How Manchester United also became known as The Red Devils
Mention the Red Devils around Salford at the present time and people will think you are talking about Matt Busby’s great soccer side, Manchester United. But in the 1930s things were different.
Gus Risman’s words, from his 1958 autobiography. As applicable now as the day they were written. Things were different in the 1930s. Salford were basking in a greatest period of its history, while Manchester United experienced its deepest lull. Here, Salford accepted The Red Devils moniker, a name that was bestowed onto them. Whereas Manchester United were anything but devilish.
Yet, as Risman notes, things changed with time. Manchester United became a colossus and somewhere along the way they too picked up the nickname The Red Devils. How, when and why they did adopted it isn’t really known.
The common adoption story is that around the turn of the 1960s, United manager Matt Busby wished for the club to have a nickname with more impact — one that would strike fear into their opponents, particularly in Europe. Perhaps because the Babes moniker didn’t have this desired effect initially; or maybe Busby wanted to let the ‘Babes’ rest with the men of a gifted generation that died tragically in the Munich Air Disaster. He knew Salford were known as The Red Devils, liked the name, thought it fit the bill perfectly and appropriated it for his charges.
Yet there doesn’t seem to be much evidence to support this story. However, there is evidence to suggest variations and alternatives. Could there even be a shared lineage reaching back before Salford received The Red Devils tag?
Salford’s 1934 tour of France
The story of how Salford came by the nickname is worthy of its own treatise. During the 1930s, the French rugby league movement was gathering pace. In March 1934, a French team with aspirations towards professionalism travelled to Britain to showcase its talents, forge alliances and garner support. Encouraged by their tour and the possibilities of formally establishing rugby league back home, this new authority were keen to invite an English team to play a number of matches in France.
Obviously they wanted a team who could cause a stir, bring audiences to venues and ultimately convert staunch union territories to league. Salford fitted this profile perfectly. As league leaders for the previous two seasons, they were an exciting team to watch, encompassing an insatiable combination of being devastating in attack and steely in defence. Salford duly accepted the invitation from the French and agreed to a six-match tour in the late Autumn of 1934.
The first game was in Paris and it was here where the seeds of Salford’s new nickname sprouted. The match programme introduced the visitors as ‘Les Diables Rouges de Salford’. What may have started as a savvy marketing tagline morphed into a prophecy, as Salford cut a swath through each team France put forward to challenge these virtuosos of the 13-a-side code. Salford took The Red Devils nickname as a sign of respect, of adulation, and reciprocated by adopting it for good.
I wonder what really lay behind the Parisians’ idea of labelling Salford ‘Les Diables Rouges’. Was it mean to be complementary or derogatory? You’d imagine it was complementary, in some sense, for what was a promotional tour. For example, other pioneers such the original All-Blacks tour of 1905 and the New Zealand (All Golds) tour of 1907/08 met with a great deal of interest from British audiences.
You could suggest an alternative marketing shtick i.e. label the opposition as unholy invaders, inhumane, evil — setting up the pretense of pantomime villains — while actually having a great deal of respect for the visiting exemplars. There’s also a more sinister if tenuous angle. Rugby union hardliners were well aware of Salford’s tour and of its potential effects. These people made concerted efforts to sabotage proceedings with counter attractions (although they had little to no effect on the rugby league parade). Did union aligned journalists perpetuate the use of The Red Devils tag to try and demonise Salford, and in turn, rugby league as a whole?
One thing our club and its supporters maintain is that Salford are the The ‘Original’ Red Devils. This is in direct opposition to Manchester United, who have taken The Red Devils nickname to a much more widespread, mainstream audience, threatening Salford’s genuine claims of ownership. There’s no doubt that United promote the nickname far more than Salford City Reds have in the Super League era. The irritation level of Salford supporters in regards to the appropriation tends to vary depending on whether they themselves are also United fans.
However, strictly speaking, Salford are not the originals. ‘Diables Rouges’ is a familiar nickname to Francophone sport enthusiasts. French football club F.C. Rouen claim to have used the same nickname since the early 1900s. Subsequently, Montpellier Rugby League club labelled themselves ‘Diables Rouges’, and after Salford took on the sobriquet, the Republic of Congo’s national football team also adopted it (as did South Korea’s).
By far the most notable of this group is Belgium’s national football team. Apparently, in 1906, the journalist Pierre Walckiers dubbed Belgium ‘The Red Devils’ after their 3–2 win over local rivals The Netherlands in Rotterdam. And the name stuck. Another team called Diables Rouges, who were effectively Belgium’s reserve team, played a number of representative fixtures throughout the first half of the 20th century. Their opponents included British league representative teams such as the London Combination, London F.A, the Athenian League, the Welsh League and football league clubs like Crystal Palace. The team actually advertised for opponents. A small section in the 26 April 1941 edition of The Times read: ‘The Red Devils, the Belgian Association football club in London, want to meet English amateur clubs.’
Notably, Belgium play in a predominantly red kit and Walckiers was no doubt describing a team who were, on the day, very good as opposed to being overly dirty or wicked. This link between red kits, impressive teams and the varied use of ‘Diables Rouges’ for sports teams in French-speaking countries could, perhaps, be the simple reason why the French gave Salford the nickname before a ball had even been kicked.
Busby, Anderlecht and other United adoption theories
Manchester Evening News sub-editor Frank Nicklin came up with the ‘Busby Babes’ tag in 1951. He used it in a match report on Liverpool vs. Manchester United as the game saw the introduction of two young, promising United players. Ever after, the precocious wunderkinds of Busby’s youth policy were labelled as his ‘babes’.
Some sources claim that Matt Busby didn’t think much of the ‘Busby Babes’ tag. So it’s plausible that he might have sought an alternative. Also, he would have been plenty exposed to The Red Devils nickname. Not only because Salford are local to Manchester United but Busby was also a player at Manchester City and Liverpool during the 1930s. So, presumably, he lived locally during a time when Salford, with its successes and a roster of international players, received more exposure.
However, the assertion that Busby adopted ‘The Red Devils’ nickname for Manchester United in the wake of the Munich Air Disaster can’t be true. Because Manchester United were known as ‘The Red Devils’ before Munich.
After Manchester United retained the league championship of 1956–57 with a 4–0 thrashing of Sunderland, a match report from The Times (Monday 22 April 1957) noted:
Any latecomer, squeezing into the 60,000 crowd, must quickly have seen for himself that there was really only one side on the field—the young men of Manchester, the “red devils” as they have come to be called.
‘[The Red Devils] as they have come to be called.’ For how long does this suggest United were called The Red Devils? Weeks? Months? Years even?
In addition, as I mentioned earlier, the opening quote to this article is taken from Gus Risman’s autobiography Rugby Renegade, which was originally published by Stanley Paul in 1958. Yet given the processes of producing a book — from the initial manuscript (ghost-written by Kenneth Wolstenholme no less) to editing, printing and release — it’s conceivable that Risman penned these words before the Munich Air Disaster. Perhaps in 1957.
Also, if Matt Busby really did give Manchester United the The Red Devils tag, it seems odd that he made no mention of it in his 1973 memoir Soccer at the Top. In describing the post-Munich era, Busby continues to use words synonymous with the original ‘Babes’: ‘[We had] more babes in the creche’, ‘[the] nursery’ and so on. Which is bizarre if he really didn’t think much of the Babes name to begin with. Although it’s entirely plausible that he warmed to the name over time; and maybe because the Babes became so synonymous with Matt Busby and Manchester United in general, the book’s publishers may have insisted that the nickname simply had to be used.
What of alternative suggestions on how United adopted The Red Devils name? A noteworthy event brings us back to Belgium. Manchester United exploded onto the European scene in September 1956. Their first, preliminary round match in the European Cup was against Anderlecht, the Belgian representatives. United’s ‘home’ leg (it was played at Maine Road) was their biggest victory to date: a 10–0 whitewash. It made the away leg, a 2–0 win for United, seem meek in comparison but no less impressive.
Quite a huge aggregate win against the champions of Belgium, the home of ‘Diables Rouges’. Surely the result made a big impact there. So are we too quick to discount the influence of Belgian media in the nicknaming process? Red kits, a good team, a foreign victory — all the elements alluded to earlier are there.
What about the influence of local supporters? Did Manchester United fans use The Red Devils tag amongst themselves to such an extent that eventually the press latched onto it?
To conclude: we know how Salford got the nickname The Red Devils, and we’re safe to assume that Salford were known as The Red Devils before Manchester United. But as to how Manchester United also came to be known as The Red Devils isn’t entirely clear. It’s certainly a topic worthy of more research.
