The Boy of 2019 learns from the Boys of ’66

Declan Lynch’s Diary

IT is strange to think that there was once a time when men such as Gordon Banks and the other Boys of ’66, were the most famous Englishmen on earth. And that they were loved, too, by the multitudes.

In the likes of Banks and Bobby Moore and Bobby Charlton, not only was there this great talent, there was also an understated style, and there was no fuss about it. As the superior artists tend to do, they made excellence seem normal.

You think of the most famous Englishmen of the present, and a series of grotesques comes into view — Farage, Rees-Mogg, Boris. Men whose abilities are roughly the opposite of those possessed by the World Cup winners — in that by the time they are finished, England will be utterly defeated.

Though unlike the coolheaded Banks or Moore or Charlton, a “Boris” will carry on in the most vainglorious style. He and his kind will always be triumphant, even if it means that everyone else has to lose. And such men were around, too, in 1966 — but luckily for England at that time, they were not front and centre.

Yet there was an illusion too, in this idea that the Boys of ’66 and others of their ilk were now a dominant force in the land which made them. An illusion that was brought clearly into view on an afternoon in Richmond Park in Inchicore in 1977, when Gordon Banks came over to play for St Patrick’s Athletic against Shamrock Rovers.

There were many fond reminiscences last week about that game, about the man who used to rescue the ball when it landed in the adjacent River Camac, about the fact that this was the Rovers with John Giles as player-manager, about Banks making a tremendous late save from a shot by one Eamon Dunphy (a crucial moment in a 1-0 win for St Pat’s).

Yes, it was another crazy day in the story of Irish football — but perhaps the craziest aspect of it all was not remembered as it should have been. And it wasn’t even the fact that Banks was still playing professional football having lost the sight in one eye in a car crash. It was the whole absurd notion that the most famous goalkeeper in the world, towards the end of a storied career, would consider it worth his while to be playing for St Pat’s for 500 quid.

Barry Bridges, himself a former star of the English First Division, was the manager of St Pat’s, who described running into Banks at an airport... and one thing led to another, with Banks agreeing to play if the money was right — £500 apparently meeting that criterion.

And £500 was, we are told, “bloody good money at the time” — yet for its modern equivalent, you’d hardly get two minutes of a “keynote” by “Boris”.

Banks was nearly 40, still playing in America having stepped down from top-class football at 34 after the car crash — and like many other great players of that time, he was starting to realise that the £100 a week he’d been getting for most of his career would not be enough to last him for the rest of his life. Indeed, it would seem that it hadn’t even lasted him until he was 34.

Declan Rice may know little of that ancient world, but at some point in what may turn out to be a glorious career (perhaps if England are about to play in a World Cup Final) he may learn that the Boys of ’66 received a bonus of £1,000 each, on which they paid tax — as distinct from the Germans they defeated, who got 10 grand each.

And according to the legend, the men who ran English football at the time, understanding that a lot of money had been made out of the tournament, had the option of either paying tax on it, or setting up a trust fund for the players.

Being the sort of chaps who ran the show back then (not unlike the sort who are evidently running Britain today), which of these two options do you think they chose?

Do you think it was (a) the one which would ensure that people of true ability were given something vaguely resembling a just reward? Or (b) the one that was lazy and stupid and careless, and basically shafted those good people?

While you’re mulling over that one — and bearing in mind that the sort of chaps running football in Ireland at that time would have been similarly inclined, just slightly worse — consider again this notion that Declan Rice was expected to make a decision which would be great for the FAI, but not necessarily that great for Declan Rice.

I’m sorry, but that sort of proposition ceased to be sensible in football on the day that the great Gordon Banks fetched up at Richmond Park with one eye and the need for a swift 500 quid. Or the day that Nobby Stiles sold his medals.

That’s history, baby.

‘Rice had to make a decision that would be great for the FAI, but maybe not great for Declan Rice...’