Joe Spence, Manchester United player

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Without Joe Spence, the difficult inter-war years would have been even more difficult. In a team that achieved little, Spence scored goals for Manchester United for fourteen seasons. He made over five hundred appearances and scored over one hundred and sixty goals.

Spence was born and brought up in the north-east of England. Even as a boy, he was a prolific goal-scorer - in one season scoring forty-two of his school team’s forty-nine goals. He left school at thirteen and began work as a miner. He was fifteen when the first world war began and, at seventeen, was conscripted into the army. He served as a machine-gunner during the war, as well as helping his battalion win the Army Football Cup. After the war he was signed by Manchester United from the north-east side Scotswood. For most of the next twenty years, he earned his living as a professional footballer. He played for Manchester United between 1919 and 1933, Bradford City between 1933 and 1935, and Chesterfield between 1935 and 1938. He retired in 1938, aged nearly forty. After the second world war, he returned to Old Trafford to work for Matt Busby as a coach and scout.

Spence was a faithful servant of Manchester United during difficult years. Between the wars, when the club won no trophies and had various seasons in the second division, it was Joe Spence that kept the supporters hopeful. He was committed to the club, he played with great energy, he was happy to play as a right-winger or as a centre-forward, and he scored lots of goals. Sometimes it was suggested there wasn’t a great deal of variety or guile to his game but, what he did, he did extremely well. He was very quick, he could cross and he could shoot. ‘Give it to Joe’ was one of the supporters’ favourite chants. Spence himself was a lively, extrovert character, who could entertain with funny stories as well as by playing football. He had an interest in dogs which, along with his own speed, presumably earned him the nickname ‘the Scotswood whippet’. Such was his standing in Manchester in his prime, that some spoke of him locally simply as ‘Mr Soccer’.

Joe Spence remains in the all-time top ten for both Manchester United appearances and goals scored. He also made two international appearances for England.