Burwell Cemetery can be added to the list of sites that are important to Cambridge United supporters and football fans in general.

There lie two of the game's best liked and most respected practitioners: brothers Len and Pat Saward.

Len, who died in March last year at the age of 89, is commemorated by the handsome headstone pictured here. Featuring United's old 'book and ball' crest, it was created by Ivett & Reed of Newmarket Road – a firm with a long history of U's support.

Ultra-talented forward Len played a total of 170 games for United between 1952 and 1958, scoring 43 times. He went on to serve the club behind the scenes as a valued and hard-working member of a phenomenally successful commercial department.

A few yards away lies younger brother Pat, an Irish international 18 times and a stalwart defender for clubs including Millwall and Aston Villa.

Burwell has not often been a place of pilgrimage; it can now claim that distinction.

The Cambridge United family is mourning the death on March 7, at the age of 89, of Len Saward, a highly influential and popular player in the 1950s and later a huge contributor to the club’s commercial success.

Len was born on 6 July 1927 in Aldershot. August of the following year saw the birth of his brother Pat, who would go on to play for Millwall, Aston Villa and Huddersfield and earn 18 caps for the Republic of Ireland. Len was less driven than his brother but there were those who thought him the better player. Indeed, no less an authority than Wilf Mannion called Len the cleverest footballer he played with.

He developed into an elusive inside forward with a powerful shot and, having played nine League games for Crystal Palace between 1948 and 1950, he turned down Notts County before joining non-League Tonbridge. United player-manager Bill Whittaker signed him for £750 in late September 1952 and he scored on his debut, a 5-1 win at Stowmarket, on October 2. He came close to scoring a hat-trick when his penalty hit the post in a 3-0 defeat of Chelmsford City Reserves.

The following season he claimed a hat-trick in a 5-3 win over Stowmarket and played a prominent part in United’s notable 3-1 FA Cup win at Cambridge City before a crowd of 11,908. That cup run led to the club’s 2-1 giant-killing victory over Division Three South’s Newport County in a replay at Somerton Park, in which Len headed United’s first goal.

Newport were impressed, and Len joined the Welsh club for £750 on New Year’s Day 1954. He soon regretted the move. For a time he continued to live in Cambridge and trained in London, but after 25 League games, five goals and a trial with Brentford he was allowed to rejoin the U’s in March 1955, just after Whittaker had resigned.

Playing under new manager Gerald Williams, Len scored within 30 seconds of the start of the first game of 1955/56, going on to complete a hat-trick in a 3-1 win over Lowestoft. After a one-month suspension for failing to be ‘in a fit state to give of his best in the interests of the club on the field’, he regained his place under another new manager – Bert Johnson – and scored in United’s first game under floodlights, a 3-0 East Anglian Cup win at Bury Town.

The 1956/57 season saw Len playing on the right wing as part of perhaps United’s strongest ever forward line, which included Mannion, Bernard Moore, Brian Moore and Kevin Barry. He was allowed to miss a match in March so that he could watch brother Pat play for Villa in an FA Cup semi-final against West Bromwich Albion.

In October 1957 he was granted a benefit match against Aston Villa, and he used some of his testimonial fund to buy the club its first floodlights: lamps mounted on telegraph poles, costing £14 each. Villa could not make the agreed date so United’s first game under the lights was a 3-0 defeat of Great Yarmouth in the East Anglian Cup on October 21; fittingly, Len scored the first goal.

His benefit match eight days later attracted a crowd of 5,500 to see United take on an Invitation XI including stars like Peter McParland, Jack Kelsey, Noel Cantwell and of course Pat Saward. Len subsequently sold the floodlights to the club.

He was released in 1958, having played 170 games and scored 43 goals for the U’s. He joined Sudbury Town, later moved on to Newmarket Town and was player-manager of Soham Town Rangers in 1965 when he took on the job of assistant admin secretary at United.

The two gents pictured right were revisiting their old stamping ground on Sunday, December 6 for the FA Cup game against Doncaster Rovers, as guests of 100 Years of Coconuts and Cambridge United. Len Saward (right) and Russell Crane eagerly drank in the atmosphere and shared the disappointment of other U's fans at the result.

Accompanying Len were his son Patrick and grandsons Jack and Charlie, passionate U's supporters every one.

We've written extensively about Russell, the newly installed Honorary Life President of Coconuts, in the recent past. Now it's Len's turn, and we can do no better than to reproduce the programme article about him that appeared on Sunday. Read on …

Football brothers: Bobby and Jack Charlton, Phil and Gary Neville, Rio and Anton Ferdinand, John and Clive Charles for starters. Glenn and, um, Carl Hoddle. The U’s have had a few, Alan and Gary Kimble being the most obvious examples.

If only Pat Saward had played for United alongside older brother Len, what a partnership that would have been, supporters of the older generation have been known to muse. The Millwall, Villa and Huddersfield wing half overshadowed Len in the fame stakes, winning an FA Cup winner’s medal and earning 18 Irish caps during a long career.

Ah but, you see, there are many who saw the brothers play who insist Len was the better of the two. He could have eclipsed Pat’s fame if he’d had more of the latter’s driven nature, the sages used to say over their pints of mild in The Globe. Look at what Wilf Mannion said about him, they’d declare, driving the point home with a jab of the pipe stem.

Len Saward, Golden Boy Mannion once said, was the cleverest footballer he ever played with.

Len, who is at today’s game as a guest of 100 Years of Coconuts and Cambridge United, has earned himself a unique place in the Abbey annals. He was a wonderfully elusive inside forward possessed of a mighty shot who played for the U’s in two spells between 1952 and 1958, chalking up 170 games and 43 goals. He paid for the club’s first floodlights out of his testimonial fund, for heaven’s sake. Then he worked in Dudley Arliss’s commercial department, at first selling the pools tickets that helped United climb towards the Football League.

Aldershot-born Len arrived from Crystal Palace via Tonbridge and a £750 fee in September 1952, promptly scored on his Eastern Counties League debut against Stowmarket and finished the season in double figures.