It’s a strange kind of obstinacy to deny our greatest sports heroes an honour ahead of all kinds of spivs and charlatans

IN the days since the death of England’s World Cup-winning goalkeeper Gordon Banks, it has emerged that friends and former team-mates had been lobbying hard for him to be awarded a knighthood. It was said an administrative mix-up delayed it but that he was in line to be recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours later this year.

Well, I’m sorry, but the idea that anyone should have to lobby on behalf of one of this country’s greatest sporting heroes for something that should have been bestowed upon him and the rest of Sir Alf Ramsey’s side long, long ago is a savage indictment of our honours system and a glimpse of the cynical disdain with which the English establishment still views the national game.

Politicians use football and footballers when it suits them. They fall over themselves in their haste to be associated with modern players and managers because they think it brings them reflected glory and an illusion of belonging in a football-mad country. The apotheosis of this was Tony Blair playing head tennis with Kevin Keegan. David Cameron claiming allegiance to Aston Villa and West Ham ran it close.

There are, of course, many worse things than footballers not being given one extra honour but in the context of the happiness and pride these men have given to generations of English sports fans, it is to this nation’s everlasting shame that Bobby Moore, the man who lifted the World Cup in 1966, died in 1993 before a knighthood could be bestowed on him.

The establishment had 27 years to do the right thing by England’s greatest captain but it still couldn’t manage it. In today’s climate of instant gratification, it seems implausible Moore should have been overlooked for so long.

Many years ago, I mocked David Beckham in print for referring to Moore in a press conference as ‘Sir Bobby Moore’. I wasn’t smart enough to realise that the joke was on me. Beckham assumed Moore had been knighted and he was right to assume it. How could it be otherwise? How could the establishment have ignored our greatest sporting icon?

It is to our shame, too, that Alan Ball, the man of the match on that summer’s day 53 years ago, died more than a decade ago without being knighted. The same applies to Ray Wilson, who died last year. And it applies to Banks, too. We rush to acclaim modern heroes who have achieved far less while we forget those who gave us our most memorable sporting moment.

It’s not that I revere the honours system. I don’t. I think it’s deeply flawed. But it is still used as a measure of attainment by many people and, more pertinently, by men and women of Banks’ generation. They are more likely to set store by it than younger generations. Unsurprisingly, Banks was said to have been disappointed when Sir Bobby Charlton and Sir Geoff Hurst were knighted in 1994 and 1998 respectively and the rest of the team was ignored.

Politicians pay lip-service to sport when they think it will bring them advantage. Banks and his team-mates were all awarded the OBE in the aftermath of the World Cup win but when England won the Ashes on a tide of national fervour in 2005, the entire squad was given the MBE, including Paul Collingwood, who only played in one Test.

‘You’re an embarrassment,’ Shane Warne t ol d Collingwood once during a match. ‘How can you get an MBE for scoring 17 runs? That’s embarrassing. Maybe you should give it back.’ On another occasion, when Collingwood was walking out t o bat at t he Sydney Cricket Ground, he was welcomed over the tannoy as ‘Paul Collingwood MBE’.

I don’t have a problem with Collingwood winning the MBE. He was part of the team, even if it was only for one Test. He was part of the triumph. And, yes, the OBE ranks higher than the MBE. But to put him on a similar level in the honours hierarchy to Banks, Ball, Moore, Wilson and the rest of the boys of ’66 is utterly absurd. More recently, Chris Hoy has been knighted. Andy Murray, too. And Alastair Cook.

I wouldn’t quibble with any of those awards. All of them are sportsmen I admire. They are from a different era when sport is more prominent in the life of the nation than it once was and when we are more ready to lionise our sportsmen and women but, still, the contrast with the way the World Cup team have been treated is stark.

Seven of the team are still alive and of those seven, Bobby Charlton and Hurst have already been knighted. That leaves George Cohen, Jack Charlton, Martin Peters, Nobby Stiles and Roger Hunt.

Several of them are in ill-health. The family of Nobby Stiles has spoken of him being stricken by dementia. In some ways, that would make the award of knighthoods to them even more special.

Time is running out but it is not too late for us to do the right thing by the last of the Boys of 66. Once, some years ago, when I worked on another newspaper, I asked if we could run a campaign to get our World Cup winners the knighthoods they deserved. Enquiries were made with the Government. We were told not to bother. There was no chance of success.

It is a strange kind of obstinacy that denies our greatest sporting heroes an honour and yet sees fit to award the same honour to all manner of charlatans and spivs from the worlds of business and finance. This is our last chance to say ‘thank you’ to what remains of our greatest team. Is it really too much to ask?