History
“There are definitely some advantages to having played the game back in the 1950s and 1960s,” smiled the genial owner of David Herd Motors. “One of those is that hardly anybody recognises me outside of this building. My football career ended a long time ago.”
Overhearing the conversation, one of Herd’s mechanics laughed, telling me that during lunchtime kickabouts at the back of the premises in Lostock Road, Herd still took football deadly seriously, despite retiring in 1971. “You don’t score over 100 goals for Arsenal and United for nothing,” said the mechanic. The modest Herd appeared slightly embarrassed by the compliment.
There’s much about David Herd’s career which stands out. As well as being the only footballer to have plundered over a ton of goals for Arsenal and our rivals from the north-west, he’s also one of a select few British footballers to have played in the same team as his father (Alex - at his Herd Jr’s first club Stockport County).
Then there was the strong Mancunian accent, despite having been born in Lanarkshire. “It might explain why I only won five Scotland caps,” Herd mentioned to me when we chatted in 1998, “as I didn’t really seem Scottish.”
Beyond the trivia, Herd was a formidable striker. Signed from Stockport for £10,000 in 1954 by Tom Whittaker, the young striker made his breakthrough in our first team in the 1956/57 campaign, after Cliff Holton was converted into a wing half.
A fast, and relentlessly hard-working forward, Herd quickly won over the Highbury crowd, who loved seeing his thunderous right-footed shots (one was timed at over 72mph) fly in from all angles.
Although more effective on the ground than in the air, Herd recalled that his favourite goal in our colours was a classic diving header which gave his team a 3-1 victory over Tottenham Hotspur in October 1956. “If I shut my eyes, I can still hear the roar of the crowd now,” Herd said.
During his seven-year spell at the club, he was our top goalscorer for four seasons straight, from 1956/57 through to 1960/61, a campaign that saw him hit 30 league and FA Cup goals, including four hat-tricks. He would bag 107 in 180 Gunners games, but despite his highly impressive goal feats, it seemingly was not enough
New manager George Swindin looked for alternatives up front as he attempted to find the elusive winning formula in north London, offering Herd to Huddersfield Town in part-exchange for Denis Law, and to Newcastle United for George Eastham.
Eventually, Herd headed to Old Trafford for £35,000 in the summer of 1961, where he excelled. He famously scored two goals in the 1963 FA Cup final against Leicester City as United began the rebuilding process after the Munich air disaster five years previously, and led the line expertly as Matt Busby’s team won league titles in 1965 and 1967.
A broken leg meant that Herd (as well as Law) missed out on playing in United’s victorious European Cup-winning team at Wembley in 1968. George Best described Herd as ‘the most underrated player in British football during that era’, and his prodigious scoring rate of 114 goals in 202 matches at Old Trafford supports Best’s assessment.
He would later feature for Stoke City and manage Lincoln City before starting his car maintenance business, which he ran for over 30 years. He died in October 2016 aged 82, but his legacy lives on. “I was overshadowed by Law, Best and Charlton, but I was a decent player in my own right,” Herd shrugged.
That was an understatement. In the black and white era, our loss proved to be Manchester United’s gain.
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