of Broken Dreams.’
Into my story comes Jimmy Keen, a middle-aged family guy for whom football is a brief escape from a sobering reality many will recognise; trying to keep his head above water while drowning in debt and doubts. Every so often during a game there is a brief glimpse of a life that might have been. Then on a trip back home to the Black Country to bury his father, Jimmy finds a pair of crumbling old boots in the attic that he’s told once belonged to Red Devils legend Duncan Edwards.
When he pulls on the old boots, Jimmy can suddenly do the most incredible things with a football. For those of you that remember the Billy’s Boots comic strip, these are Duncan’s Boots and he is Duncan.
It’s a premise that stretches reality, bringing one of the most enigmatic figures in football history back to life, at least in the pages of a novel.
But it enabled me, a fifty something writer with the modest ambition of completing 90 minutes still standing, to imagine what it would be like to play like the great Duncan Edwards.
And, for a devoted player at the Field of Broken Dreams, it doesn’t get much better than that.