Eric Thompson was not one to shout about his eminence in British sportswriting.
That was part of the incalculable sadness when the work of the Old Trafford press box went on again without him, just 13 days after Munich.
Thompson, the Daily Mail journalist on British European Airways Flight 609, would have journalists in a state of helpless laughter with lines dispensed so deadpan that at times nobody was sure if the joke had been intentional.
'He should have been a professional press-box entertainer, forever making sad men smile, making the obvious remark un-obviously, and teaching you that a game is just a game for all that,' said Peter Thomas, whose work for the Daily Express and Daily Mirror brought him into Thompson's friendship.