Banksy (27 page)

A journalist from a Sunday redtop approached me regarding a story ostensibly about footballers’ diets and how they prepared for a big game, particularly on a Saturday morning. We arranged that he would come to my house and he sat in the kitchen with my wife and I. After a half-hearted interview during which he hardly made a note, he got up to leave.

‘I hear you’re in dispute with Leicester over money,’ he said, apropos of nothing.

I told him that ‘dispute’ was too strong a word for what was, in fact, simply the renegotiation of my contract. At this time I was on £35 a week. I felt I was giving good service both to Leicester and England and that I was worth a bit more. After all, it was below half what Tottenham Hotspur’s players earned, and a good deal less than what just about every other First Division club was paying at the time. I told the reporter that talks were
continuing and that I was confident the matter would be resolved quickly to everyone’s satisfaction. Then he turned to Ursula and asked if she thought I deserved a bit more money and, of course, she told him yes.

‘If Gordon gets a rise, I suppose the extra money will enable you to buy a bit more in the way of food,’ said the reporter.

‘I suppose it will,’ said Ursula as the two of us saw him to the door.

When I saw his article that Sunday, my heart sank: ‘“ICan’t Live on £35 a Week” Says Gordon Banks’ Wife’.

I was furious, not so much because I had been duped but because I knew the trouble and grief his scurrilous piece would cause Ursula. Sure enough, the next time she went to do the weekly shop she ran a gauntlet of angry women who told her, in no uncertain terms, how fortunate we were to have a wage of £35 a week and how they had to manage on much less. Talk was rife at Leicester of Matt Gillies having to spend too much time arguing with me over money, and of how I was opposed to the club’s policy of pay parity for every first team player. It was water off a duck’s back for me, but it did upset me that Ursula was subjected to some very nasty and wholly unjustified remarks. All I could do was tell her to maintain her dignity and ride it out. With time, the matter would be forgotten, if not forgiven.

The 1963–64 season saw a landmark in the history of Wembley: the first match to be played there under floodlights. No longer would midweek internationals be played at the grand old stadium on Wednesday afternoons when most supporters had difficulty in attending because of their work commitments. I played for England in our 8–3 victory over Northern Ireland. Jimmy Greaves scored four and Southampton’s Terry Paine also helped himself to a hat trick.

Another first was achieved when Jim Fryatt of Bradford Park Avenue scored the fastest goal on record. His goal against
Tranmere Rovers was timed by the referee’s watch at just four seconds. Jim, a rugged centre forward whose bald head and long pork-chop sideburns made him an instantly recognizable figure, was a journeyman round the lower divisions. Presumably it was this wanderlust that drew him to travel around America when he had retired from football, before eventually becoming a croupier in a Las Vegas casino!

Football was dragged through the gutter in 1963–64 with revelations in the
Sunday People
of a bribery scandal. The paper revealed that a number of players had been paid by a gambling syndicate to fix matches. It was a major news story involving several players, most notably Peter Swan and David ‘Bronco’ Layne of Sheffield Wednesday and their former team mate, Tony Kay, who had by then joined Everton. The
People
alleged that the trio had taken part in arranging the outcome of a Sheffield Wednesday game at Ipswich Town in December 1962, which Wednesday had lost 2–0. Other players of lesser note were also said to have been involved in match fixing, and all were subsequently arrested and appeared in a much-publicized court case.

The key defendant was Jimmy Gauld, a former Everton, Charlton and Swindon Town player who it was revealed had been the ringleader. The players were charged with conspiracy to defraud. Ten were subsequently jailed and banned from football for life by the FA. Gauld received the heaviest sentence and was jailed for four years and ordered to pay £5,000 costs. The other nine players were jailed for between four and fifteen months.

I was deeply shocked and saddened by this scandal, not only because it besmirched my profession and the game I loved, but also because it involved my old school mate David Layne. His involvement abruptly terminated what I, and many others, believed would have been a very successful career in football.

During the summer of 1964 I was a member of the England party that toured North and South America, and it was during this
tour that I lost my place in the England team, albeit only briefly.

The tour began well when we beat the USA 10–0 on a dustbowl of a pitch in New York, a result that went some way to avenging England’s humiliating defeat at the hands of the Americans in the 1950 World Cup. The margin of our victory was very pleasing to Alf Ramsey, who had been a member of that defeated England team.

In the dressing room before the game Alf told us how he had never been allowed to forget what had been the most calamitous result in the history of England as an international team. He repeatedly warned us not to be complacent, emphasizing that we had to treat the USA much as we would any top international team. Even as we were leaving the dressing room Alf was still reminding us to be on our mettle. We took to the pitch so wound up we tore into the opposition from the start and could have scored twenty. I hardly touched the ball and spent the vast majority of the game spectating.

Liverpool’s Roger Hunt scored four and Blackburn’s Fred Pickering scored a hat trick on his England debut. Fred was a very tall and powerful centre forward, not the sharpest or most mobile of strikers but awesome in the air and very difficult to knock off the ball. Fred knew where the goal was and in only three games for England scored five goals. It is indicative of just how many quality forwards were then playing in English football that five goals in three matches wasn’t enough to earn Fred a fourth cap following his move to Everton that summer. Today a hat trick on your international debut would mean you are hailed as a superstar and made for life. It contrast, when he retired from football Fred worked as a forklift driver in his home town of Blackburn.

Following our convincing victory over the USA we flew down to Brazil to take part in a four-team tournament with the hosts, Portugal and Argentina. This tournament had been billed as ‘Little World Cup’ and was seen as a true test of our ability to compete against the very best in world football.

Our opening game was against Brazil, but my dream of playing against the great Pelé was dashed when Alf Ramsey took me to one side after our first training session. Alf told me he thought my form had suffered of late and was going to play Tony Waiters of Blackpool in goal. I was very disappointed, but as a player you must accept and respect a manager’s decision. Alf asked me if I was happy with his decision to play Tony. I told him I was far from happy. ‘Good,’ said Alf, ‘because that’s the right attitude to have. If you had told me it was OK, I would know you were either lying or that you didn’t have the right mental attitude that I’m looking for in my players.’

I watched the game from the sidelines as Brazil gave full vent to their mercurial football powers. For much of the game England were the equal of Brazil, but with twenty minutes remaining the Brazilians stepped up a gear. We conceded three free kicks outside our penalty area and Brazil produced the sort of wizardry that had deceived me at Wembley in the previous season. The final score was 5–1 to Brazil. Back in the dressing room, Alf was not a happy man and I harboured high hopes of a quick recall to the fold.

Two days later Brazil took on Argentina and Alf insisted we all go along to watch and learn from two of the top four FIFA-rated sides in the world (the others being Portugal and West Germany). We sat on benches by one of the touchlines in the cavernous bowl of the Maracanà stadium. Behind us a formidable fence separated us from the massed ranks of volatile Brazilian supporters. We soon discovered English footballers were not the most popular people in the eyes of the Brazilian fans. Even as we walked down the touchline towards the benches we were assailed by non-stop verbal abuse; once we had taken our seats, those fans proceeded to throw the contents of a greengrocer’s shop in our general direction. We didn’t learn much about either team because our attention was constantly being diverted as we ducked and dived to avoid the oranges, apples, tomatoes, bananas and
nuts that rained down from the packed terraces. And, as the old song goes, they’ve got an awful lot of nuts in Brazil.

Argentina were on fire and raced into a three-goal lead. When the third Argentinian goal went in, Ray Wilson was hit on the shoulder by a tomato. Ray immediately took to his feet, turned to face the Brazilian fans and held up three fingers on one hand and none on the other to remind the Brazilian supporters of the scoreline.

‘That’s right, Ray,’ said Jimmy Greaves, ‘you try and appease them.’

That did it. Hundreds of livid Brazilians began pulling at the fencing as if trying to bring it down. Those who couldn’t get near to the fence angrily gesticulated at us with fingers or fists, and you didn’t have to possess a working knowledge of Portuguese to know what they were insinuating. The atmosphere was turning very, very ugly and Alf Ramsey, a model of self-control, got to his feet.

‘Gentlemen, there is no cause for alarm, simply sit and –’

Alf never finished what he had to say. An apple rocketed through the air and hit him square on the back of the head. It was too much, even for Alf. Still exuding calm authority, Alf bent down, picked up the offending apple and carefully placed it on a bench.

‘Gentlemen, be so kind as to follow me,’ he said.

Follow him we did, and at more than a casual pace as he led us down the touchline to relative safety behind the Brazilian goal, where the distance between us and the supporters was too great for us to be troubled by anything thrown from the terraces.

From our new vantage point I was able to concentrate fully on the game. Pelé was coming in for some really shabby treatment from his Argentinian marker, who stuck to him like a leech. Pelé was hacked and kicked, at times even when he didn’t have the ball. In the end it all proved too much for him. With play deep in the Brazilian half of the field, Pelé was coasting about in the
middle of the park when an Argentinian defender thought fit to run his studs down the back of one of Pelé’s calves. The great man snapped. He turned quickly and landed a ‘Glasgow kiss’ right on the nose of his tormentor. As head butts go it was a good ’un, the Argentinian defender went to the ground like a parachute with a hole in it, his nose broken.

Today, Pelé enjoys a deserved global reputation for being a gentleman sportsman, a statesman and a fine ambassador of football. But that day against Argentina he showed that he was only human after all. Probably wisely, the referee chose to ignore the assault and, as opposed to the guy with the broken nose, Pelé remained on the pitch. To have dismissed him would in all probability have sparked a full-scale riot. Perhaps fresh in the referee’s mind was the fact that less than a fortnight before, 301 people had been killed during a riot at the National Stadium in Lima when Peru’s opponents had again been Argentina.

Alf Ramsey recalled me for our next game in the series, a 1–1 draw against Portugal. In our final match we were up against Argentina, who needed a draw to win the competition. This was a very closely contested game between two evenly matched sides, but on the hour, Argentina broke quickly from defence following a prolonged period of England pressure. The ball was played by Silvio Marzolini from our left into the penalty box, where Alfredo Rojas sent a stinging low drive into the right-hand corner of my net. In contrast to the rough-house tactics deployed against Brazil, Argentina had concentrated on playing football against us. In so doing, they showed us what a very good side they were.

Of the three teams we came up against in this competition, Argentina impressed us most. Technically they were our superiors and their level of skill and organization had been very impressive. We were all of the mind that Argentina would be a major force in the 1966 World Cup. We’d been particularly impressed with the skill and general performances of the Argentine captain, who had proved himself to be a world-class player. Alf Ramsey even went as far as to tell our trainer, Harold
Shepherdson, to make a note of him in the dossier they were compiling on possible qualifiers.

‘What’s his name, again?’ asked Harold.

‘Antonio Rattin,’ replied Alf.

Can you imagine the sensational headlines a newly promoted team would make today if they began a season in the Premiership without a manager and with a 15-year-old boy in goal? Yet that is exactly the situation our opponents Sunderland found themselves in when we kicked off the 1964–65 season. After six seasons in the Second Division Sunderland had just returned to the top flight but before a ball had been kicked, the club were in turmoil. On 31 July Alan Brown, the manager who had guided Sunderland to promotion, went off to Sheffield Wednesday, leaving the Roker Park club managerless. Then their first-choice goalkeeper, Jimmy Montgomery, an England Under 23 international, sustained a hand injury in training that ruled him out for two months and reserve keeper Derek Kirby was injured in a pre-season friendly. As the loan system had yet to be introduced, Sunderland had no alternative but to play Derek Forster, their untried youth-team keeper. Forster, an English schoolboy international, had only left school in June. At fifteen years of age he became the youngest goalkeeper to appear in the Football League and, by a matter of days, the second youngest player to play in the First Division.

Before a Roker Park crowd of 45,465 basking in August sunshine, the game proved to be an exciting 3–3 draw full of end-to-end action, and Derek Forster acquitted himself remarkably well for one so young. Sadly, though he was to remain on Sunderland’s books until the early seventies, Derek never fulfilled his early potential, making only eighteen league appearances in nine years at Roker Park.