Fixing Sixty Six

by Tim Flower

  Sure enough, Brazil went on to lose the match 3-1 and Hungary took their place in the quarter-finals.

  When I met George after the match, he told me that Ken Dodd, who had been a guest of the FA, had given him two complementary tickets for The Cavern. The world-famous beat club was reopening that night after a major revamp, ahead of an official reopening by the PM in four days’ time. Although we knew we weren’t really “with-it” enough to go there, we didn’t want to waste the tickets and pass up the opportunity to see where The Beatles were discovered. So we gave it a go.

  We didn’t stay long. The Cavern proved to be a hot dark, noisy cellar that smelt of sweat and toilets. Even worse, it didn’t have an alcohol licence. After enduring a warm Coke and a loud “hit” by The Hideaways, we escaped up the stairs to the relative cool and silence of Mathew Street.

  Around the corner, we found the White Star, a pub which had a quiet, temperate room at the back. According to the publican, it was where The Beatles were paid following their appearances at The Cavern. There was no sign of them that evening; in fact, with the room to ourselves, we occupied two of their seats. So, accompanied only by two much needed pints of “mixed” (mild and bitter), we were able to talk football in comfort and peace.

  Once I had wetted my whistle and had a few deep draws on my pipe, I was itching to ask George (McCabe, not Harrison) about the fouls that sealed Brazil’s fate. But I sensed - perhaps due to The Cavern’s loud, frenetic atmosphere - he hadn’t yet wound-down after the match. Beneath his widow’s peak of dark, greased-back hair, beads of sweat hung across his brow and his deep-set eyes darted busily around the room. Although in his civvies - a charcoal suit and a Sheffield United tie - he still looked primed, ready to officiate.

  So we chatted for a quite a while about other aspects of the tournament. It was only after he was on his third pint and had taken off his jacket and loosened his tie, that I steered the conversation to that afternoon’s match and, specifically, Morais’ one-two on Pele.

  ‘To be frank, at first I thought there were nowt wrong with him,’ he said, rolling up his sleeves. ‘He’d gone down earlier like a sack of spuds. Their trainer tore on: did you see him? With his Yul Brynner and commando belt?’ George gave me a look as if to say, what’s wrong with a comb-over and a bucket and sponge.

  I nodded in recognition and smiled.

  ‘He treated Pele like he were at death’s door, only for the lad to jump up, take the free kick and almost score. So when he went down later, like he’d been shot, I thought, here we go again.’

  ‘That double foul by Morais did look brutal though.’

  ‘I’m not being rude, Harry: but you can’t judge owt from the stands, especially with them foreign players. And that’s not me being prejudiced.’ He leaned towards me and (given the absence of potential eavesdroppers) unnecessarily lowered his voice before continuing, ‘Between me and thee, he warned us about Brazil: the histrionics they get up to. He said, one minute they’ll be rolling on the ground like they got it in the guts from Cassius Clay and next minute they’re up on their feet and right as rain. And it’s true.’

  ‘You said “he”: who’s “he”? Ken Aston?’

  ‘No, it weren’t Ken. I’d never seen the lad before. He were a southerner like Ken - and tall too. But he were thinner and posher.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  George hesitated. ‘Good question. Let me see…’ He looked up at the high ceiling, as if searching for the name in the ornate, nicotine-stained stucco.

  Suddenly his eyes switched to me. ‘Radford. That were it. Dave… No, it were Dick. Anyroad, it were definitely Radford. I think.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Nowt at our morning briefing - although he were there, listening. He came up to me after.’

  ‘And said what exactly?’

  ‘Why the interrogation, Harry?’ George pointed a censorious finger at me, like I was one foul away from going in his notebook. ‘I don’t want to see owt in print.’

  I wanted the information, not as a journalist, but in the hope it would dispel the doubts about the briefings that Nell had cast. So I had no hesitation in saying, ‘Of course. I can assure you, George, you won’t see it in any paper.’

  After seemingly checking that John, Paul, George and Ringo hadn’t crept in the room to pick up their pay packets and were eavesdropping, he said in a low voice, ‘When he’d finished gushing about the way I ref, he said, “We want you to treat this like any other match”.’

  ‘Who did he mean by “we”?’

  George shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask him.’ He paused. ‘Although, he said he were a Referee Support Officer, and that the FA were interested to know how I performed ‘cause I were on a very short list to referee a future Cup Final. That were it. So, by “we”, maybe he meant the FA.’

  I liked to think I knew - or at least knew of - all the men that mattered in English football’s governing body; I had never heard of anyone there called Radford. ‘Are you sure? I’ve never come across a Radford at the FA.’

  ‘No, me neither.’ He looked puzzled, and his eyes flashed up to the ceiling again. ‘No, wait a jiffy: I’ve got it now.’ He lent towards me and murmured, ‘When I asked him what his job involved, he said monitoring the performance of referees during the tournament. So, thinking about it, he must have been from FIFA.’

  ‘If he works for FIFA, how come he knew about the FA’s Cup Final shortlist?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe the FA asked him to share his findings with them?’ After a moment’s reflection, he sat back in his seat looking satisfied. ‘Aye, that must be it.’

  ‘Let’s hope he gives you a good report then.’ I winked. ‘A Cup Final would be a great honour.’

  ‘Aye, I could hang up me boots after that,’ he said, staring into his half-empty pint. He took a large gulp of the rich brown brew, before continuing, ‘Anyroad, Radford told me to take the same, sporting approach I always do. Give the benefit of the doubt to the tackler and don’t be fooled by any of that, what he called, “South American histrionics.” He reminded me about some incidents in the Rous film Ken showed and said I should get “the stricken”, as he called them, back on their feet and get on with the game. I said, you don’t need to tell me that. It’s the way I do it week in, week out.’

  This was true. George was renowned for letting the game flow. ‘But the Morais incident: that wasn’t South American histrionics. Why didn’t you send him off or at least book him?’

  ‘Because the Brazilian lad fell face down and rolled over twice?’

  ‘No, because of the nature of the fouls. Like I said, they were brutal.’

  His demeanour switched from affable to defensive. ‘I made my decision based on what I saw of the incident itself. Nothing else. And what I saw were two late tackles by the Portuguese lad, number 17, that brought down the Brazilian number 10. It were a foul - two fouls, like you said. No doubt about that. But, as far as I was concerned, that’s where it ended. With a team like Brazil, you don’t take no notice of the dramatics that follow.’

  ‘But Pele wasn’t being dramatic. Far from it. In response to Morais’ first foul, he showed great athleticism to stay on his feet. He couldn’t avoid going down the second time because Morais had hacked his right leg from beneath him.’

  ‘I can see why you take that view now, Harry. As it turned out, the lad had taken a nasty knock. That were a shame, of course. But I had to go on what I actually saw of the incident itself, there and then, when it happened. We referees don’t have the luxury of twenty-twenty hindsight like you journalists.’

  In an obvious effort to bring the subject to a close, he emptied his glass, shook it and said, ‘Shall we make it a fab four?’

  I nodded. ‘Why not? One for the road.’

  As I re-lit my pipe, I watched George at the bar. He stood tall, chest forward, like an off-duty bobby. He looked the epitome of a fair, no-nonsense, honest-to-goodness Yorkshireman. Although I d
idn’t agree with the leniency he showed Morais, I was in no doubt that he genuinely thought at the time that a free kick and nothing more was the appropriate sanction. I couldn’t believe for one moment that George had deliberately allowed Morais to injure Pele, any more than I could believe the Brazilian coach’s claim that Tschenscher, the German referee, had done so in the first game.

  However, I was unable to silence Nell’s voice in my head complaining (in her annoying “I told you so” manner) about the pernicious influence of the Rous film. Nor could I explain away the mysterious Mr Radford’s involvement. Musing on this while George exchanged banter with the publican, and recalling the leniency shown to Morais that afternoon, to Pele’s other assailant in Brazil’s first match and to Nobby Stiles in England’s game against Uruguay, I found I could no longer dismiss protestations of refereeing bias as the last resort of Latin losers.

  And that was before England played France at Wembley.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Thursday, 21st July 1966

  The morning after England unconvincingly beat France to qualify for the World Cup quarter-finals, I was woken by the teasmade’s alarm, only to discover that Nell hadn’t put water in it. So, mumbling and grumbling, I dragged on my dressing gown and shuffled downstairs in search of a brew.

  Alison, who wasn’t yet dressed either, was lying on the settee, clutching her Sindy and looking sorry for herself. I could hear Nell searching the kitchen cupboards. As I scanned the lounge for the morning papers, I called out, ‘The teasmade didn’t work. There wasn’t any water in it,’ hoping this would prompt her to offer me a cuppa and even some breakfast to go with it.

  ‘There’s water in the kettle,’ came the disappointing reply.

  ‘Are the papers here yet?’

  Nell emerged from the kitchen. She was in her work attire and hurried towards upstairs. ‘Don’t know. Look in the letterbox.’

  I tutted my way downstairs. Sure enough, that morning’s papers had been folded into a dense wad and shoved into the front door’s mouth. This made it impossible to extract them from inside without shredding the outer pages. Fortunately, the paperboy always put the tabloid Mirror inside the broadsheet Guardian. So I just tugged them free, pulled out my paper and left the remains of Nell’s for her to collect on her way out.

  As I traipsed back upstairs, I saw that the Mirror’s front page carried a seventy-two-point headline. This traditionally signified that the story below it was a momentous one - which it was.

  “THE DEEP FREEZE”, was the paper’s dramatic announcement. “It’s tough action on all fronts in Wilson’s great shake-out for the nation” Another sub-headline roared, “FREEZE on wages FREEZE on prices FREEZE on profits... And on top of all this... DEARER hire purchase DEARER beer and petrol DEARER phone calls.”

  Nell had returned to the lounge with Alison’s pink floral eiderdown and some Angiers Junior Aspirin. Since our daughter liked the chewy orange tablets much more than Miss Hopkins, her teacher, I would have been sceptical about a sudden sickness on a weekday morning, had her cheeks not been cricket ball red.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ I asked, hoping she wasn’t going down with chicken pox, which Ma had repeatedly told me with pride that I had avoided as a child.

  ‘She said she feels hot,’ Nell said, with the tone of a busy nurse rather than a concerned mother. She put a hand on the patient’s forehead. Alison responded by adopting an ailing expression. ‘She is rather flushed. And it feels like she’s got a temperature.’

  ‘It’ll just be a cold,’ I said hopefully.

  ‘Probably. But I can’t take her to Jane’s, just in case. She’ll have to stay here with you until I get back from the briefing.’

  ‘How come you’ve got a briefing today? The next match isn’t until Saturday.’

  ‘It’s a special one. They only arranged it late yesterday. But there’s no lunch, so I should be back by one o’clock.’

  This was fortunate, I thought. Rita had telephoned me at the paper to arrange a meeting with Forsyth for that afternoon. If Nell had been staying for a lunch, I wouldn’t have been able to get to Number 10 in time.

  ‘As long as you are. I’ve got a meeting in town at three.’

  Nell headed purposefully towards the kitchen. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll only have to spend half a day caring for your daughter.’

  To avoid frequent and fruitless arguments, I had adopted a policy of ignoring Nell’s pointed remarks and changing the subject.

  ‘Have you seen what the PM’s doing to - as the paper calls it - save the pound?’ I followed Nell into the kitchen to make my tea. ‘They seem pretty desperate measures.’

  She was looking in the cupboard under the sink where we kept the beer and other bottled drinks. ‘The “PM”?’ Nell said quizzically, without interrupting her search.

  ‘I mean the Prime Minister - Wilson.’ I silently rebuked myself for lapsing into government lingo.

  ‘I know who you meant. It’s just you sounded like a Whitehall mandarin.’

  I moved rapidly on. ‘He’s announced a six-month wage freeze at the same time as making several things we buy dearer. Beer’s going up by a penny a pint; he’s increased petrol duty by fourpence a gallon; and that mini you fancy would cost us an extra eight quid in purchase tax.’

  ‘I don’t have time to read the papers. But I heard it on the wireless last night - when I was putting Alison to bed and you were at the England game.’ Nell pulled a new bottle of Lucozade - still in its orange cellophane wrapper - out of the cupboard and thrust it into my hands. ‘If she’s thirsty, give her some of this.’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s worrying?’

  ‘She’ll get over it.’

  ‘No, what the… what Wilson has announced. It’s like the country is in crisis.’

  ‘There’s no point in worrying,’ she said, pushing past me into the lounge, ‘because there’s nothing I can do about it.’ She picked up her handbag/briefcase she had propped against her chair and, as she was leaving, added, ‘I’m a woman and, therefore, not the one running the country.’

  After she had gone and I had made myself a cup of tea, I remembered my shopping from the day before. On my way home, inspired by the street decorations around Goodison Park, I had popped into Allansons - the department store near the main station in Birkenhead - and bought a host of World Cup merchandise with which to dress our house. My spree had started modestly with a World Cup Willie ashtray, a set of coasters and a tankard. I then came across an ice bucket that looked just like one of the tournament’s tan leather footballs. It was dear, but I had to have it. To these acquisitions, I had added a large England supporters’ Union Jack and two matching pennants. As I was leaving the store, it had occurred to me it would be diplomatic to get a gift for Nell. I had found a silk scarf with the flags of the sixteen competing nations, two different World Cup Willie images and the location of each of the match venues on it.

  I kicked myself for not remembering my purchases earlier. If I had given Nell the scarf when I first came downstairs, I might even have got breakfast made for me.

  Whilst Alison slept on the settee, I arranged my World Cup merchandise (except for the scarf) around the lounge/diner. I tied the pennants either side of the television and divided the coasters between the occasional tables. I put the ice bucket on one end of the sideboard, by the dining table, and the ashtray and tankard at the other. Above the sideboard was an extra-large, paint-by-number, Italian street scene, which Nell’s mother had given us as a housewarming present. Although Nell wasn’t that keen on it and I thought it a monstrosity, she wouldn’t contemplate taking it down. But, at least for the rest of the tournament, I thought I could get away with covering it with the Union Jack.

  Once I had finished bringing a football festival spirit to our living area, I went downstairs to my writing room and made some phone calls in search of a story for Friday’s paper. I also spoke to Norman, who let slip he was about to leave for England’s training base
at Roehampton to photograph Nobby Stiles. Given the French manager’s pre-match concerns about “Le Pugiliste”, I wasn’t surprised to learn that the Evening Standard was interested in Stiles. I had been at Wembley the previous evening for England’s final Group game and, unlike the Peruvian refereeing it, had spotted his belated hack which had ended the match for France’s Jacques Simon. Having grabbed a word with Simon’s manager after the game, I knew he was furious that England were allowed to score their decisive second goal whilst France’s key player was prostrate and in agony on the ground. He was similarly unhappy that they had to play the last fifteen minutes of the match with only nine fit men (Herbin having become a hobbling passenger, after only ten minutes). What I didn’t know, until Nell got back from her briefing a little earlier than I expected, was that this was only half of the story.

  ‘Your Nobby Stiles is in trouble,’ she said, looking at me accusingly from the doorway of my writing room. She had developed a habit of distancing herself from the nation’s faults and failings and ascribing them to me personally.

  ‘The Frogs have lodged a complaint, have they?’

  ‘The French have, yes. But not just them. A Brazilian FIFA official, watching from the stands, was so incensed by Stiles’ crippling tackle on Simon - and Mr Yamasaki’s failure to even caution him - that he has reported both of them to FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee.’

  ‘Why would a Brazilian official complain about an incident in an England v France match?’

  ‘Because it was Morais on Pele all over again - with Yamasaki playing the role of blind George McCabe,’ Nell said, pulling her chiffon scarf from her neck like it was a toilet chain. ‘The Brazilian’s are convinced that Stiles is part of a conspiracy to ensure the host nation wins.’

  ‘That’s nonsense.’

  ‘Officials I’ve spoken to expect him to be banned for at least one match. So we’ll see, won’t we?’