[RIP] Kenny Morgans

[rondwisan]

ManUtd.com - 18/11/2012 18:14,
Kenny Morgans passes away



Manchester United today confirms the sad news that former player Kenny Morgans has died. He was 73.

The Welshman - a survivor of the Munich air disaster in 1958 - was taken ill on Saturday night and later passed away in hospital. Staff at the football club send their deepest condolences to Kenny's family and friends.

Kenny played for the Reds as a winger in the late 1950's, making his debut at the age of 18 against Leicester City on 21 December 1957. Less than two months later, he travelled to Belgrade for the ill-fated European Cup trip and sustained injuries when the team's plane crashed in Munich after refuelling on the return flight.

Although he recovered from his crash injuries and was able to continue his playing career, Kenny spent the large part of his time as a footballer back in his native Wales, leaving Old Trafford for Swansea in 1961 and later joining Newport County before retiring in 1967.

Kenny returned to Old Trafford for two notable events in recent years - for the 50th anniversary of the Munich tragedy in 2008, and latterly an Association of Former Manchester United Players dinner at which he was the guest of honour.

[rondwisan]

19/11/2012 20:30 - ManUtd.com, David Meek
Obituary: Kenny Morgans



Kenny Morgans made only 23 first-team appearances for Manchester United before fading from the Old Trafford scene to play for Swansea and Newport County. But to dismiss this cheery, likeable Welshman as a player who failed to make an impact is to do him a terrible injustice.

Kenny was, of course, involved in the Munich air crash. Compared with some of his team-mates, he escaped lightly. There were high hopes that he would return to action and fulfill the rich promise he was showing before the fateful flight home from Belgrade and the accident en route at Munich.

Sadly it never really happened. Kenny got back into the team a month after the crash and played a handful of games but although United tried to help him, he wasn’t the player of old. The trauma of an experience like the Munich tragedy can be equally as harsh as a physical injury and it seems that young Kenny was just as much a casualty in football terms as the colleagues who were more obviously injured.

Certainly there was no doubting Kenny’s natural talent when he arrived in Manchester as an outstanding Welsh schoolboy international. He prospered in United’s junior teams, playing in the FA Youth Cup-winning teams of 1956 and 1957.

He was so good that he captained the side in his second year. As Harry Gregg once said, “Kenny Morgans could play on concrete and run circles round everyone.”

Kenny was in fact good enough to squeeze the experienced Johnny Berry out of the team at outside right, when he made his debut as an 18 year-old against Leicester City on 21 December 1957.

As that shrewd judge, the late John Doherty, put it in his book reviewing fellow former United players, “Kenny Morgans burst on to the scene as a slim, pacy, tricky right winger deemed good enough by Matt Busby to remove the far more experienced and combative Johnny Berry from the team. He held his place during a run of much improved performances leading up to Munich.

“He escaped from the disaster with his life but in football terms he was horribly unlucky. The impetus of his career was halted brutally. He was only a kid and the trauma must have been overwhelming for him.”

With his career at Old Trafford failing to pick up after the crash, Kenny eventually moved back home to Wales to join Swansea for a £3,000 fee in March 1961.

Kenny later explained in an interview: “I was homesick and couldn’t really settle back into it in Manchester so the move back to my home town suited me. I was there two years and then retired, but Billy Lucas, the former Wales wing-half, said I was too young to retire and took me to Newport which I enjoyed for three seasons.

“Then I had a couple of years as manager of Cwmbran in Pontypool and took them up into the Welsh League. I also had a pub, The New Inn. After that I really did retire from football and went back to Swansea where I had a job as a ship’s chandler at the port until I reached retirement age. I enjoyed that, too.”

Football dealt Kenny Morgans a cruel blow as a young man but there was no bitterness in him. It would appear that a happy and fulfilling family life – he was married to Stephanie and was playing football in the park with his great grandsons into his 70s – more than made up for a United career undoubtedly curtailed by Munich.

[rondwisan]

08/02/2008 10:00 - ManUtd.com, Steve Morgan
Kenny Morgans: My story


Like his team-mates Kenny Morgans wasn't short on confidence.

The Swansea-born winger, plucked from the valleys at 15 by Bert Whalley and Jimmy Murphy, had graduated to become captain of United’s all-conquering youth team shortly before his first-team debut – a 4-0 home win against Leicester City –* in December 1957…

Making the grade
“I made my debut at 18 against Leicester at Old Trafford, alongside Harry Gregg, who’d just been signed from Doncaster. The first team wasn’t clicking, so Matt Busby had made changes. He put Albert Scanlon on the left wing, me on the right and Harry played in goal. He was one of the best goalkeepers in the world. He dominated his area superbly, picked every ball from corners, free-kicks and crosses. Then we had Roger Byrne, our captain, at left full-back – and he really was a captain, too. He never came out with us, stayed with the chairman and Matt Busby, and when he said something, you did it! We had Bill Foulkes at right-back and in front of them arguably the best three wing-halves in the world: Eddie Colman, Mark Jones, and Duncan Edwards. I was outside-right, Bobby Charlton at inside-forward, just a year older than me; Tommy Taylor, Dennis Viollet and Albert. That must have been the best – and not because I was playing! – side in the world."

Munich
“We came from Belgrade down into Munich to refuel – the weather was terrible, it was snowing, there was ice on the plane. They took the ice off the plane twice. The first couple of times we were just laughing. We thought, ‘go and have another cup of coffee’. Nobody thought anything about it, everybody was joking.. But everybody was feeling the same way when we got on the third time: it was quiet. People had changed seats, gone up the back to sit down, so it seemed as if something was going to happen. I was sat by the window looking out. I was frightened to death. I remember thinking ‘the plane can’t go any faster and we’re not in the air’. I remember hitting the fence at the end of the runway, then I blacked out. At about eight or nine o’clock that night, two German reporters went back to the plane to look for something and I was still there. I was the last out. Once the plane hit the fence, it had pushed me underneath the plane to the luggage compartment at the back. I woke up on the Sunday morning, with Albert Scanlon, Bobby Charlton and Ray Wood and thought the other players would be in a different room. Then the professor of the hospital came round and told me of the players that had died, and said that Matt, Johnny Berry and Duncan Edwards were upstairs."

Picking up the pieces
“You don’t get over something like that. I’ve got the last line-up of the team in my lounge and I see the boys every time I get up and go downstairs. I was lucky because Duncan Edwards lived just two doors down from my digs, and Tommy Taylor was five doors away. I used to call for them to train every morning for three months, so I got to know them like brothers. I missed them a lot.

“I came back from the crash on the train with Dennis Viollet. He was told not to kick a ball for a year. I was home for a week and Jimmy Murphy came to get me because he said we had no players – and no wingers. I played in a few games up to Wembley, I was picked on the Friday night to play [in the final] – so I was over the moon. I thought ‘I could play my heart out for the players that died’. Walking round the ground, Jimmy came up and told me he wasn’t going to play me because he thought the atmosphere in the ground would be too much. I wasn’t very pleased. A fortnight later he picked me for the Milan game at Old Trafford and told me he was sorry he hadn’t played me at Wembley because I’d have won the game for him. I played my heart out that night, I was man of the match against Milan. Then I just sort of packed my career in – I just didn’t want to play in the first team. I missed the boys that had died. I went home to Swansea* – the boss thought it would help my career if I went back for a fresh start. But my heart wasn’t in it."

What might have been
"I’m not bitter. To be laying in a Munich hospital and to have someone tell you the players that had died and you were still alive, it was just, well, a funny situation… But I can still see them now – they were a great, great team. Before I got into the side they’d played Real Madrid at Old Trafford – they were supposed to be the best team in the world. You had Alfredo Di Stefano at centre-forward, the best in the world: nothing like Tommy Taylor. You had Puskas – he wasn’t as good as Duncan Edwards, Duncan could play inside-left. Duncan had another 12 years in him – at 21, he’d played five years for United and four for England. Then you had Gento – Albert Scanlon could catch pigeons, like he could. They were such a good side."

[Andi Istiabudi]

Turut berduka cita atas wafatnya Kenny Morgans. Semakin berkurang nih korban selamat dari Munich Tragedy yang masih hidup. Terima kasih atas pengabdiannya kepada Manchester United.

Berikut beberapa foto Kenny Morgans selama bermain di United :

[rondwisan]

20/11/2012 21:36 - ManUtd.com, Adam Marshall
Sir Bobby's Morgans shock



Sir Bobby Charlton has revealed he was shocked and saddened to hear of the death of his former team-mate Kenny Morgans.

The Welshman who, like Charlton, survived the Munich air disaster, passed away at the age of 73 after suffering a*brain aneurism at the weekend.

"Well, I was very surprised because there was no warning really," Sir Bobby told MUTV. "But my immediate thought was what a smashing little lad he was - I still think of him as the little lad. When Sir Matt Busby started breaking up the older element and started introducing people like Kenny, it was a big step for him. He played really well and deserved his position on the field.

"He was fortunate in Munich but he will certainly be missed a lot. He was a very, very nice person and a good player - a tough, little player and fast.

"I'm really very sad because he was one of those very nice people you always like to see. Even up to a few months ago ,when I saw him last, he was always smiling. I'm very sorry it's happened."

The two former Busby Babes took to the field at the Liberty Stadium ahead of last season's 1-0 victory at Swansea.

"We went on the field together because he was born in Swansea," added Charlton. "He was a Welsh lad and very proud of being Welsh, I remember that most of all.

"When they asked the two of us if we'd go on the field to give the fans a wave, we were happy to do that. He was a really nice person and I was very, very sorry about him."*

[troy andreas]

RIP opa Ken