GIVE GREAVSIE A GONG
SIX-PAGE SPECIAL
THErE is probably only one person who would not join this newspaper’s campaign to get Jimmy Greaves on the honours list. And that’s Jimmy Greaves.
There has never been a man with less regard for recognition and fame, so casual about his status and achievements. He is quite probably the greatest goalscorer this country has seen, but you’d never know it.
There was only one clue in his house. A photograph of two young men in a Swiss town square. They were dressed in every-day clothes, not sportswear and nothing formal and were smiling at the camera. Look closely and the image was of a teenage Greaves with his equally youthful friend, Bobby Moore, on England age group duty. That picture seemed to mean more to him than any cap or medal — and maybe royal recognition, too.
He was always aware of his standing, of course, but approached it with selfdeprecation and a nonchalance that echoed the best of his talents as a centre forward.
In the days when he was still well enough to perform one-man shows of several hours’ length, just before his 70th birthday and a celebratory gig at the O2 Arena, we talked about his enduring celebrity.
‘People are always coming up to me, “Jim, can you remember that goal against West Brom in 1968?” and I say “No”. But that’s all right because they only want to tell you about what happened to them anyway. “Well you had the ball on the halfway line and I remember that because I was with Charlie and we’d just got two pies” and it turns out the real story is about Charlie dropping his pie and what you did wasn’t all prefer that that, important really.’ anyway. And I
the That’s man. Jim, And right it is the there. man That’s even more deserves than to be the honoured player because who anyone can be good at football — although obviously not as good as Jimmy was — but it takes a truly special individual to make a success of that second act.
To build a career from the wreckage of alcoholism, as Jimmy did in television. He has always maintained this was the greater achievement, because football came so naturally to him.
And while he may have looked a natural in front of the camera, too, that ease was harder won, given his past.
I met Jimmy as ghost writer for his newspaper column. We spoke every week for hours, probably only 10 minutes of which would make it into print. He was a brilliant partner, generous, witty, strident when he needed to be, and insightful on the most difficult subjects. He wrote magnificently like George on tragic Best, contemporaries Brian Clough and Paul Gascoigne, and was counter-intuitively sympathetic on the day Diego Maradona was banned from the 1994 World Cup for failing a drugs test.
Amid screaming headlines branding Maradona a cheat and a disgrace, Jimmy, at his measured best, instead focused on the way he was brutally targeted at the peak of his career, calling out the assaults which set him on a path to addictive pain-killing drugs and other numbing concoctions.
It would have been easier to gleefully drag up the Hand of God travesty, to see Maradona’s comedown as England’s revenge, but Jimmy was smarter and kinder than that.
He took the more challenging and braver road, one that 26 years later is considered nearest the truth. He should be as proud of that piece as any hat-trick.
I remember staying at his place in La Manga and being amazed to find wine in the fridge. Jimmy
stopped drinking on February 28, 1978 and has not lapsed since. Recovery was part of who he was but it didn’t cast a shadow in company.
Jimmy spent years on the afterdinner circuit without making a soul feel uncomfortable drinking in his company. He was entirely without self-pity. When he was getting sober he attended meetings in marylebone, central London. He went there, he said, because there were homeless people, down and outs, who were somehow holding their lives together without alcohol.
Jimmy would return to his nice house in Essex with renewed determination. ‘i thought, “if they can do it, so can i”,’ he said. and he has taken that resolve into every day since.
We could trudge, eyebrows raised, through a list of figures who have been honoured — Jimmy Savile remains a knight and a papal knight — but Jim wouldn’t like that. He was never as outraged at being overlooked, or as committed to righting that wrong, as those who championed his cause.
He will probably be as amused or bemused by this campaign as he was all the others. There was a long-running crusade to get him and all surviving members of England’s 1966 World Cup squad a winner’s medal each. When this was finally successful, Jimmy said his main motivation for going to the ceremony at Wembley was to catch up with old friends.
They watched perplexed as England dismantled andorra, with his former team- mates speculating how many goals Jimmy would have scored against such rotten opposition.
‘andorra must be the worst team i’ve ever seen,’ Jimmy told the interviewer after the presentation. ‘Why didn’t we get to play teams like that?’
The camera hastily cut away. Even with a World Cup winner’s medal around his neck there was no place for Jimmy’s honesty in our modern football world.
Tottenham inducted Jimmy into their Hall of Fame — another glorified reunion — but couldn’t persuade him to be guest of honour when playing another former club, Chelsea, in an Fa Cup semifinal at Wembley.
it clashed with a Six Nations match between England and ireland and the traffic would be a nightmare and everyone would want to celebrate his presence and it really wasn’t his cup of tea.
maybe, approaching his 80th birthday, he feels differently now. Recognition would mean a lot to his family and friends, certainly, and to the wider community.
Those who saw him play have never forgotten it, those who didn’t have probably heard the tales.
Here’s Harry Redknapp on him: ‘We were at the training ground with Queens Park Rangers and Sky Sports News was showing a goal by Lionel messi. He got into the penalty box, took his time, waiting for all the defenders and goalkeeper to commit and then just rolled it into the corner. The players were in rapture.
‘i told them Jimmy Greaves scored one like that every weekend and frequently more.
‘When he got the ball in the penalty box, the world stopped, it was like somebody had hit pause on the television screen. The action around him carried on, but Jim appeared to be operating in another dimension — slower, calmer, making his mind up oblivious to the surrounding frenzy.
The centre half would come flying across, Jim would make out as if to shoot. The centre half would throw himself into a desperate slide to try to block, Jim would stop the ball. The centre half would go whizzing past, Jim would switch it to his other foot.
‘The goalkeeper would anticipate the direction and dive fulllength, Jim would place the ball, gently, into the other corner. as it reached the back of the net, there would be bodies lying everywhere. it was amazing.’
Even before the stroke that robbed him of so much, Jimmy would say he couldn’t remember that stuff. He knows he was good at football because it’s what everyone tells him, but the memories of his playing days have long been a blur.
Perhaps that is why he is even prouder of what happened next. The second half, the sequel, act Two. it isn’t just Jimmy Greaves, iconic footballer from a bygone age, who deserves recognition, but the man revealed in later life.
He is equally worthy of an honour. He could have been lost. He could have been sad or bitter. He was, and is, none of those things. There is no- one more deserving of noble recognition and nobody less likely to be flattered by it.