MANCHESTER United may be the richest club in the world today - but pensioner Sarah Aitken remembers when it had to scrape the pennies together to get the team's socks washed.

For Sarah used to wash and darn the team's socks at her Old Trafford home in the 1940s.

She was paid the princely sum of one old pence per pair - but was given the boot by United when she asked for a pay rise!

Sarah took on the washing duties in the days after the Second World War - when United did not even have a ground as its Old Trafford stadium had been hit during the Blitz.

She was in charge of cleaning and darning the socks for Matt Busby's first great team - whose stars included skipper Johnny Carey, Jack Rowley and Stan Pearson, and who won the FA Cup in 1948 and the Championship four years later.

Sarah, now 84, recalls club secretary Walter Crickmer used to bring the socks around to her home on Atkinson Street every week. The club needed her services because the local laundry had also been destroyed in the Blitz.

"They wanted me to do the towels and shorts too, but I had to refuse because I only had a zinc bath and no hot water. I had to put the gas boiler on and fill the bath with water.

"At Christmas I had to work hard to get the socks ready because there were a lot of matches played then.

"Sometimes the socks had holes in them and I had to darn them. Manchester United has not always been as rich as it is now - in those days they did not have the money for more pairs of socks. The players just had two pairs each."

Sarah, who now lives at Kitty Wheeldon Gardens in Sale, continues: "I asked Mr Crickmer for a penny rise - but he said I should be proud to be washing for the players and took the job elsewhere."

Despite this, Sarah's devotion to the Reds has never wavered and she still avidly follows the team's games on TV.

The great grandmother suffers severely from arthritis and doesn't get out too often these days. But warden Yvonne Graves was determined Sarah wouldn't miss United's homecoming parade - and got hold of a wheelchair to take her to Washway Road to see the open-topped bus drive past: "I still love United and and I was really chuffed to see them come home. David Beckham waved to me!"

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