Continued from My World Cups: Introduction
I've spent my life regretting that I missed the iconic one and only time England won the world cup - 4-2 in 1966 at London's Wembley stadium against West Germany. I was too young (just turned 2 at the time of the 1966 final) and we lived in Africa with no TV. What a shame I'd been born in time but missed it.
My parents moved to Kenya in the early 1960s as teachers. They were employed by both the British and Kenyan governments. Kenya became independent of Britain in 1963, a year before I was born. The new post-empire President of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, visited the school where my dad taught and my dad met him and shook his hand. We lived in Embu, then a small village but now a major town, and when my mum went into labour with me my parents had to drive 80 miles over makeshift roads to Nairobi for my birth at the Kenyatta National hospital (until 1963 named after King George). Fathers didn't attend their childrens' births in those days so my dad made himself scarce and my mum says he came back after my (apparently much delayed) entry to the world, more excited that he had seen two lions copulating than about the birth of his first born son. Having welcomed me to the world he then returned home leaving us in the hospital, and held a cheese and wine party with friends to celebrate my birth. My dad was always a good father, I just think this was how things worked in those days.
After two and half years my parents contracts ended and they returned to the UK. They had three months leave and based themselves with my dad's parents in Wolverhampton but travelled around. My mum had gone to a religious boarding school in South Wales as a child, her parents were missionaries in South America, but she spent her summers in Scotland with her Auntie Edie and Uncle George. They holidayed on the Isle of Arran off the west coast of Scotland and my mum was keen later as an adult that her, my dad and I should visit Arran and we spent a month there while they were on leave post-Kenya. We also spent a month in the coastal village of Crail on the Eastern coast of Scotland. We visited my mum's parents, her dad Scottish, her mum Irish, who then lived in Glasgow.
After my lifetime regretting I'd never seen the '66 England world cup victory my dad recently dropped a bombshell. I can't believe he never told me this before. Lots of people bought TVs in 1966 in part to watch the world cup which was being held in England. One of them was my grandparents' neighbour in Glasgow. While we were there he invited us round to watch the world cup final and my parents, me, and my grandfather took up his offer. My grandparents were quite puritanical missionaries and I was surprised to learn they allowed this as they were generally against fun or anything with colour. But they did like watching the wrestling on a Saturday afternoon when they were retired, so maybe sport was allowed to be an exception. After a life thinking I never saw this match I found out that actually I did. We were in the UK with TV access and I was there when Geoff Hurst swept in England's fourth and winning goal from distance and when Kenneth Wolstenhome uttered the historic words about the crowd prematurely invading the pitch - 'some people are on the pitch, they think it's all over' - and then as Hurst scored the goal - 'it is now'. It was two days after my second birthday. I doubt I took much of it in. But it doesn't matter. The UK's most watched TV event ever, the only time England have won the world cup, and I was in front of the TV watching it in Glasgow.
In the match West Germany scored in the 11th minute when an England defender headed the ball straight to a German player in the box. The commentators politely don't call out the defender who was to blame. How different to now. Soon after, England equalised through Geoff Hurst after a perfect free kick by the artist Bobby Moore. After 78 minutes similarly a German defender kicked the ball to Martin Peters in the box who scored. 2-1 ahead, England were close to winning when Germany equalised in the last minute. It's argued that there was a German handball in the cross for the goal, the English goalie Banks makes vigorous appeals, but I can't see that from the grainy black and white film and it's doubted. In extra time England took the lead with a shot from Hurst that looks like it didn't cross the line and the German players at the time certainly look absolutely adamant it didn't. England supporters say it doesn't matter whether it crossed the line or not because England then scored a 4th goal to seal the match. But the 4th goal (by Hurst completing his hat trick) was facilitated by West Germany pushing forward to equalise and leaving acres of space at the back, which they would not have done so fully if the match had been drawing. So the dodgy third English goal does seem to have been decisive and I think West Germany were right to have felt aggrieved. Germany, in one form or another, did go on to win the competition 3 times after that, and have been runners up 3 times since. England have never won it again. In fact, England have never made the final again.
It was the 1972-3 season 6 years later, I was 8, when I started to watch the local football team and so become aware of football. Many of the 1966 players then were retired or at the end of their careers. But Alan Ball, 21 at the time of the final, was playing for Arsenal and I remember watching him in the 1970s. Bobby Moore and goalie Gordon Banks were icons, both still playing in the 1970s but in the later years at their clubs. Banks is said to have made one of the greatest saves ever seen, from Pele, and continued to play even after losing the sight in one eye after a car crash. Bobby Moore was playing for West Ham and then Fulham in the 1970s, elegant and stylish and a superb defender. He sadly died aged only 51 of cancer, the first of the winning side to pass away. These were the three England players that I was most aware of in the 1970s but of course the others I grew to know of retrospectively. For Germany, Franz Beckenbauer, was another elegant and composed central defender cum sweeper cum midfielder who played in 1966; he could come out of defence and pass, which was not that common for a defender in those days. 'The Kaiser' as he was called, was part of my consciousness in the 1970s, another iconic figure. I first knew Jimmy Greaves as a comical TV presenter on 'Saint and Greavsie' in later years. I knew he was an ex-player but didn't know until later that he had been a late omission from the later 1966 finals matches due to injury earlier in the tournament - hat trick hero Hurst being his replacement. Incidentally, substitutes were not allowed at that time. Only Geoff Hurst of the '66 winning team is still alive.
After the 1966 leave back in Britain my parents got the call to teach again in Africa, Zambia this time. We went back and my brother was born there in 1967. I recall looking through a small glass window in a hospital door at him in his first days and my mum. I have memories of Zambia, I don't know whether created in my mind from what I've been told or real ones. We lived in a small crescent in the middle of nowhere with other Europeans and Americans, in white houses with red tiled floors. We had a nanny called Grace from the local African village who was distraught when we finished our stint to come back to the UK about 1970. There are photos of her crying as we climb the steps to our propeller plane which had to make refuelling stops as we winded our way home. We had a smiley cook called Charles, who my parents say they didn't really need but employed to give something back to the local community. Charles liked a drink and I'm not sure how much of a help he really was. My dad fought a cobra in our woodpile using a panga (like a sabre), getting poisonous venom spat on to his glasses while we watched from inside our locked house. My memory is that a man in a Land Rover turned up with a gun and brought closure to the situation, but my dad says that was another incident. We played in the hot sand with other local kids, I remember the sand too hot on my bare feet, and travelled a lot through other neighbouring countries. I caught malaria at the Victoria Falls on the way to Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) and was hospitalised, and then again in Mongu, Western Province, where we lived. My memory of the Victoria Falls is being at the top yet being in macs with spray pouring back on us. Our car caught on fire at the edge of a cliff precipice and passers by had to help us put the flames out, pouring sand from the road on to the engine. I was the first to see my brother walk, which he did suddenly and in a straight line across the room until his face met a wall. I called my parents and they came and saw the final meeting with the wall. I think it took a while until he mastered turning corners while walking.
Then it was time to come home and my dad went to the UK for 6 months to find a job. While he did this, my mum, my brother and I went to live with my mum's sister in Rio de Janeiro. I got stung on the elbow by a bee on the sugar loaf mountain, Christ with his outstretched arms watching us from afar. It was in a restaurant and the waiter came running with brandy to apply to the affected area. My brother got his head stuck in Aunty Beth's railings. Beth had gone to Brazil aged about 20 to be a nurse, married a local man and stayed. I remember battered cars driving at speed too close to each other in Rio, the the drivers blaring their horns and shouting at each other through their windows, shaking their fists. Kids played football barefoot on the Copacabana beach. They really did. I kept in touch with Beth by phone in her last years when she was in a home in São Paolo.
When we came back to the UK to stay for a while with another aunt until we got sorted out it was raining and cold. Coming from the airport, I looked out the car window, rain running down it, and wondered what on earth we were doing in this godforsaken, cold, wet country. As far as football went, the country I had just left produced the beautiful team I loved the most in the 1970s, Brazil. In the 1970 world cup they were dazzling, one of the greatest teams ever. One match in particular stood out for me and I later had a DVD of it which I watched over and over. But my dad had got a teaching job. Our next move was from Rio to Reading. And it was in Reading that I started to go to football matches.
The England victory was in the 1960s. Harold Wilson was the Labour prime minister. 'We only win the world cup under a Labour government' Wilson said. There was the rise of pop and rock music, the counterculture, and radical politics. London and Britain were a central part of it all - from The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and beyond. In the highlights of the 1966 final you can see the queen in the crowd (after England's second goal) wearing some pretty cool sunglasses. All this passed my family by more or less. I was too young to know what was going on. We lived in Africa and my parents had jobs and a family and were distant from it all in the UK. They never really got into pop music. But in the 1970s we were back in the UK. I was 6 in 1970 and 16 at the end of the decade. Pop culture, pop music, and politics became central to my life that decade. So did football. There were 3 world cups in the 1970s. The 1970 world cup in Mexico was too early for me but retrospectively I became fascinated by some of the key moments, including one or two goals perhaps some of the best and most beautiful ever scored. In 1974 the World Cup was in West Germany; aged 10 and into football I must have been aware of it. In 1978 I was 14. The World Cup in Argentina was the first I was really engaged with. Argentina, under military dictatorship, were the hosts. And the Argentina team captivated me, one of the players in particular.
Next post will be on the world cups in the 1970s.