Big match hat-trick in his own words...
THE EQUALISER 18 MINS FOR my first goal Bobby Charlton was on the ball and Franz Beckenbauer fouled him. So Bobby was then looking to take it quickly. At West Ham we were taught to take quick free-kicks. If somebody’s on, catch them off their guard. So that was a goal made at West Ham’s Chadwell Heath training ground under Ron Greenwood.
It was a near-post free-kick, pulling away from the far post. Bobby’s only a yard away from the ball so he can take it quickly. He knocks it into the space and I’m there to head it in (above).
Horst-Dieter Hottges was marking me and my thinking before the game was he’s a right-back playing at centre-half and I’m going to take him into positions he’s not familiar with. Fast forward to the goal, he’s probably 10 yards away from me. These days, when you see how the players grab shirts, that wouldn’t be possible. It’s very hard to stop those runs, unless you’re hanging on to people’s shirts. 50 YEARS ON . . . IN OR OUT? 101 MINS I WENT to Germany a few years ago where the goalkeeper Hans Tilkowski was being honoured and we both signed a copy of a photo. I wrote: ‘The ball was in!’ and signed it. And he wrote: ‘The ball was out!’
Nobby Stiles played a very good ball to Alan Ball. Because Ball and I had played together in the Under-23s, he knew that I liked the ball to the near post so he didn’t look up. He knew that if he just got it in, I would be there.
I made the run a little early so it came slightly behind me. I had to take two touches to get it in line and then hit the ball. I probably had the worst view in the stadium to see whether it had gone in. I’d fallen over and was looking over my shoulder. The ball actually bounced down right behind Tilkowski (above).
I turned away to celebrate but it wasn’t kidology. It was 2-2, in the World Cup final. You want to believe, it’s more than your life’s worth, that ball is over the line. For me the clinching piece of evidence is Roger Hunt, wheeling away, instinctively, to celebrate. If you’re not sure, you try to put it in and Roger didn’t. It might have saved all this debate if he had, but I’m glad he didn’t.
3 THEY THINK IT’S ALL OVER 120 MINS IF THE best broadcasters in the world had as much time as they liked, they could never come up with a better line of commentary than Kenneth Wolstenholme’s. When I lived in Weybridge there was a Rover dealership and the headline in the paper was: ‘They think it’s all Rover.’ It’s a part of our language now.
Jack Charlton was shouting at Bobby Moore: ‘Get it in row Z.’ But Bobby wasn’t like that, even in the last minute. His delivery was inch-perfect for me on the halfway line.
I looked at the ref and he had the whistle in his mouth, so I knew the game was almost finished and I’m thinking: ‘I’m going to hit the ball with every ounce of strength I’ve got left and if it goes beyond the bar, beyond the sand, into the crowd, by the time the ballboy gets it back to Tilkowski, surely the game’s got to be over?’
The strange thing is, it had rained before the game and the pitch was cut up in a few areas and the ball was almost on a divot. It was like a tee shot in golf. And it caught my bony instep, so that’s where the power came from (below). My dad had taught me that, to kick with my left foot, in the back garden in Chelmsford. Roll forward 20 years, and I was using that skill to score in the World Cup final.