THE sporting agenda this weekend and in the middle of next week will be dominated by the 50th anniversary of the greatest tragedy to hit British football.
It will be 50 years next Wednesday since Munich. Manchester United lost eight players (while two others never played again) on that fateful afternoon in 1958 when their plane crashed attempting to take off for a third time in dreadful conditions of ice and snow.
Our region was personally touched by the tragedy and three of the players lost came from South Yorkshire.
What do you think? Post your comments below.Two were from Barnsley, Tommy Taylor from Smithies and Mark Jones from Wombwell, while David Pegg was from Highfields, Doncaster.
Taylor, England's centre-forward at the time, was the most famous.
Pegg, a left winger and 21, had one England cap. Jones, a strapping centre-half, had been spotted by a Manchester United scout at 15 playing for Don and Dearne schoolboys team - a rich seam of talent across many years.
There will be a lot of emotion and a lot of people with poignant stories to tell.
I heard one this week from the daughter of Frank Swift, goalkeeping great with Manchester City and England, who was by then working as a journalist and was one of several from that profession to die in the crash.
Tommy Taylor was, is and always will be, a hero for the people of Barnsley - among them none other than Dickie Bird who played in the same school team as Tommy.
He was only 21 when Manchester United beat off the attempts of about 20 clubs to land the young man who had once worked down the pit sorting out the mud from the coal.
He became the star centre-forward at Oakwell, particularly brilliant with his head.
He had the ability to seemingly "hang" in the air when he headed the ball.
Perhaps among those little stories this week will be the one of the day Matt Busby came across to Oakwell to sign Taylor.
Keen not to have the millstone of a £30,000 fee around the young man's neck, they paid £29,999.
The other £1 was given to the lady who had served them tea during the final negotiations.
Tommy travelled over to Manchester to be met at the station by United officials and with reporters and cameramen waiting too for this new
young star.
He was carrying his boots in a brown paper bag.
That certainly wouldn't happen today!
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