A magical night with Sir Geoff Hurst -- one of the last links to a disappearing world
Thick wet snowflakes had begun to coat the road outside the Royal Spa centre when the members of the audience who had paid an extra few pounds for the meet and greet part of the evening with Sir Geoff hurst began to arrive in the foyer.
We took comfort in the shelter and the warmth. A huge poster advertising an upcoming Evening with Anton du Beke and a flyer for a show called Totally Tina stared down at us from the walls.
i bought a couple of signed retro shirts — one West ham, one England — from a memorabilia stall that had been set up on a trestle table. There were other options: signed Geoff hurst boots, signed Geoff hurst footballs, signed Geoff hurst photos, Denis Law memorabilia, Martin Peters memorabilia, George Best memorabilia and a brilliant yellow Brazil shirt with Pele’s signature on it. All our yesterdays in a provincial theatre in Leamington Spa.
i stood there for a while, admiring a print of the famous picture of Sir Geoff in mid-air at Wembley on July 30, 1966, his left leg extended in front of him and the ball speeding towards the West Germany net, one of the greatest sports action images ever taken. it was England’s fourth goal in the World cup final, and hurst’s third. Somewhere, high in the stands, the BBc commentator kenneth Wolstenholme was saying: ‘They think it’s all over, it is now.’
One of the staff asked us to form a queue for the meet and greet. After a little while, we filed into the auditorium and sat in the first two rows. i looked at the people around me. There were a lot of West ham fans, old and young. And a lot of people like me, football fans who had come so they could say they once met, and listened to, England’s greatest living footballer, a man who would be a legend in any age.
One lady walked in with the aid of two sticks. i spoke to her afterwards. her name was Myrtle Tunney and she was 86 and she had come with three generations of her West ham- supporting family. She had grown up in Forest Gate and had been a regular at Upton Park when Sir Geoff, Bobby Moore and Peters were in the side. We were all here on a pilgrimage of sorts and this was hers.
A pilgrimage and maybe a bit more than that. Sir Geoff is one of the last links to a disappearing world, a link to a piece of glorious history that we have never quite been able to emulate. Only he and the great Sir Bobby charlton remain from the Boys of ’66, the team preserved in our memories as the young men who gave England its greatest sporting moment nearly 60 years ago.
Perhaps one of the lessons we can learn from the Gary Lineker affair, one of the lessons that the BBc should have heeded, is that there is a powerful bond between the sporting heroes of yesteryear and the fans.
it is hard to break that bond and the near-unanimity of football’s support for Lineker, not a World cup winner but one of our greatest goalscorers, was another reminder of the affection in which we hold the game’s icons.
To be in hurst’s company, to hear him speak, to listen to him reminisce, is something precious if you love our game. We talk a lot about wanting to honour the sporting heroes of the past and show them they are not forgotten but too often it is just lip service. The evening at the Royal Spa centre, for me anyway, was a small way of showing one of my
heroes how much we value what he did for our game and how much we value the team he represents.
IHave met Sir Geoff before briefly, at press events here and there, but i would have paid double or triple what i paid in Leamington Spa for the chance to shake his hand and listen to him tell stories that brought that golden day at Wembley back to life. i went up on stage when it was my turn to have my picture taken with him
and get my shirts signed. Exchanging a few words with him, and those mementoes i clutched, are things i’ll treasure.
half an hour after he had finished his meet and greet, a bigger crowd of us filed back into the auditorium to listen to him chatting about the past.
i have heard some of the stories before, like the fact hurst knew his second goal had crossed the line when it bounced down off the crossbar because Roger hunt, a goalscorer supreme, turned away when he saw where it had landed. And there were some stories i hadn’t heard. When he was running on through on goal in the last seconds of extra time, hurst said, he could hear Alan Ball, who was man of the match that day, screaming at him to pass.
‘ hursty, hursty,’ hurst screeched, imitating Ball’s famously high- pitched voice. hurst said, with a broad smile and a happy profanity, that he had dismissed the thought from his mind.
‘My thought process was that i would hit it as hard as i could,’ he said, ‘and that i would probably miss but that it would fly so far over the bar that by the time it could be retrieved, then surely to goodness the game would be over. Anyway, as we all know, i mishit it and it went in.’
The audience broke into a little roar of applause at that point and that image of hurst in mid-air, his left leg stretched out in front of him, flashed through every mind in the theatre.
hurst talked about Sir Alf Ramsey, Bobby Moore and Jimmy Greaves, the man he called ‘a genius’, the man whose place in the team he took midway through the tournament. he talked about how Manchester United manager Sir Matt Busby had once offered West ham £200,000 to sign him and the West ham manager Ron Greenwood had sent back a telegram that merely said: ‘No thank you.’
And he talked about sadness, too. he talked about Ray Wilson, England’s left back in the final, announcing to the rest of the team at a reunion some years ago that he was in the early stages of dementia.
he talked about seeing his great friend Peters decline suddenly in the throes of the same illness. hurst is slim and trim and sharp as a tack at 81 but he paused for a moment there as he considered the friends he has lost.
After a couple of hours, it was over, the applause rang out, the spell was broken and we all wandered back into the foyer. it was still snowing those great wet flakes outside so i clutched the signed shirts in a plastic bag in my hand and wrapped them up even tighter against the elements.
‘I wanted to show one of my heroes how much we value what he did’