Banksy (33 page)

The Celtic manager, Jock Stein, was a little more positive in his assessment of our chances, saying, ‘So much depends on…luck and the run of the ball. Given both these things, England could do really well.’ But one of my boyhood heroes, the former Manchester City goalkeeper Bert Trautmann, who was then general manager at Stockport County, gave us little chance. Some thought we lacked sufficient players of world class to go all the way to the final and win it.

The press were no more encouraging. The
Daily Sketch
was typical, saying, ‘We wish Alf and the boys all the luck in the world. If we are to even reach the heady heights of the semi-finals, they will need it,’ while Robert Page writing in the
Soccer Star
said, ‘England for the quarter-finals, the semi-finals at a pinch. But no further I’m afraid. It will be a Brazil–West Germany final.’

Alf Ramsey believed we could win it and had publicly said so, as had Bobby Charlton and Jimmy Greaves. I certainly believed we could win the World Cup, as did all twenty-two members of the squad. As a nation, though, England certainly did not expect.

No opening ceremony of any great sporting occasion could have been better stage-managed than the opening of the World Cup at Wembley on 11 July 1966. The weather was perfect: blue skies and a warm sunny evening. A cosmopolitan crowd packed the stadium and Her Majesty the Queen was in attendance along
with the Duke of Edinburgh. The football world waited with bated breath for the commencement of what had been dubbed the first modern World Cup tournament. There was a great sense of anticipation and hopes were high for a feast of cavalier football. The opening ceremony began at 6.30 p.m. as Wembley thrilled to the massed bands of the Guards. Across the planet, 500 million people, the world’s largest television audience, watched. In the wake of the massed bands of the Guards, youngsters paraded the flags of all the competing nations. Twenty-two boys – no girls, note – represented each nation and wore the strip of their designated country.

Once the parade massed on the pitch, the Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, emerged to be greeted by a roar audible from inside the England dressing room. Sir Stanley Rous, president of FIFA, welcomed Her Majesty and called upon her officially to open the tournament. That duty done, there was a fanfare of trumpets, the signal for us to emerge from the tunnel alongside our opponents, Uruguay. We walked out into the warm air of a July evening to be greeted by a tempestuous roar from the terraces.

We were fit and raring to go. Never had our spirit been higher, but the first ten minutes after Bobby Charlton had got the game under way were nightmarish. I stood unemployed in my penalty box watching players flitting eerily about the pitch. When Bobby kicked off, the atmosphere had been electric, but after only fifteen minutes I sensed that the game was going to be a damp squib and prove almost too much for the nerves of my team mates.

I think it’s fair to say that, man for man, the Uruguayan players possessed superior technique. They had an outstanding striker in Penarol’s Pedro Rocha, but the negative tactics they employed sent the carnival atmosphere of the opening ceremony evaporating fast into the cooling London night. The Uruguayans were setting the pattern some of us feared might dominate the tournament. They became a cloying cobweb of shifting pale blue shirts,
hell-bent on suffocation rather than inspiration. I reckon that throughout the first half I must have touched the ball no more than half a dozen times, more often than not, simply to field a wayward through ball. Riveting stuff it was not.

We tried – Lord knows how we tried – but we just couldn’t find a way through Uruguay’s blanket defence. Jimmy Greaves fizzed a shot inches wide of the post. Bobby Charlton hit a sumptuous volley into a thicket of legs, but that was about as near as we came to breaking the stalemate. During the last ten minutes the crowd that had roared us on to the pitch began to boo Uruguay for their delaying tactics. Their goalkeeper, Ladislao Makurkievicz, at one point actually threw the ball off the pitch when a ball boy was trying to throw it on!

When the final whistle sounded, the Hungarian referee Istvan Zsolt signalled an end to play with an almost apologetic spread of his hands. On hearing the whistle blow, Jack Charlton, Alan Ball and George Cohen simply turned and ran towards the tunnel as if wanting to put it all behind them as quickly as possible. At least we hadn’t lost, and I had kept a clean sheet (no great achievement, given that I’d been a virtual spectator throughout), but I left the pitch feeling very deflated. The Uruguayans on the other hand were ecstatic and ran around hugging each other as if the World Cup had already been won. The Wembley crowd let them know what they thought of their spoiling tactics, however, and I walked up the tunnel back into our dressing room with the sound of jeers ringing in my ears. What a start!

Elsewhere in the first round of group matches, the goals everyone had been hoping for flowed. West Germany posted their intent with a 5–0 victory over Switzerland. Two of Germany’s goals were scored by a 19-year-old who stole all the headlines that day for his assured performance against the Swiss. It was the first time that the vast majority of us had ever heard the name Franz Beckenbauer. Brazil too got off to a flyer. Goals from Pelé and Garrincha gave them a 2–0 victory over Bulgaria in front of a crowd of over 47,000 at Goodison Park. Both
Brazilian goals came from trademark ‘banana’ free kicks but a superb match was marred by the rough treatment meted out to Pelé. He was man-marked, at times ruthlessly, by Bulgaria’s Peter Zhechev and picked up an injury that put him out of Brazil’s next game against Hungary. In Group Four Russia gave ample evidence that they too would be a force to be reckoned with, beating North Korea 3–0 at Ayresome Park. After such a disappointing and turgid start, the goals flowed and the ’66 World Cup began to take on a life and identity of its own.

Following our game against Uruguay, we returned to our base in the Hendon Hall Hotel where, between training sessions at the Bank of England ground in Roehampton, we watched the tournament unfold on TV. Much of our pre-tournament preparation had taken place at the FA’s coaching school at Lilleshall in Shropshire, but as all our group games were at Wembley it had been decided we would be London based. Hendon is hardly a backwater, but quite often I would join other players for a stroll down the high street and at no time were we pestered by the press, or even unduly bothered by over-enthusiastic fans.

Not having our every move scrutinized by the media, our base at the Hendon Hall Hotel took on a very relaxed atmosphere. What spare time I had was spent reading newspapers or watching television in the TV lounge – hotels in those days didn’t have sets in every bedroom. At 10.30 every night Alf would join us in the lounge. So regular was he, you could set your watch by him. He’d simply say, ‘Goodnight gentlemen,’ and that was our signal to go up to bed.

After a day on the training pitch I was ready for bed then anyway. Not that television offered much incentive to stay awake. There were only three channels: BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. There was little daytime television other than
Watch With Mother
and some specialist schools programmes. Programmes for grown-ups began on BBC1 at 5.55 p.m. with a ten-minute news bulletin followed by regional news programmes. Those of a certain age might remember the BBC’s early and disastrous
football soap called
United!
. This saga followed the on- and off-field antics of a fictitious team called Brentwich United.
United!
was certainly not from the hard-hitting school of soaps such as
EastEnders
and
Brookside
and its early-evening slot ensured that whatever drama unfolded was strictly family viewing. The Brentwich United players all had comic-book names, such as Jimmy Stokes (played by George Layton), Curly Parker (Ben Howard) and Vic ‘Hotshot’ Clay (Warwick Sims). It was the brainchild of the writer, Brian Hayles, and the technical adviser was Jimmy Hill!

United!
had a curiosity value though it never took off as a soap. Scenes portraying Brentwich in action were shot at actual league matches. Brentwich – or so it appeared, as this was black and white television – played in red and white stripes and white shorts. For added realism, footage of Sunderland or Stoke City in action (both these teams wore the same strip as Brentwich) were cut into the matchday scenes. Such editing was rarely convincing and led to some odd and unintentionally humorous moments, such as when George Layton as Jimmy Stokes would be seen leading the Brentwich team out of their dressing room, only to cut to footage of Sunderland’s Charlie Hurley running down the tunnel. These surreal images didn’t help the credibility of the series at all and together with storylines that portrayed the mundane side of life at a football club – ‘Holiday time is over, so it’s back to work for the players of Brentwich United’, and ‘Deirdre (Beverley Jones) runs short of envelopes in the club office and Gregg Harris (Graham Weston) is worried about being fit for Saturday’ – saw the series disappear after little over a year.

BBC1 closed down at 11.40 p.m. with the
Epilogue
, a fiveminute sermon given by a guest broadcaster from one of the faiths. BBC2 also ceased transmitting at around that time with
Late Night Line-Up
, a series which looked at the world of the arts and popular culture featuring the analysis of such worthies as Denis Tuohy, Joan Bakewell and Tony Bilbow. ITV also ceased transmitting programmes at around 11.30, so even if Alf had
allowed us to stay up to watch television, there was nothing to watch. And of course there wasn’t the all-night social life that you find in cities today. Last orders in the pubs was 10.30, ten o’clock on Sundays, while nightclubs were an innovation barely heard of by young working folk. The routine of people’s lives had still to change: most went to bed at around 11 p.m. and the streets were safe at night, simply because few people were out and about by then.

As we sat in our rooms whiling away the hours until we could get out there and show that the Uruguay match was not our true form, Alf was analysing his strategic options. Blackburn’s John Connolly had played on the left against the South Americans, in a more or less orthodox wing role. Now, when he announced his team for our second match against Mexico, Alf revealed his new thinking. There was to be an important change to our formation – and our personnel.

Against Mexico, Alf Ramsey brought Martin Peters into the team on the left side of midfield in place of John Connelly. Alan Ball was also replaced, his position on the right being taken by Southampton’s wide man Terry Paine.

Martin Peters was a midfield player rather than an orthodox winger like John Connolly. Replacing midfielder Alan Ball with winger Terry Paine was a balancing move: in dropping one winger, Alf had brought another one in on the other flank. The selection of Terry Paine indicated to me that, even at this stage of the proceedings, Alf obviously still thought there was a need for an orthodox winger in the team. Perhaps he believed such a player would stretch opposing defences, creating space and opportunities for Bobby Charlton. Though the side was more or less settled, it was obvious that Alf was still not one hundred per cent certain about his best eleven, or even what the preferred formation should be.

Prior to the Mexico game we enjoyed a day out at Pinewood film studios. Being a big movie fan, this was a cracking treat for me as well as a good ploy on the part of Alf. He had noticed how down we were after the Uruguay game; we needed something to brighten our spirits and bring some fun back into the general mood of the camp. As Alf said when announcing the trip, ‘Laughter is contagious.’

Before we went down to Pinewood we had a training session at Highbury during which Jack Charlton and Alf exchanged words, and I was dragged in to their disagreement. With the training over, all the players were keen to get away, have some lunch and relax. Jack, however, had a point to make to Alf and was adamant it would be made. We had all watched Brazil beat
Bulgaria, with both goals coming from free kicks. Jack took Alf to task about what we would do to counteract free kicks should we come up against the Brazilians. Jack believed the best way was for one of our defenders to stand between me and my goal line. Alf asked me what I thought of this and I immediately said I was against it.

‘A player in front of me? That’ll obstruct my line of vision,’ I complained, ‘which is the last thing I want.’

Jack couldn’t see this at all. The debate raged on and on with Jack becoming more belligerent as it progressed. The more we debated the issue, the more it annoyed and exasperated the other players. After forty-five minutes of this, Bobby Moore stepped in.

‘Alf, you told us earlier that laughter is contagious. Well, let me tell you, the three of you have just found the cure.’ Bobby’s intervention immediately prompted Alf to wrap things up.

‘Gordon is in charge of his own penalty area,’ Alf said sternly. ‘Gentlemen, the matter is closed.’

The trip to the Pinewood studios was highly enjoyable. They were filming the new James Bond movie,
You Only Live Twice
, and we all met Mr Bond himself, Sean Connery. The Bond movies had taken cinemas by storm. Though there had been a thaw in the Cold War, spies and espionage were still very much a part of the news. The space race between the USA and the Soviet Union was continuing apace as both countries strove to be the first to land a man on the moon. The reality of real-life spies such as Kim Philby, the ‘Third Man’ (after Burgess and Maclean) who defected to the Russians in 1963, was one of a dreary, alcohol-fuelled paranoia, a far cry from the speedboats, careless violence and sex without guilt of James Bond.

The James Bond films purveyed the fantasy that government took a laissez-faire attitude to Bond’s penchant for bedding any amount of delectable women. His promiscuity mirrored the increasingly liberal attitude to sex among young people who were the first generation to have the contraceptive pill. The
sophistication of the James Bond character, not only with regard to gadgets, but also food and drink, because something to which the masses could aspire. All of which made the Bond films a highly popular product of their time.