Sir Bobby Charlton’s funeral was the stately send-off that England’s greatest deserved

MANCHESTER — How many lined the streets it is hard to say. The talk was of 30,000 defying the attentions of Storm Debi to pay their respects to Sir Bobby Charlton.

Manchester was at its monochrome best, a pewter November sky evoking a sense of the post-war city that greeted a 15-year-old tyro in 1953 when Charlton traded Ashington for another gritty, industrial landscape to sign schoolboy forms at Old Trafford.

He could not have imagined then at the start of his footballing Odyssey that he would have the career he had, that he would come to define Manchester United and England the way that he did. Nor that it would end like this, a deified figure universally loved, sent to the next world via a quasi-state occasion attended by the future king of England.

The presence of the Prince of Wales symbolised the significance of Sir Bobby’s contribution to English cultural life, one prince acknowledging the regal power of another. He was there in his role as Football Association president, but he might easily have found a reason to be elsewhere and sent his apologies instead. His appearance shamed the absence of United manager Erik ten Hag, who did just that. An unbreakable prior engagement in Holland, apparently.

Neither was there any representation by the owners. The Glazers believed their turning up would have been a distraction. Not as great a distraction as their not being there, another example of their dislocation, of how little they understand of the club they own and its community.

Enough of the people who really mattered to Charlton, players past and present, honoured him at Manchester Cathedral, including Paddy Crerand, Alex Stepney, Willie Morgan, Martin Buchan, Mark Hughes, Steve Bruce, Peter Schmeichel, Roy Keane, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt, Michael Carrick and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Each understood the importance of the thread linking the last of the playing survivors from Munich to the club they too would represent.

Sir Alex Ferguson was among the first to arrive, as was always his custom at Carrington. The one remaining Charlton brother, Tommy, took his place quietly without fuss. As the clock ticked towards 2pm the chatter in the chamber began to ease, replaced by the sonorous notes of the organ telling us the cortège was near. It all felt terribly stately, an occasion of tremendous weight.

At four minutes past the hour, the pall bearers entered through the South Entrance. Throats tightened at the awful finality of the pageant. The idea that Sir Bobby Charlton, a beacon of such towering permanence, was being borne along the nave in a small oak casket seemed impossible to process. England’s greatest gone. There was not a peep, save for the footsteps of the pall bearers.

The order of service was fronted by a photograph of a smiling, avuncular Sir Bobby. On the back the god-like youth was knelt over a ball in classic pose, his red shirt remarkable for its obvious, repeated use. It was probably laundered that very day by his landlady.

Prince William joined in proudly at the rendition of the first hymn, Abide With Me, a weekend of remembrance slipping into an extra day of sincere contemplation. Former chief executive David Gill was the first to speak in tribute. He seemed nervous, the words spilling too quickly like a prefect addressing a school assembly, frequently tripping over monotone phrases. He went through the Charlton ledger, the 758 United appearances, the 249 goals, the 106 England caps.

It is hard to offer originality when the story is universally known. Besides a career as profoundly nourishing as Charlton’s can never be captured by numbers. Towards the end Gill faltered over Munich, the emotion stifling his delivery. We can forgive him that.

John Shiels, CEO of the Manchester United Foundation, reminded us of the magic inherent when a ball was at Sir Bobby’s feet, and how he would implore the kids at his eponymous soccer school to smash it into the back of the net, the best expression he knew of the game he loved. Sir Bobby said he wanted the experience of playing football to feel like Christmas Day, the epitome of childhood happiness. It wouldn’t have occurred to him how smashing a ball like he did was impossible for mortals. What came to him so easily was a gift that defied instruction.

Keane, clean shaven for the occasion, appeared to hang on every word of Sir Bobby’s grandson William Balderston, who spoke of a devoted grandfather who would indulge the passions of all his grandchildren equally, including plane spotting at Manchester airport. Who knows what private torment Charlton had to negotiate to accomplish that after the horrors of Munich.

The tragedy of 1958 provided the narrative force of Charlton’s remarkable story. It troubled him that he was not among the eight team-mates and 23 victims in total, who lost their lives. The widow of the last to be pulled from the wreckage of British European Airways flight 609 alive was among the 1,000 mourners.

Stephanie Morgans, who lost her husband Ken more than a decade ago, pierced the solemnity with touching anecdotes from their shared youth learning how to be Manchester United players under Sir Matt Busby.

She recalled how they would visit Jesse Harold’s tailors, just across from the cathedral where Charlton now lay, on Deansgate to get new suits. “If one did it they all had to have one.” It was the time of Frank Sinatra. The suits would be accessorised with trilbies a la Old Blue Eyes. Bobby the crooner.

Who knew? These were days of innocence and possibility. The world was at their feet. Bobby had yet to meet Norma. Hard to imagine Charlton as anything other than a modest family man, but before all the serious stuff that comes with family life, he was just one of the lads, a fun-loving sprite.

“Always a lovely boy,” she said. Indeed, a man of character, charm, humility and kindness, a footballer the like of which we shall never see again.