The inside story of United’s 1980s basketball team

“We were paraded on the pitch after we won the title before a league match at Old Trafford and the crowd went crazy,” Jones told us. “The league was very strong, with the likes of Kingston, Livingstone, Portsmouth and Solent Star all competitive but we were winning trophies, getting into Europe and playing prestige matches against the biggest clubs on the Continent. There was even talk of building an arena specifically for the club’s basketball side.”

Despite the title and the growth in attention, the basketball experiment attracted criticism. Shareholders began questioning Edwards over whether the United board should focus on football. “We are doing all the things we can to keep it going,” Edwards told The Times on the eve of the shareholders’ annual meeting in January 1988. “Slowly we are bringing the losses down. We wouldn’t lightly pull out.”

Eventually, weighed down by the costs of six full-time pros, and the loss of sponsorship from Sharp, the club did just that. “It was great while it lasted,” Jones said. “We came close to moving basketball away from being just a minority sport here.”