Harry Gregg's One Life...

...Well more than one really. Quite a few actually. 'The World's Best Goalkeeper' for starters.

'The Hero of Munich' too. Though not according to the man himself. You would perhaps have heard Harry speak last night in personal memory at the fiftieth anniversary of that dreadful aeroplane crash, which killed half a team of the most promising footballers of their day and many of the journalists who followed them in their pursuit of glory and triumphs.

It was indeed an era of 'jumpers for goalposts', a time when promotional photographs would show the boys practising their skills and grinning for the camera, not in some mighty stadium - or on a Brazilian beach - but on waste-ground behind the houses of the men who would pour out of a hard week's work at Trafford Park to rejoice in the artistry of the players of Old Trafford across the way. (That was the message to the team from Matt Busby - show respect for the workers. And they did.)

But when Harry Gregg dismisses claims that he was a hero for going back into the aircraft to saves lives when others were fleeing - and it was the choosing of the risk that makes him brave - it is not the stern, generational self-deprecating sentiment he reveals, but the tormented, unending agony of the guilty survivor.

He lives and they died. Them he could not save and Harry's pain is that he believes he needs to be forgiven by them for this. Forty years he stayed away from the the families of the men who died, because he could not bear to look them in the eye.

Ten years back, however, Harry was persuaded to attend a fortieth remembrance service with those families. And they thanked and praised and loved him for what he had done, not spurned him for what he had not. It was some great relief from a heavy burden.

If you do not understand the guilt of a survivor, then count yourself very fortunate for only they who live with this pain can comprehend its strength and power.

I've had it seven years. I'm not sure I can wait another thirty or more to be forgiven, but then perhaps Harry's one life gives hope for mine.

Thank you then Harry Gibb for living a part of my life as well as the many of your own.