Jack Millington

Why Blue?

This might get maudlin and start to ramble.

I was born in Hulme in 1945 (right opposite Hulme Church on Egerton Street … if anyone remembers). My dad got hurt in the war (badly as it happened but of course got s**t on by this country). Anyway to cut a long story short, my dad used to take me to whoever was at home (Hulme where we lived was within 2 miles walking distance of both grounds). So as a babe in Hulme I was neither Blue nor Red, in those days I’m talking the early fifties, there was absolutely no bad feeling.

In 1953 we moved to Wythenshawe, ’cause of dad’s poor health (Wythenshawe is now a slum, lying very close to Manchester Airport). I was always a clever git (that’s why I chose Blue), so I went to grammar school, and here’s the reason… why I’m a Blue. We got the afternoon off to dress up for prize giving (March 1958 if you want dates) and I had a ticket for Maine Road (I was 13 and didn’t tell anyone my plans, in fact this is my confession), City vs. Stoke City. I didn’t want to go ’cause it was City, I wanted to go ’cause it was probably the last time I would ever get the chance to see Stanley Matthews playing on the wing. Needless to say, I went. I got caned for that (grammar school kids were very harshly punished in those days) but I did see Stanley Matthews in the flesh (it was 1-1 and as usual it was crap). So now you know, I’m a Blue ’cause I got caned for watching Sir Stan instead of getting a prize.

By the way. The guy who wrote recently, about the fifties and sixties. You named the Cup final team but that was a one off. Roy Clarke would almost certainly have played but he got injured. And if Jimmy Meadows hadn’t been crippled in the 1st minute of the 1955 Cup final he would have made Maldini look ordinary. Others? Clive Colbridge? Ray Sambrooke? Colin Barlow? (yes the same one, he married the managing director’s daughter) Paddy Fagan? Yes the same one called Joe who took Liverpool to so many honours.

And just to prove it all really happened, forget Blue Moon, the City song (for away matches or the scorboard end, now the North Stand) was as follows and (you may have to ask your grannys for the tune) it was “Bobbin up and down like this.”

City’s the team… we are the best team in the land.
Playing away games… always in command (ironic shouts of ‘now and again’)
May we lose a point or two, but we never do despair.
‘Cos, you can’t beat the boys in the old light blue…
When they come from Manchester.

Sorry, said it would be rambling… too many times, too many memories but I had to say something.

First printed in: MCIVTA Newsletter #269 on