" UNITED "

By J. P. W. MALLALIEU, M.P.

IT SUPPOSE I have climbed that embankment a couple of hundred times to catch the midnight train from London Road. Sometimes I've been walking from Exchange, past the blackened cathedral, along tawdry Market Street, through Piccadilly where gardeners year after year ward off the encroaching warehouses much as civilisation will struggle against the creeping jungle. More often I've come in from Yorkshire by road. Not on the tram—I was once sick in Stevenson Square after the long tram journey ; and though that did not stop me running the rest of the way to Old Trafford, it did thereafter make me ride in cars or buses.

By road. You come down Austerlands, and out of the moorland air. You pass the mill chimney which marks the end of Yorkshire and the beginning of Lancashire, and clatter at once on to granite setts and tramlines. Through Waterhead they go, and Mumps and Hollinwood, through Failsworth and Miles Platting, plunging into the murk of Ancoats, breasting their way out again and going on and on till they reach the fabled land of Cheshire where, it is said, the grass is green.

Granite setts and tramlines, mile after mile, back-to-back houses, rain-streaked with the dirt of a thousand mills. Bleak it is. Joyless it seems. I know that human beings can defy surroundings. I was once happy in the fore messdeck of a destroyer ; and even in a Royal Naval barracks I sometimes surmounted at leiist the worst excesses of physical and mental anguish. I know, too, that Lancashire men and women, especially, have in them deep wells of resourcefulness. But Manchester Road, Oldham Road, Ancoats. . . . After a life- time of such streets, those wells must be running dry.

When at last you reach it London Road station is as forbidding as the streets which serve it. Gloomy, cavernous, draughty, only one general waiting-room—and that a standing proof that you can have smoke without fire—a refreshment room where the service is as lukewarm as the tea. Here hundreds stand listlessly until the station staff choose to open the barriers. Then they scramble for the Belsen Special which is to take them away. Even when you are departing there is no joy about London Road. When you are arriving, there is despair.

Yet it was there, last Friday night, that I saw real goodness.

"Blessed are thc meek. . . ."

Where normally there are hundreds, on this night there were thousands. There were men in red-and-white bowler hats, girls wearing red-and-white tam o' shanters, two little boys in red-and- white suits, an old woman wearing a hair net,, holding on to her ten-year-old granddaughter with one hand and to the family dinner bell with the other. There was a cripple, limping with his stick, wearing a giant red-and-white rosette on his chest, and, lest there be any mistake, a giant red-and-white rosette on his back. There were men carrying bottles of beer, women carrying flasks of tea. All men and all women were carrying rattles.

In all this throng there were just three policemen ; and they had nothing to do except pose with groups for the flashlight photo- graphers. For the crowds, not without noise, but entirely without fuss or directions, formed themselves into long queues for the Specials which would run them down to Wembley. There they waited, not listlessly but with a happiness so eager that the station glowed. Year after year, maybe, they lived in drab streets. Year after year, maybe, they went aimlessly through the motions of some drab job. But that night, they had left the streets behind to stand at the gates of Paradise. They had an aim at last, a concrete and under- standable aim which they shared with everyone around them. In the deep, all-embracing contentment of that fellowship, each man had found himself. And in finding himself each man had inherited the earth.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . ."

When the barriers opened and the crowd skipped nimbly through, I prayed with all my heart that United might win. I prayed again on Saturday afternoon when we sang "Abide With Me."

"When other helpers fail and comforts flee Help of the helpless, Lord, abide with me." I I knew what those words might mean to men and women dragging themselves down the Embankment from London Road in the cold half-light of Sunday morning. .0

But I knew, too, that praying was most unfair. The Almighty may have some reservations about a state of society in which so many people can find fulfilment only in a football match. But His loving compassion, on Friday as always, would be unbounded.' It would embrace the people of Blackpool as well as those of Manchester. With the same hopes, the same awareness of purpose,' the same comradeship, men and women from Blackpool were crowding into their trains. At that very moment, members of my profession, with curious insensitiveness, were presenting a bronze statue to Stanley Matthews for being the best footballer of the year.' But the fans from Blackpool were thinking not of Stanley Matthewst but of their team, not .of one man but of eleven.

And how near that eleven came to glory ! They were tipped to' lose before they went on the field ; but they scored first. Their' centre-forward, Mortensen, was bursting through for goal when al foot came from behind and tripped him on the edge of the penalty' area. Before roo,000 pairs of eyes, Shimwell sent home the resulting penalty kick with the casual motion of a man knocking mud off his shoes against the side of a house.

A team which gives away a penalty goal sometimes goes to pieces.' United were saved from that by a Blackpool blunder. A high ball came towards the Blackpool goal and their centre-half was poised to head it away to safety. But the Blackpool goalkeeper came out shouting "Mine ! " then left it to the centre-half after all, and there was United's Rowley with the ball at his feet and the goal wide open before him. So that was t-t.

Like United, Blackpool refused to be shattered by a costly mistake. They were given a free kick on the edge of the Manchester penalty area, Matthews kicked it to Mortensen and the ball was in the net before Manchester players had finished hitching up their trousers. Blackpool riot only held that 2-I lead until half-time, but for twenty- five minutes afterwards they played Manchester off their feet. There comes a point in many matches when you say to yourself, "That team is going to win," and you begin to button your coat and wonder how long it will take you to get out of the ground. On Saturday, round about 4.25 p.m., with the seconds ticking by, the golden gates Were swinging open for Blackpool.

But suddenly the gates began to swing back. First Morris re- turned a first-half compliment by taking a free kick before anyone except the referee and Rowley was ready, Rowley, running forward, took the ball on the side of his head ; and that was 2-2. Still Blackpool seemed to be on top and Mortensen once more broke through the centre and went flying towards goal. Crompton came out to meet him, slightly to the right of his goal, but at just the right second Mortensen fired a pile-driver to the left. It seemed a goal all the way, a goal that would have meant the Cup. But with the inspiration of despair Crompton leaped to his left and made a one-handed, cover-point save. Worse, he gathered the ball, kicked it high and far upfield and Pearson, taking it in his stride, had it in the net, all in less time than it takes to read this paragraph.

No team could stand up to such heartbreak. And no team there- after could have stood up to United, who not only scored yet another goal, through Anderson; but garlanded the green grass with glory during the last ten minutes.

So, after all, the Kingdom of Heaven went to Manchester.

"Blessed are they that mourn . . . ."

In Manchester today, even in the hearts of City supporters, there is contentment. Those setts are made of gold. Those trams are chariots of fire. Let the people of Blackpool remember that and take comfort. After all, their team had played in the best and cleanest Cup Final for years ; and though they lost, there's still the Tower and the South Shore. Above all there'll soon be those lighted cars gliding along the promenade, full of Lancashire boys and girls who sing as though Wakes Week will never end. Some of Black- pool's sunlight now shines on Ancoats and Oldham Road. But Blackpool has sunlight to spare.