A band of brothers, our rotten honours they were not
fortune were never compelling needs for Big Jack, never compelling needs for any of his team-mates.
It’s a sweeping generalisation but you could not say that about very many generations of England players since.
We all know the honours system is fundamentally flawed.
We all know there are thousands and thousands of people out there – in the health service, doing selfless charity work – who end up going without any sort of public recognition like that whatsoever.
But with every honour given to sportsmen and women whose achievements pale into relative insignificance alongside England’s solitary World Cup win, it rankles that the boys of ’66 were not all knighted.
With every tragic passing, it rankles even more.
Jack is now the sixth member of the winning team – and the 12th member of the 22-man squad – to leave us. Of the five remaining members of the 11 that gave English football its most momentous 120 minutes of football, two have knighthoods. Sir Geoff and Sir Bobby.
To Liverpool fans of a certain vintage, Roger Hunt will forever be known as ‘Sir Roger”.
But in reality Hunt is officially an MBE, as is Nobby Stiles and George Cohen.
Incredibly, those three heroes, along with the late Ray Wilson and the late Alan Ball, had to wait 33 years to be recognised at all.
It is about time they were recognised properly .
Not just for themselves but as a tribute, as a fitting honour, to those who have passed away without ever being truly feted as the heroes they were.
As a tribute, as a fitting honour, to Big Jack and his band of brothers.