Last weekend, I found myself trying to find something to fill the gap that the end of the football season has left in my life. Flicking between the hundreds of channels I accidentally struck gold.
‘1966 FIFA World Cup Final – IN COLOUR’.
It looked amazing in its restored colour saturated finest…but it sounded different to the way I remember that game.
The commentary for the film was actually taken from the ITV coverage of the match and actually featured 2 Welshmen, Hugh Johns and former Welsh player and manager Dave Bowen.
Bowen had plenty of personal World Cup experience having captained Wales in the 1958 tournament in Sweden.
On a programme that so celebrated being ‘English’ it seemed slightly strange to hear such familiar Welsh accents. At the time I had no real knowledge of the rivalry between us and our Saxon neighbours. In fact I was slightly shocked when on the morning of the match, following a kick about with some friends, one of them said he wanted West Germany to win. Really??
If I’m honest I probably didn’t really know Wales had its own team.
At that time I had no knowledge of how if it hadn’t been for a 17 year old Brazilian named Pele we would have won the ’58 World Cup. All of this, along with all of the other things I had to learn about being a football fan, in that, it’s all about the teams we support and the teams we definitely don’t support were still a few years away.
The reason I so enjoyed watching the whole game again in colour was that it was like being in a time machine.
One of my earliest memories is the whole family gathered around a small black and white television to watch that 1966 World Cup. I must have watched some of the earlier games in the tournament, but the final is the only one that sticks in my mind.
In 1966 I thought everyone in the England team was brilliant. It also reminded me of how flexible a 6 year brain can be. Strangely I always thought that West Ham inside forward Martin Peters was also a member of the Beatles. In truth it took a few years to realise he wasn’t.
Sitting on my own 60 years later I found myself being a little more critical than I had been as a child. Bobby Charlton seemed to give the ball away a little more than I remember, and maybe centre forward Roger Hunt should have taken one of his chances.
But some players still stood out. Bobby Moore, the golden boy of 1966, was magnificent. He would take the ball down on his chest and always find the perfect pass, as he did in fact for the final Geoff Hurst goal. The other player that caught my eye was Alan Ball. He was only 21 years old and tiny, but he was giant on the pitch that day.
So, the only disappointment for me about the film was in fact that ITV commentary for the final Geoff Hurst goal.
In those days we always used to watch football on the BBC. ITV did show the final, but it seemed a bit of an afterthought squeezed in between the horse racing and wrestling on ‘World of Sport’.
Commentary is so important and is a real fine art. You have to concentrate on the action whilst saying what you see without saying too much. There is no script writer and no second chance. As Geoff Hurst approached the West German goal Hugh Johns said,
‘He might make it 3…he has, he has.’
Which is absolutely fine isn’t it?
The BBC commentator on that day was the immaculate Kenneth Wolstenholme. Years later I had the privilege to interview him. We did talk about the 1966 Final and without any real prompting I remember asking him at the end of the interview if he would say ‘it’ once more, just for me. Without a moment’s hesitation he said those immortal words,
‘There are people on the pitch, they think it’s all over…It is now’.
The same game, the same goal but words that will never be forgotten.
By 1970 I was football crazy. The finals were in Mexico and I had the Panini World Cup Sticker book with all of my pocket money going on packets of stickers which if my memory serves me correctly also came with a stick of cheap tasting chewing gum.
The time difference meant that breakfast was spent eating my cornflakes whilst watching David Coleman give all the latest updates before heading to school to trade stickers.
In 1970 the team I wanted to win was Brazil. By then I had read about Pele and Wales and 1958. They looked brilliant in their gold shirts, blue shorts and white socks. They all had cool names and of course they played champagne football in a way I dreamed about but had never seen.
The final against Italy was on a Sunday at 7pm. Now coming from a Gospel Hall background any television on a Sunday was a difficult negotiation to be had with my parents.
On Sunday 7th July 1974 we agreed a compromise. My brother Gareth and I could watch the final, but we had to go to the hour long gospel service at 6pm first.
By 7.10pm the game had started, and the preacher was still preaching. At last he finished, and with the final prayer still echoing in the church we bolted for the door and ran all the way home just in time to catch Pele score the first goal from a header.
In 1974 I had a new Panini Sticker book and a love for the ‘New Brazil’, Holland. A few years earlier I had been on a school trip to Holland and bought the Dutch edition of Gola magazine for my brother as a present. As I paid for the magazine the man behind the counter asked who I thought was the best player in the world. It was obvious…George Best. ‘No’ came his reply, ‘Johann Cruyff’.
He was soon to be proved to be right. By 1974 George Best had left Manchester United and Cruyff had indeed taken Best’s place in my pantheon of great players. Holland were everything that Brazil had been 4 years earlier.
It seemed to me that the final was a foregone conclusion. West Germany were strong and regimented, but Holland were artistic and wonderfully unpredictable. An early penalty put the Dutch in front only for the Germans to equalise through their own penalty.
When I say I was a Cruyff fan I really was. By this stage in my footballing career I was captain of the Swansea Schoolboys and I needed all of the best kit…light weight shin pads and the best pair of boots I ever owned, Johann Cruyff Puma King boots with a special yellow/gold stripe. As the Germans took control of the second half I quietly took myself into the kitchen to where my boots were stored. I put them on and wore them for the rest of the game.
Looking back it makes me realise I’ve always been a strange kid, with a head full of dreams and a passion for the beautiful game. All these years later nothing’s changed!