Harry Gregg,MBE was born on Oct 25th, 1932 in Coleraine, Co. L’Derry is a Northern Irish former football player.
Harry started his career withWindsor Park Swifts FC, the reserve team of Linfield, before signing for his local club Coleraine. At the age of 18 he earned a move to Doncaster Rovers, before transferring to Manchester Utd in 1957. He earned 25 caps for the Northern Ireland national team. At the time he was the most expensive goalkeeper in the world.
Gregg was a goalkeeper who had 48 clean sheets in his United career. He is sometimes called ‘The Hero of Munich’ because he pulled some of his team mates from the burning plane during the Munich Air Disaster including Bobby Charlton, Jackie Blanchflower and Dennis Viollet. He also pulled out a woman and her baby as well as his manager Sir Matt Busby.
Harry Gregg is rated by many as one of the the best goalkeepers Manchester United ever had, yet he achieved no medals to justify this claim – made all the more frustrating for him by the fact that he played for the club during a generally successful spell. He was ruled out of the 1963 FA Cup victory due to a serious shoulder injury, and a succession of injuries meant that he could not play enough games to qualify for a league championship medal in the 1964-65 and 1966-67 title-winning campaigns. He was transferred to Stoke City in the summer of 1967. He left Stoke City to manage Shrewsbury Town.
In November 1972, he became manager of Swansea City, resigning in February 1975 to join Crewe Alexandra where he remained until 1978. He then had a spell with his old team Manchester United at the invitation of Dave Sexton as goalkeeper coach, where he stayed until Sexton left. His next club was Swindon Town as assistant manager to Lou Macari, helping them win the Fourth Division title in 1986. During the1986-1987 season had an uneventful spell as manager of Carlisle United, failing to prevent them from suffering a second successive relegation that pushed them into the Fourth Division for the first time since the 1960s.
He received an MBE in 1995, and has appeared in a number of recent television programmes about Manchester United and the Munich Air Disaster, including a documentary televised in 1998 to mark the 40th anniversary of the Munich tragedy. He was voted best goalkeeper of the tournament in 1958 according to the FIFA documentary “FIFA fever”.