The small men always walked like giants in Eddie Colman’s household. The 5ft 6in right-half would mark Alfredo di Stefano for Manchester United against Real Madrid in 1957 but no one needed to teach him about humility.
His grandfather served in the First World War in one of the bantam battalions, formed by men who were less than five feet tall. His father had been out of work for five years when he scored a hat-trick in the Salford Unemployed Cup Final in 1933. Somehow, it earned him a job as an engineering firm’s plate layer, which he clung on to for all his life.