SCOTS of a certain age will always remember where they were when England won the World Cup. Most of them were not in front of the telly. There are a million Caledonian reminiscences from that sunny day in 1966 from Denis Law playing golf to other less celebrated Scots employing a number of other distractions, from sticking hot needles in their eyes to inviting their spouses to have that profound and meaningful discussion about commitment.
Me? I was a Scout. With the Third Cavalry, since you ask, and was on manoeuvres after renegades broke from the Possil reservation. No, I was a Scout and I was walking with a troop of comrades whose decrepitude was reminiscent of the final scenes of the Treasure of Sierra Madre.
I had, however, no animus towards England winning the World Cup. And despite the best efforts of English sporting commentators, who manage to insert 1966 into a discussion of prospects for the 400m medley in the PanAmerican Swimming Games, I still bear the Boys of 1966 no ill will. Indeed, I retain a respect and affection for all of them with an added reverence for one.
Here is one of my personal sporting truths: it is impossible to scorn any side that contained Bobby Charlton. He was one of the greatest players. Ever. He is also one of the most intriguing, poignant figures to grace the game. My memories of him are two-fold.
First, he was a player who seemed like the best of racehorses: he was mostly captured in photograph with his feet off the ground. Most often, this was recorded as sort of scissor motion of the legs, with a crude combover failing to detract from the grace of the subject. Second, he is the only man whose hand I have shaken in the shadow of his own statue after an audience with him at Old Trafford.
As the English game becomes heavily inflated with exorbitant sums and its fans persevere in crude belligerence, it is sobering to reflect on Charlton, a player of power and poise and a personality who knows that much of the significance of life exists outside the confines of the playing fields.
There is much nonsense vented about 50 years of hurt in reference to the drought in major tournaments that has afflicted England since 1966. But Charlton’s pain is in the very marrow, in the dark recesses of the mind, in most of his steps and many of his thoughts.
How is this for a sentence from a man who has won all the major prizes, been knighted and garners a universal respect? “In my 79th year, I know more surely than ever before the extent of the privilege that accumulated on the long and so often blessed journey away from that 20-year-old’s pain, confusion and fear.”
The sentence refers, of course, to the tragedy of Munich when Charlton walked away from a plane crash with a gash to his forehead but with a trauma that would accompany him in solitude and in the frenzy of extraordinary triumph.
It comes from 1966: My World Cup story. It is a title that is breezily evocative of those fitba’ books of yesteryear when everything was a jolly jape and criticism was as muted as a flea’s trombone. However, this testimony is breathtakingly lucid, insistently informative and deeply affecting. It gathers an inexorable significance as personalities are revealed and moments of frailty, not least his own, are exposed.
It owes much, of course, to the presence of that most benign of ghosts, the wonderful James Lawton, who imbues his books not only with an authentic, clear-eyed love of the game but with his gift, spectacular in this particular instance, to bring historic moments into a focus so immediate that one is almost forced to blink.
It is a book about an historic triumph, under a singular manager, with a cast of well-drawn characters. There is anecdote, revelation and explanation. But at the centre of it all stands Charlton. The flying, scissoring motion is of the past and he adopts in print that hands on hips pose that everyone who saw him will always remember.
This is not the physical aspect of laziness or disinterest. It is, instead, the portrait of the great man in fleeting repose. There is an undoubted impression of reflection and that is accompanied not only by the warm remembrance of a Wembley past but with the cold reality of a snowy Munich when 20 players and journalists died. These included Duncan Edwards, more a force than a football player.
Charlton was in awe of the giant from Dudley, loving him as a friend and revering him as a team-mate. Edwards may have been the best of them all. This is Charlton’s verdict. Edwards would have been 29 in July, 1966, and would surely have been the first Englishman to lift the World Cup.
Instead, the substantial, physical figure was but a memory. But it was a strong one. Edwards and Munich remain with Sir Bobby to this day. It is a mercy for the lover of football that at least one great Englishman was spared. But it is a mercy that one suspects Sir Bobby has on darker days felt the need to question.
1966: My World Cup Story by Bobby Charlton is published by Yellow Jersey at £20
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