One of the club’s guests that day was Tim Mantle who was representing the Trautmann Foundation as one of their UK Ambassadors. Tim brought along with him a gift for the club which has some personal connection to Bert.

Bert had attended Manchester City’s Champions League away encounter with Villareal back in November 2011 and having watched his former club win comfortably 0-3 he made his way back to his friend’s car where he was spotted by City fans!

Tim takes up the story, ‘Bert always had a huge amount of time for fans and he never distanced himself from those who remembered him.

‘As one person recognised him, then another, it soon became a friendly ‘mob’ of around 300 fan who besieged the car. They all wanted to get a glimpse of or a word with, the City legend.

‘The narrow streets of the old town resonated to the raucous sound of “There’s only one Bert Trautmann.”

'And the average age of these fans, probably twenty five to thirty years. Yes, most of them were born more than twenty years after he played his last game for City in 1964.

'Imagine that, they were all intimately familiar with the great man, they all wanted a piece of him that night. He cried, I cried, a lovely sight to behold, an 87 year old king enshrined in warmth and adoration. A wonderful moment. Indeed there is only one Bert Trautmann.

‘Bert was handed a commemorative scarf from the game by one of the supporters which he gladly accepted and a year or so later that was passed to me and I felt it would make a nice addition to Town’s Trautmann memorabilia collection.’

Club Chairman John McKiernan added, ‘It was a lovely touch from Tim and the club is delighted with what is a unique piece of memorabilia.

‘We have a large number of items which have a connection to Bert including signed books, programmes and photographs which we are hoping will make an excellent exhibition when we eventually have a base back in St Helens.’

‘There are lots of stories out there about Bert, many of them with a St Helens connection and we’d love to try to document these. If anyone has any tales they’d like to recount or items of memorabilia relating to Bert we could loan please get in contact.’

Where you the person who gave Bert the scarf? If so get in touch and we can update this story.

John McKiernan
sthelenstownfc@hotmail.co.uk
Mobile 07713 338 682