Outside Football
Swift had three brothers, Cuthbert, Fred and Alf, and one sister, Alice. Fred, also a goalkeeper, played for Bolton Wanderers amongst others. The five grew up in a house a short walk from Blackpool's Bloomfield Road ground. During football's off-season, Frank and Alf ran boat trips off the Blackpool coast for tourists. On one such trip he met his future wife, Doris Potter. They married at Blackpool in 1935. They had a daughter, Jean, who was born in 1936, and a son, David, who was born in 1948.
During wartime, Swift became a special constable with responsibility for traffic control. He was enrolled in the RAF, and travelled to France after the Invasion of Normandy, but was stationed well behind the front line and did not see combat. This did not prevent risk to his life, however, as in 1944 a Dakota on which he was a passenger was involved in a near miss.
Several members of Swift's family attended the February 2008 Manchester derby, played in the week of the 50th anniversary of the Munich air disaster. The game, at Old Trafford, was won by Manchester City; the minutes silence was fully observed by the Manchester City fans. Towards the end of the game, the City fans chanted "There's only one Frank Swift" several times, to rounds of applause from the United fans.
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Famous quotes containing the word football:
“You can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1993)
“... in the minds of search committees there is the lingering question: Can she manage the football coach?”
—Donna E. Shalala (b. 1941)