by Gordon Banks
Our World Cup preparations had gone extremely well, but the build-up to the tourna-ment in England began with sensation, then farce. The World Cup itself, the Jules Rimet Trophy, had been on display at, of all places, a Stanley Gibbons stamp exhibition at the Central Hall in Westminster. One morning security staff approached the glass case in which the trophy was displayed and were dumbstruck to find it had been stolen. Shock waves reverberated around not only England, but the world. The theft of the World Cup was a huge embarrassment to the Football Association and to the whole country. The police immediately launched a nationwide investigation. Ports and airports were closed for a time as the search for the World Cup began. The story was headline news every day and, despite apparently leaving no stone unturned, the police could uncover neither clue nor motive.
A week after the event a Londoner named Dave Corbett was walking his dog, Pickles, around Norwood in south London when the dog disappeared into the front garden of a house and began digging at the base of a hedge. Pickles uncovered a newspaper-wrapped parcel and when his owner went to investigate he was astounded to find the parcel contained the stolen World Cup.
I can only imagine the relief that swept through the corridors of the Football Association and, indeed, Scotland Yard. The recovery of the Jules Rimet Trophy made even bigger headlines and the cartoonists of the time had a field day – especially in the News of the World, the newspaper in which the stolen World Cup had been wrapped. Not surprisingly, one of their cartoons featured Pickles unearthing the package with a caption that read, ‘The dog that knows which newspaper sniffs out the top story.’
A man was subsequently arrested and charged with the theft of the gold statuette. Apparently he had demanded a ransom from the FA for its safe return. He was given a custodial sentence, though many people believed there were others involved who had not been brought to book. To this day the affair remains a mystery. It was not to be the last time that the Jules Rimet Trophy was to find its way into the hands of someone other than the captain of a victorious international team, but that’s a story for later.
The ’66 Tournament was the first World Cup fully to exploit its commercial potential. It was also the first to enjoy blanket live TV coverage worldwide, and this played a key role in the unprecedented commercial success of the competition. The tournament adopted a corporate logo: World Cup Willie, a cartoon lion kitted out in a Union Jack shirt and white shorts. Willie appeared on every conceivable product from badges, sports bags, T-shirts and pennants to cereal boxes, ashtrays, soft-drink cans and cuddly toys. He even released a singalong novelty record (helped by Lonnie Donegan), the opening lines being, ‘Dressed in red and white and blue, it’s World Cup Willie, we all know he’s true, World Cup Willie’. The ‘World Cup Willie’ record received a lot of radio airplay but was only a minor hit, although, curiously, it sold very well in Japan – for the simple reason, according to Jimmy Greaves, that the disc itself fitted Tokyo’s parking meters.
The choice of Lonnie Donegan to sing the first official World Cup song was, at the time, an odd one. Lonnie Donegan had been a big star in the late fifties, enjoying a string of top-ten hits in his skiffle style. Lonnie, however, hadn’t had a hit since 1962 and in 1966 his style of music seemed to belong to another era. In pop music the Beatles ruled supreme, and the charts were dominated by groups such as the Rolling Stones, Troggs, Yard-birds, Animals, Kinks, Small Faces and Hollies, from Britain alone. The only UK solo performers to chart regularly were Cilla Black, Tom Jones and Georgie Fame and I couldn’t imagine any of them singing ‘World Cup Willie’. So the official World Cup song, aimed at young teenagers, was sung by someone youngsters perceived to be of their parents’ generation. So while everyone could sing the song, it wasn’t hip to buy the record.
The marketing people learned an important lesson from the ‘Willie’ experience. In future, if they couldn’t get a current top pop star to record a football song, they went for the team, a ploy that was effected with some success until 1990, when New Order bit the bullet and recorded ‘World In Motion’ as England’s official World Cup song for Italia ’90.
In many ways the marketing of the 1966 World Cup set the scene for what was to come. The days of people counting out their coppers and asking for a pie would soon be committed to history as supporters dug deep to buy anything and everything from World Cup Willie duffel bags to jumpers and jerkins. The strangest souvenir I can recall was marketed by Daniel Schuster’s Football Souvenirs of Sutton, Surrey. Schuster’s produced a glass wellington boot with World Cup Willie on the front, marketed as ‘a real souvenir for your mantelshelf’. This five-inch-high glass wellie was supposedly a liqueur glass. It appeared that the imagination of those who made and sold World Cup souvenirs under licence knew no bounds.
The very phrase ‘for your mantelshelf’ is suggestive of another era, seemingly an anachronism in this period of ‘G’ plan furniture, central heating and the emergence of Terence Conran’s Habitat. While we rightly see the sixties as a decade of radical innovation, we tend to forget that, for every person swept along by the tidal wave of change in popular culture and new social opportunity, there were many who lived lives of modest expectation, whose lifestyle and homes had changed little since the fifties. In an era when domestic consumerism really took off, the material desires of many people were held in check by low wages and, as such, didn’t extend much beyond a real souvenir for their mantelshelf – still the centrepiece of their living rooms.
In 2002 some thirty-two nations contested the World Cup finals in South Korea and Japan. In 1966 there were just sixteen, divided into four groups of four. The group winners and runners-up proceeded to the quarter-finals, which were played, as now, on a straight knock-out basis, followed by the semi-finals, the play-off for third and fourth place and then the final itself. England kicked off the tournament on 11 July and in less than three weeks, on 30 July, it was all over. They didn’t drag it out in those days: thirty-two matches concentrated into twenty days around which television had to fit their schedules. Television was playing an increasingly important role in spreading the gospel of football, but football’s governing bodies were still very much in charge of the game and beholden to no one.
The tournament took place in four zones throughout the country and eight grounds were used. The south-east zone used Wembley and, for just one game, France versus Uruguay, White City. The White City stadium was a strange choice as a World Cup venue, given that London boasted White Hart Lane and Highbury, two of the best stadiums in England at the time, as well as the cavernous Stamford Bridge.
White City was known more as a greyhound stadium than a football ground, but its inclusion had much to do with its ability to offer covered accommoda-tion for 50,000 in a capacity of 60,000. Much of Highbury’s ample terracing was open to the elements, as were the paddocks on the lower tiers of the East and West stands at White Hart Lane. Today, alongside the A40 Westway flyover where the White City Stadium once stood, there are now houses and offices offering covered accommodation for all.
The Group Two matches took place at Hillsborough and Villa Park, Group Three at Goodison Park and Old Trafford, while Group Four was staged at Roker Park, Sunderland, and Ayresome Park, Middlesbrough.
Few grounds met FIFA’s minimum requirements for seating, so clubs such as Sunderland, Middlesbrough and Aston Villa had to install temporary grandstands, though grand is hardly the right word for what was actually put in. At Roker Park and Ayresome Park, for example, low rows of benches were placed on the terracing where the crush barriers that were already in place restricted the view of the pitch for many supporters.
England matches, prime games such as the semi-finals and those involving Brazil apart, attendances for the 1966 World Cup were decent rather than staggering. Many matches were played in front of crowds that were well below capacity, for two basic reasons. First, the price of admission was nearly three times that of Football League games. For example, the minimum admission price for children was
7s. 6d. (37½p), whereas they were used to paying only 2s. 6d. (12½p) to follow their clubs. This prevented many from attending games, or made them selective about which matches they did attend. The second reason was that many games took place at the same time. If an attractive game was on television, what was the point of going along to their local ground and pay to see a less interesting match? For example, only 24,000 turned up at Old Trafford to see Hungary against Bulgaria when England’s game against France was broadcast live on TV. Attendances at Old Trafford in particular suffered from this conflict of interest, the highest attendance of the three games staged there being 29,886 for the game between much-fancied Portugal and dark horses, Hungary.
Disappointing attendances occurred especially when England played. On the afternoon of our quarter-final against Argentina, West Germany played Uruguay at Hillsborough, Portugal, North Korea at Goodison Park and Russia took on Hungary at Roker Park. Whereas we played in front of a full house at Wembley, 40,000 turned up at Hillsborough and 42,000 at Goodison Park. Healthy crowds in themselves, but below capacity for both those two stadiums. The telling difference was at Roker Park where only 22,103 turned up to see Russia dispense with Hungary. The English public loved the World Cup but, for a good proportion, their love of cosmopolitan football did not outweigh their love of watching England.
The draw of the host nation live on television, and its adverse effect on the attendances at other games, was a lesson FIFA learned during 1966. In subsequent World Cups, not only did matches involving the host nation not clash with other group games, all group matches were to be given staggered kick-off times. The structure of the World Cup finals would never be the same after ’66 when the power of television was seen for the first time.
England not only had home advantage, but had been drawn in Group One and all our games were to be played at Wembley. Alf had originally picked a squad of forty players that, three weeks prior to the tournament, had been pared down to twenty-two. The eighteen players unlucky to miss out on the finals were goalkeepers Tony Waiters (Blackpool) and Gordon West (Everton); full backs Chris Lawler (Liverpool), Paul Reaney (Leeds United) and Keith Newton (Blackburn Rovers); half backs Marvin Hinton and John Hollins (both Chelsea) and Gordon Milne (Liverpool); forwards Joe Baker (Nottingham Forest), Barry Bridges (Chelsea), Gordon Harris (Burnley), John Kaye (West Bromwich Albion), Peter Osgood (Chelsea), Fred Pickering (Everton), Peter Thompson and Tommy Smith (Liverpool – yes, Tommy was a forward in those days), Derek Temple (Everton) and Terry Venables (Chelsea).
The final twenty-two comprised myself and two other goalkeepers, Ron Springett (Sheffield Wednesday) and Peter Bonetti (Chelsea); full backs Jimmy Armfield (Blackpool), Gerry Byrne (Liverpool), George Cohen (Fulham) and Ray Wilson (Everton); half backs Jack Charlton and Norman Hunter (both Leeds United), Ron Flowers (Wolverhampton Wanderers), Bobby Moore and Martin Peters (both West Ham United) and Nobby Stiles (Manchester United); forwards Alan Ball (Blackpool), Ian Callaghan (Liverpool), Bobby Charlton and John Connelly (both Manchester United), George Eastham (Arsenal), Jimmy Greaves (Tottenham Hotspur), Roger Hunt (Liverpool), Geoff Hurst (West Ham United) and Terry Paine (Southampton).
Alf’s backroom staff was tiny compared with that in attendance for England games today. Apart from Alf himself, it comprised trainer Harold Shepherdson (Middlesbrough), the assistant trainer, Les Cocker (Leeds United), who also acted as our physio, and Wilf McGuinness (Manchester United), who helped Alf with the coaching. That was it, four people in total, though we did enjoy the services of a doctor for the duration of the tournament. (Don’t knock the doc – he managed to get himself on the official photograph of the final squad, and not on the end of the back row either. Dr Bass was pictured wearing an England tracksuit and seated left of centre, between Alf and Jimmy Armfield, with Alan Ball, Ian Callaghan and Nobby Stiles sitting on the ground at his feet!)
I felt Alf’s final twenty-two was as strong as it could be. With all due respect to those players who had just missed out, I don’t think there was anyone missing from the squad that could have added greatly to it. Alf got it right and not for the first or last time.
Alf was confident we could go on and win the World Cup, though doubts were expressed not only by certain members of the press, but a number of people in football. The Scotland manager of the time, John Prentice was on record as saying, ‘England won’t win’. The Leeds manager, Don Revie, sat on the fence: ‘England can take the trophy, but I would not say they will win it.’ Matt Busby of Manchester United was similarly non-committal: ‘Certainly Alf Ramsey knows what he is aiming for and England could do well… but unless England find that attacking flair, I am afraid they will have to struggle to get through to the final and win.’
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 througho
ut 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!