It was the room where the draw for the 1966 World Cup took place, the venue for the team banquet to celebrate the greatest day in English football history and, on the top table, was a gleaming Jules Rimet Trophy.
Looking on were four of England’s heroes from that day: Sir Geoff Hurst, Gordon Banks, Martin Peters and George Cohen. It was perhaps forgivable, then, that the fan inside Greg Dyke, the current chairman of the Football Association, briefly overrode protocol and could not resist lifting the 50-year-old trophy aloft in a one-handed pose to recreate the iconic celebration of captain Bobby Moore.
Exactly half a century will have passed on July 30 this year since Hurst’s hat-trick sealed a 4-2 final win against West Germany and Tuesday's gathering marked the launch of a year of celebrations.
Banks, who is now 78, said that just entering the Royal Garden Hotel evoked memories of how the team were initially unable even to access the building after the match because Kensington High Street was so crammed with fans.
He then recalled the “absolutely shocking” protocol that said the wives and girlfriends of their day had to wait in a nearby room while the men ate their victory meal. “Every single thing has changed dramatically,” Hurst said.
A gleaming Jules Rimet Trophy was on display
Bobby Charlton and Ray Wilson were even able to relax by going shopping in Golders Green on the morning of the final. “Players were on similar wages to the man on the street,” Hurst said. “I love the modern game – it’s great, but the changes are unbelievably different.”
Hurst, though, remains justifiably adamant about one constant. It is that the squad of 1966 contained a quality of player that would thrive in any era. Hurst rates Moore, Banks, Bobby Charlton and Jimmy Greaves as “all-time greats” but is also emphatic when asked whether he would get into the England team of today. “What a stupid question – you’re kidding aren’t you?” he said, smiling. “Of course I would. Would I score more goals? Yes. They say it’s tougher today. I think that’s nonsense. The game has changed to help attacking football. You can’t get tackled from behind. You look back at some of those archaic matches from the Sixties and Seventies, the villainous teams, it was astonishing.”
Hurst also pinpoints the mentality of the 1966 squad and how the younger players, men like Peters and Alan Ball, were so fearless in grasping their opportunity. “People ask what it is like to win,” he said. “The first emotion is relief. The overall enjoyment of it is phenomenal and it lasts forever.”
George Cohen, the right back, says that the journey from the team hotel to Wembley remains especially vivid. “You couldn’t actually get to the gate to go through on the coach,” he says. “I remember there was one banner saying ‘Nobby Stiles for Prime Minister’.”
Greg Dyke said he hopes England can replicate the success of 1966
Cohen was especially close to Greaves, who so controversially lost his place to Hurst during the tournament after getting injured. “Jimmy is my oldest friend in professional football,” Cohen says. “I have never ever mentioned it to Jimmy. All these years have gone past. I couldn’t bring myself to ask him about it. He was one of the greatest names in our game at the time. But Geoff’s performances proved that what we needed was what we got. We got a three-goal hero in the World Cup final. I don’t think we have ever stopped talking about it. When I go to the supermarket everybody says ‘Hello George’. People still want to know.”
The anecdotes will certainly flow over these next 12 months when a series of events will be held to commemorate the achievement. Money will also be raised for various charities as well as the players and their families. Given the wealth now in football, it is easy to forget that the squad of 1966 all had to earn a living once their playing careers were finished. Eight of the starting 11 subsequently auctioned off their winner’s medal. Dyke concedes that it was a generation of footballers who were not particularly well looked after.
“Anyone of my age will tell you it was one of the days of their life,” Dyke said. “Alf [Ramsey] announced we would win it and he never wavered. I couldn’t get a ticket and watched the final on a little black-and-white telly at my aunt’s house. We have to make sure we tell those stories and keep them alive. I genuinely believe the building blocks are in place to one day soon emulate the ’66 winners. We owe it to them. We owe it to a generation of teenage dreamers.”
Hurst shares that optimism. “Yes we can do it again – the unpredictability of the sport is something that captures us all,” he said. “Cynics say to me ‘you don’t want anyone to win it again, you don’t want anyone to score three’, which is absolute nonsense. We are as passionate about England doing well as the man in the street. Having been there and done it, more so probably. We know how big it is. It changes your life.”
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