1966 - When the World Cup Came to Bolton
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| Pele and Brazil train in Bolton - 1966 |
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As the excitement builds up to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, memories are rekindled of when the World Cup came to England and even came to Bolton briefly, 48 years ago in 1966.
TV coverage was very different as there were only three TV channels available in the UK, BBC, ITV and BBC2 which had been launched two years earlier. TV was not 24 hours a day and breakfast TV was an oxymoron. Although the 1966 World Cup was the first to be broadcast worldwide by satellite, Satellite TV in this country was the stuff of Sci-Fi novels. The main channels only had children’s TV in the early afternoon with Andy Pandy prancing about and The Woodentops and their friend ‘Little Weed’ plopping up every now and then. All programmes were in black and white. Colour TV was another 12 months away from being introduced for the 1967 Wimbledon Tennis tournament, in the days when all tennis players had to wear white! We had to wait for the official FIFA World Cup film, ‘Goal’ to be released a few months later and watch it in cinemas to realise that England had played in red for the final. As a special treat, the final was broadcast in “High Definition” 625 line format as well as the usual 405 line format, if you had a compatible TV.
Not all matches were shown live as many kicked-off at the same time, like the quarter finals. David Coleman was the main presenter for the BBC as well as commentating along with Frank Bough, Walley Barnes and our own Kenneth Wolstenholme, who was born in Worsley and went to Farnworth Grammar School. On the summarisers bench, the BBC had Danny Blanchflower, Tommy Docherty, Ron Greenwood, Johnny Haynes and Jimmy Hill. In opposition on the ITV side was Eamonn Andrews as the main presenter and a commentating team of John Camkin, Barry Davies and Gerry Loftus led by Hugh Johns. ITV had their football specialists, Dave Bowen, Bill Shankly, Jock Stein and Phil Woosnam sitting along their commentators. Billy Wright was their studio pundit.
The first hero of the 1966 World Cup was Pickles, the dog who found the World Cup after it had been stolen from the ‘Sport with Stamps’ exhibition in the Central Hall at Westminster on 20 March 1966. It was missing for 7 days before Pickles, following a lead, found the Jules Rimet trophy wrapped in newspaper under a bush in South London. A spokesman for Brazil said it was sacrilege and it would never have happened in Brazil as even their thieves love football too much. Brazil were awarded the Jules Rimet trophy for keeps after winning the World Cup for the third time in 1970. It was stolen in 1983 in Brazil and has never been recovered.
None of the host nations had qualified for the 1966 World Cup but England were there as hosts and kicked off the tournament at Wembley against Uruguay on a Monday evening, after the opening ceremony, performed by her majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. It wasn’t the good start every English fan was hoping for as it ended 0-0. The second match featured Brazil, the champions of the two previous World Cups, in action against Bulgaria at Goodison Park. The first goals of the 1966 World Cup were scored by Pele and Garrincha as Brazil got off to a good start, winning 2-0. Although no matches were being played at Burnden Park in Bolton, the World Cup did come to Bolton when Brazil made Bolton their training centre for matches in the North-west. As a thirteen years old boy, I remember dashing down to Bromwich Street, Bolton Wanderer’s then state of the art, training ground to see these football legends. One ‘lucky’ 9 years old schoolboy got a bit too close to the action and was hit by a piledriver from Da Silva and had to receive treatment from the Brazilian team doctor. All the pain was worth it as he also received a Brazil lapel badge for his suffering. Sadly that was as good as it got for Brazil as they lost their next group match to Hungary and then their final match to Portugal for whom Eusebio was becoming a legend and would end up the top goalscorer of the tournament with 9 goals.
The surprise team of the group matches was North Korea, who managed to beat Italy at Ayresome Park and put them out of the competition and in the process become the first team from outside of Europe or the Americas to qualify for the knock out stage of the finals. One of the favourite tie-breakers in quizzes about the 1966 World Cup was ‘Name the North Korean scorers! (Seung-Zin Pak, Dong-Woon Lee and Seung-Kook Yang for the uninitiated).
The quarter finals was when the South Americans got stuck in literally. Uruguay had two players sent off as they lost to West Germany while Argentina‘s Antonio Rattin found fame as he became the first ever player to be sent off at Wembley in a senior international match. He refused to leave the pitch and had to be escorted off by several policeman. It was this incident that prompted the normally quiet and sedate Alf Ramsey to call the Argentinians ‘animals’. We won 1-0 and never mind the Falklands, this is what really annoyed Argentina. This game is called el robo del siglo (the robbery of the century) in Argentina.
In the other quarter-finals, North Korea were incredibly 3-0 up against Portugal after 22 minutes but finally lost 3-5, while the Soviet Union edged out Hungary 2-1.
Controversially, England’s semi-final against Portugal was moved from Goodison Park to Wembley to increase ticket revenue. We won 2-1 with a couple of Bobby Charlton specials and Portugal’s goal coming from the penalty spot after Jack Charlton had handled on the line. In those days, it wasn’t a sending off offence and he played in the final. The previous day, West Germany had seen off the Soviet Union 2-1 at Goodison Park.
This set up the final between England and West Germany. 1966 was the era of slot TVs which you had to feed shillings in to get about 2 hours of TV. So, the first essential on the day was to make sure there was enough shillings about to cover the match. 96,924 lucky souls got tickets for the match while the rest of us were huddled around our TVs at home. There were no large screen TVs or fanzones to watch this match. Helmut Haller, rated amongst the world’s best divers, put the West Germans ahead after 12 minutes. Geoff Hurst soon got us level after 19 minutes and Martin Peters put us ahead after 78 minutes. We seemed home and dry but Wolfgang Weber equalised in the last minute to put England fans on tenterhooks and create a mad dash for another shilling for the extra time on TV. All’s well that ends well and Geoff Hurst put us back in front courtesy of a Russian linesman who thought it had crossed the line and then wrapped it up with a fourth goal in the very last minute with spectators already on the pitch, which prompted Kenneth Wolstenholme’s immortal commentary,"And here comes Hurst. He's got... some people are on the pitch, they think it's all over. It is now! It's four!"
So, as the 2014 World Cup looms ever closer, the excitement is building up as World Cup stickers are being bought and traded like the real players to fill up the official books. England shirts are coming out of the wardrobe and the match schedules are being examined, so that we can arrange our working and social lives around the World Cup. Blind faith says that we are going to repeat our win in 1966 but reality says that we will do well to get out of our group. But let’s all get behind our team and enjoy this festival of football and ‘Que sera, sera, Whatever will be, will be’.
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