When, so long after the action was over, I was asked to name my all-time England, I did not hesitate to include Armfield, no more than I did when choosing his fellow casualty on the road to the ’66 World Cup, Jimmy Greaves.
I tried to separate individual talent from the special requirements of Alf, to say that the men in my imaginary team would have perhaps offered the best balance and options in the competing demands that face every football manager in all their different situations. And so when I chose Jimmy at the expense of George, I was careful to make clear that I didn’t believe he could have performed any better than my World Cup team-mate but simply that he was a superbly rounded player of skill and one of the first, and best, overlapping full-backs football had ever seen.
For Alf, of course, the overwhelming imperative was to have players who understood most completely his needs – and his priorities. George did this quite perfectly and when he made some great charge down the field, and capped it not with some delicate chip into the box but a blast that endangered the press photographers more than the opposing goal, Alf didn’t share the exasperation, at least not entirely, of some of his team-mates. He thought more of the absolute reliability of his defensive instincts, the certainty that no winger, however tricky or brave, would deflect George from his overriding purpose of shutting him down as a source of danger.
So, as we moved surely from the cold and the bankruptcy of that night in Paris, many crucial pieces seemed to be fitting into place.
We had the strongroom of our goal in the safekeeping of Banks, who would so quickly placate the irritation of Alf that came when he surrendered a couple of soft goals in otherwise impressive early performances and, most seriously, seemed not to have absorbed totally the manager’s warning about the full range of danger that came with a Brazilian free-kick.
We had the leadership of Bobby Moore, who was installed as the unchallenged captain when George came in for his first cap in the 2-1 victory over Uruguay in May 1964 – a win that eased Alf’s angst over the fact that a solitary defeat in a run of increasingly surefooted performances had been administered, for a second straight time in his brief reign, a few weeks earlier by Scotland at Hampden Park.
Though Alf was always terribly intent on winning the tribal battles with Scotland – ‘You must be joking,’ he snapped to a local reporter who had been bold enough to say to him, ‘Welcome to Scotland’ when he got off a train in Glasgow – he also knew that his broader ambition, if not all the details of it, were already beginning to show the first signs of taking shape.
If the draw with Brazil represented a distinct improvement, the triumph over the World Cup finalists Czechoslovakia had to be seen as something of a breakthrough, an early announcement of serious intent. They were a skilled team and they played with a flourish that was not so evident on the streets of a beautiful city subdued and brooding, it seemed to me, under the weight and the harshness of life in a hard-line Communist state, but we always felt that we had a strong edge in the 4-2 win.
A few days later we beat East Germany 2-1 after recovering from one of those rare slips from grace by Banks, with the help of a spectacular goal by Roger Hunt, who was replacing a sick Jimmy Greaves, but if we expected even a hint of euphoria over this defeat of the always combative East Germans we were quickly disabused. Alf told a cluster of surprised reporters, ‘No, I’m certainly not entirely satisfied with our performance. There were some serious problems. Our passing was erratic and careless – and lacking in imagination. We can, and will, do much, much better.’
Our response a week later in Basle was an 8-1 defeat of Switzerland. I scored a hat-trick and drew level with the thirty-goal England mark of two of my heroes, Tom Finney and Nat Lofthouse, and even Alf was bound to say, ‘Yes, I was happier today, this was a better, more convincing performance.’
As we flew back to England to much improved critical notices, I got the chance to tell him that playing for England was becoming an experience of growing satisfaction. Of course, I didn’t make too much of it, I didn’t want to suggest that I was beginning to feel at home. That was the last thing he wanted. True professional contentment, everything he said cried out, could only come much further down an extremely hard road.
4. A Price for Glory
NO, ALF NEVER said the way ahead would be either easy or secure against the deepest of personal doubts and he could remind you of this on the most unlikely occasions. Sometimes, he did it with a quite shocking abruptness.
It was as though he had weighed up the potential for maximum effect, sniffed out the moment when maybe you had let down your guard, perhaps with a casual remark, and then he would pounce. At times he might have been a sergeant-major measuring out a parade ground with his yardstick.
That, maybe, was his most enduring weapon, this capacity to plunge you into an examination of yourself and the degree of your ambition and determination without a hint of warning. You could be in the most serene of moods, smelling the roses that seemed to be blooming wherever you turned, strolling through an airport lounge or sitting in a coffee shop chatting with team-mates, and then Alf might hit a note that went far beyond a breath of steadying caution.
He would bring you back to the starting point – and all those questions which he never stopped asking, in one way or another. How much did you want this? How much were you prepared to sacrifice, how many comforts of the body and the mind were you prepared to forgo?
Once he noticed that one of his new boys, Allan ‘Sniffer’ Clarke, the usually cold-eyed striker of Leeds United, seemed to be in a particularly cheerful frame of mind during a flight. ‘Enjoying yourself, Allan?’ Alf asked curtly. ‘Yes, thanks, boss,’ Clarke replied. ‘Well, you know, that’s not the purpose of your presence,’ said Alf.
It was the old, mostly unstated imperative. Had you thought it all through? Were you ready to go all the way on this long and difficult journey? A mistake in Bratislava could be redeemed in Leipzig but the detail of it would never obscure the broader vision.
Sometimes it could be a cutting remark from Alf that went straight into your bones. Or maybe it was a brief but hard analysis of his view of certain deficiencies in your game. In my case almost invariably it was to do with a tendency to put attacking possibilities too far ahead of defensive security. I knew he valued my ability to attack, to be creative, but I was also aware it would never be an open licence.
Occasionally it could be a withering look or a gesture of resignation as to the limits of your ability to respond to the challenges he was laying down before you, one by one.
Famously, he was particularly irritated when one of his players, assuming that he had become integral to the manager’s plans, spoke jauntily about seeing him on the team’s next assignment. Geoff Hurst and Gordon Banks and our Jack, in their brisk and open manner, could be a little prone to this.
‘If you are picked,’ he would growl and send home the guilty player with previously unsuspected demons suddenly released. It was the presumption of permanence surrounding a casual phrase like ‘see you next game’ that offended Alf to his core and when he rejected the first sign of it so forcibly, his hope, no doubt, was that he had put up still another barrier against the worst effects of complacency.
At the very least, he had let some of the air out of a balloon that perhaps someone had allowed to fly a little too high.
Looking back it is clear enough that he was in the grip of an obsession, one that he was intent on spreading into every corner of the squad.
The verdict of history had to be that it was a magnificent and ultimately rewarded preoccupation. He had created a single, self-justifying goal. He had waged war on all our illusions, on any shortfall in understanding of all that was involved when he picked you out for a role in his grand plan. Yes, it was a magnificent, sometimes brooding obsession. But in all honesty, all the years that have gone by have never softened the fact that it wasn’t always so comfortable to be around.
My most striking experience of this came in
Rio a year after that hugely encouraging victory in Bratislava. By this time my feeling of wellbeing within the England fold, I would soon be reflecting, had maybe struck Alf as being on the point of overflowing to a dangerous degree.
We were at the end of a summer tour which had been extremely demanding physically, following the routine hard labour of a domestic season played on pitches which sometimes seemed designed to drain the last of our energy, but still the mood was good despite the fact that we had lost 5-1 to Brazil in a ‘Little World Cup’ tournament.
The circumstances of the match had been extremely difficult and played at a level at which Alf was entitled to feel none of the gloom suffered by Walter Winterbottom in Belgrade eight year earlier, when England had suffered their previously heaviest defeat.
In Rio we were going down to only our second loss in the eleven games since the draw with Brazil at Wembley and we had gone on to the Maracanã pitch just thirty-six hours after boarding a plane in New York, where we had thrashed the United States 10-0. Before that we had beaten Uruguay at Wembley, with George Cohen winning his first cap in such a forceful fashion it could only increase the concern of the injured Armfield, the Republic of Ireland in Dublin and Portugal in Lisbon.
The sense of progress was so strongly underpinned that after the defeat by Brazil, and a particularly impressive performance by Pelé, Alf was completely unruffled.
He had noted that despite the weariness of everyone – and severe discomfort for Cohen, who had rejected the advice given to him by the team doctor Alan Bass that he should leave the game at half-time – we had done well for most of the ninety minutes. Indeed, Peter Thompson played so well, so bitingly, that no one that day could have imagined that in the last days before the World Cup finals he would be the victim of tactical opportunities offered to Alf by the late but compelling contenders Alan Ball and Martin Peters.
It was only in the last twenty minutes that the Brazilians fully exploited our exhaustion, scoring the four goals that gave the scoreline more than a hint of disaster. Alf told us, ‘Don’t worry about this result, it has come out of the worst possible circumstances for us – and I’ll tell you something else, Brazil have no chance of winning the World Cup when they come to England in two years.’
Alf’s lack of deep concern was somewhat justified when we played a much stronger Argentine team than the one we had defeated in Chile two years earlier and lost a close match by the only goal. We then went to Maracanã to see Brazil outplayed by Argentina.
With the usual vast crowd baying for the blood of a referee whose judgement had been excessively lenient towards Argentine tackling that seemed expressly intent on leaving Pelé a casualty, Alf got up from his seat and announced, ‘Gentlemen, I think we have seen enough. We can go now.’
On the way back to the hotel he insisted that Brazil, despite their triumphs in Sweden and Chile, would not represent a serious threat in England. Yes, they had in Pelé indisputably the world’s most accomplished player and perhaps they would also have Garrincha revived and ready to augment still more the legend of the Little Bird. But in his opinion they had not properly reseeded their team; too many of their players were living on what they had done yesterday rather than what they might do tomorrow.
‘Most certainly,’ said Alf, ‘this is a team going backwards, and if we had been in fresher condition against them I think we would know this more clearly.’
Against this background, and filled again with the pleasure of having enjoyed one of the world’s most exciting cities, I was perhaps understandably emboldened and relaxed enough to pass on some of my feelings when I sat next to Alf at the gathering in a Rio bar arranged by the press corps.
The evening was casual and pleasant, with such journalistic stars as Geoffrey Green and Frank McGhee in their most exuberant form, and there had been much chatter between the players and the reporters by the time Alf turned to me and said, ‘Well, Bobby, what did you think of the tour?’
I said that after six years and fifty-five caps with England I could say, despite the results – the best of which in South America was a draw with Portugal – it was the most enjoyable and satisfying I had experienced. I told him I loved the way we were developing as a team, how Bobby Moore was growing so easily into the captaincy, how George Cohen and Ray Wilson were striking up such great understanding as the new full-back pairing and how much security Gordon Banks had injected into our defence.
We had the superb goalscoring instinct of Jimmy Greaves, Johnny ‘Budgie’ Byrne had also displayed a wonderful touch recently with his hat-trick in Lisbon and George Eastham continued to make his claims with much guile and skill. As each day passed I felt more confident that we were on course for a good performance in the World Cup.
We were developing a system perfectly geared to our strengths and on the training field the work had never seemed less like a chore to be endured rather than benefited from.
And then, in what I meant to be an aside, I added, ‘But of course, Alf, it has been a very long, tough tour and I’ve really missed my wife and daughter. I will be very glad to see them.’
I was shocked by his response. A very hard expression came to his face as he said, ‘If I’d thought that was your attitude I wouldn’t have brought you on the trip.’
There, in a moment, was the driven Alf, the man whose inner feelings had for long been so elusive to all but his wife Vicky. Beside me, suddenly, was not the guardian of all my hopes for success with England but the man who could just as suddenly become a stranger, someone who kept a distance from all those who wanted to know more about his progress from humble beginnings in Dagenham, how it was that he had become so single-minded in his thinking and his attitudes towards both life and the game of football. So much of the former he had always kept hidden but never before had his ability to draw a line between them been expressed so starkly.
However long I worked with Alf, and saw him on the social occasions that accumulated when our direct involvement with England was over, there would always be some of him residing in another and quite inaccessible place.
At times he could be engaging and funny, sometimes away from the public gaze he would relax quite thoroughly, have a drink and show that he could celebrate his victories as heartily as anyone. In the right setting, and in the right mood, he was happy enough to do his version of the Lambeth Walk. But always there was this other Alf, watchful for a perceived slight, some evidence that he hadn’t carried with him all his listeners and, most crucially, all his players.
This, as I learned in Rio, could be troubling but then I also have to say that over the next two years it became progressively easier to understand the apparent contradiction between the devotion he had for his wife and their daughter, and how he so obviously cherished his time with them, and what had seemed to me the mad assertion he made on a night intended for some welcome relaxation.
Was he really saying that however dedicated a player, however intense his commitment to the future of the team, he was wrong to be distracted by even a passing thought of his personal life? Was he really relegating the importance of those feelings which could never in the end really be governed by the result of a single football match – or even a whole series of them?
Time would tell me that he really wasn’t doing that. Time – and his absolute refusal to milk any of the personal glory that came when his methods and, if you like, those obsessions brought ultimate success.
Then, he retreated to the rewards of his own private life and he seemed to be saying, ‘Look, all I asked you to do, all the sacrifices you had to make, were for your benefit – so that one day you could tell yourself, and your families, that you had done something that required tremendous concentration, a single, uncluttered vision of what was in front of you for a few years. And then it could be enjoyed by both you and your families for the rest of your lives. You would never have to look back with the terrible regret that you might have done more. And, if I have learned anything in life and football, there is n
one greater than that.’
That, though, I have to admit, was not quite the philosophical understanding I took back to the hotel room before packing for home – and those pleasures which my yearning for had been so brusquely and roughly chastised.
Yet again, though, the more I thought about it – and once again there was plenty of time for reflection on another of those marathon flights which always seemed, at one stage or another, to lead me to some new assessment of where I was and what the future might hold out for me – the more I concluded that with Alf you had to work out a very important equation.
Mine, maybe inevitably given all my long-held ambitions to succeed in the England shirt, was that it was important to take the very best of him and live, and work, with the rest as comfortably as it was possible.
Certainly there was no shortage of examples of the best of him on that homeward flight.
High among them was Alf’s wonderfully clear and practical preparation for that watershed victory over Czechoslovakia a year earlier. It still shone in my mind as a masterpiece of clarity, a simple but persuasive statement of how we should proceed, and how we did that was not only to beat one of the world’s most respected teams on their own soil but set a pattern for ourselves we now could see might well bring the highest rewards.
We had been given an example of hard but easily absorbed professionalism that had never been available to England in the days of Walter Winterbottom’s theory. This wasn’t because Walter was without knowledge, and certainly not because he lacked intelligence, but the fact that none of it was touched by the fears and the insecurities that sooner or later come to someone who plays the game for a living, who will always be in some corner of his mind only as strong as his last performance.
By comparison, Alf seemed to be saying, ‘Look, I’ve been here, I’ve been in your place – I know what you need to know about operating at this level. It is never going to be easy, there are always going to be questions in your mind. We have to answer as many as we can before it is too late.’
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