10 1GS Saturday December 18 2021 | the timesSport Football
A
s Sir Geoff Hurst is
talking, the doorbell of his
Cheltenham apartment
rings. The lion of ’66
opens the door to a
plumber called out to fix a sulky
radiator. “Come in, take your shoes
off. The plumber — that reminds me
of Tom Finney!”
And Hurst is away, his sharp mind
recalling great football men, great
moments. “On the morning of the
match Tom would be fixing
somebody’s taps before playing for
Preston [North End] in the
afternoon,” Hurst recalls. “Great
player. Could play anywhere across
the front line.
“Tom presented me with the man
of the match trophy on behalf of the
Daily Express in ’66. I have a picture
on the front of my phone of my wife,
Judith, carrying the award, walking
along a road with myself, Martin
Peters and [his wife] Kathy, about a
week after the final.”
Hurst is as talkative and busy as
ever. To celebrate his 80th birthday
this month, he has written a
fascinating book with his friend, the
author Norman Giller. Eighty at
Eighty: An A-Z of Masters from Ali to
Zola has Hurst lauding and analysing
his favourite sporting legends,
including many of those he shared a
pitch with in 1966.
“My 15 minutes of fame has lasted
55 years,” Hurst says, laughing. “And
it goes on. The hat-trick [in 1966, the
only one scored in a men’s World Cup
final] — it’s a record proving very
hard to beat. It was an amazing day
and people still talk about it.
“People recognise me. Although I
was walking along in Cheltenham last
week and one woman tapped me on
the shoulder and said, ‘Excuse me,
you’re Glenn Hoddle, aren’t you?’ I
was quite flattered by that, because
he’s 15 years younger than me. I said,
‘Yes, I am.’ She said, ‘I saw you on TV
a couple of weeks ago. You were verygood.’ I said, ‘Thank you very much,’
and off I went!”
England’s fabled World Cup final
hat-trick man gets stopped regularly,
certainly more often than the West
Germany defenders managed. He
always gets asked whether the ball did
cross the line for his second. “Had
they had VAR in my time it would
have showed the ball quite clearly at
least a yard over the line,” Hurst says.
“That’s my stock answer today.
“The last half an hour made it the
game it was, with the controversial
goal, the fourth goal and Kenneth
Wolstenholme’s unbelievable
commentary. I challenge people to
come up with better commentary
than those brilliant lines.”
Wolstenholme’s perfect words are
ingrained in the nation’s sporting
psyche: “Some people are on the
pitch. They think it’s all over. It is
now. It’s four!” Hurst smiles again.
“Top of my list of stupid questions I
get asked is, ‘Did I realise there were
people on the pitch?’ I say, ‘Yes, I was
just about to shoot and I put my foot
on the ball, stopped, looked back to
the halfway line and counted the
number of people on the pitch!’”
Of that golden XI, Bobby Moore
died in 1993, followed by Alan Ball in- Since May 2018, when Ray
Wilson died, Gordon Banks, Jack
Charlton, Martin Peters, Nobby Stiles
and Roger Hunt have died. Only
three of the Wembley lions are still
with us: George Cohen, 82, who has
survived bowel cancer, Sir Bobby
Charlton, 84, who is living with
dementia, and Hurst.
His mind is so alert and he looks
well. Hurst accepts the compliment
before turning serious. “When you
talk about how wonderful
I look, and my health, well, I’ve just
had a pacemaker fitted,” Hurst says.
“It’s atrial fibrillation, an irregular
heartbeat, and all the pacemaker does
is when the heart starts to beat
irregularly it rectifies it. I had it
‘A woman stopped
me and said: You’re
Glenn Hoddle,
you’re good on TV.
I just thanked her’
HENRY WINTER
THE BIG INTERVIEW
Sir Geoff Hurst discusses the loss of
his former team-mates, his recent
health scare and why he is happy to
talk to fans in the street
astonishing. Here’s a little insight
into the genius of Jimmy. When
we looked at matches and saw a
player missing a goal, Jimmy
would talk about that player
‘freezing’: they didn’t expect the
ball to come to them. Jimmy was
always on about expecting the
ball.
“Defenders can’t
take a chance to
anticipate where the
ball’s going. They can
only react. Whereas
a genius like Jimmy
anticipates and takes
a chance that the
ball’s going to get
into that position.
If you do, you’re
ahead of your
marker, because
you’ve taken the
chance.
“And I was
competing for a
place with a genius
like Jimmy! And I’d
played only four games
before the finals!
Remarkable. Fantasticpeople too. The great thing about the
team is we got on with everybody.
Camaraderie is important for being
successful in World Cups.
“Roger Hunt — they call him Sir
Roger Hunt up in Liverpool — was
such an absolutely nice guy. My wife
and I were saying if we had to go out
with one player and his wife from that
time, who would we want to go out
with? My wife said Roger Hunt.”
As his sharp mind scrolls through
the ’66 final, Hurst thinks of Peters’s
movement. “Martin Peters was called
‘the ghost’. He’d always get in the box.
His record from the middle of the
park as a goalscorer was just
fantastic.” Peters scored 20 in 67 for
England and 175 in 722 for his clubs.
“The strange thing about Martin is
Alf Ramsey didn’t pick him because
he didn’t think he could head a ball,”
Hurst says. “Even the great managers
make mistakes. Martin was the best
header of all at West Ham [United].
Alf eventually picked him, of course.
Martin was very, very determined, but
never got involved in any ruction,
fight or scrap, or showed any dissent.”
Hurst’s memory rolls on, settling on
another of his West Ham brethren.Hurst, below,
turned 80 this
month; main,
he completes
his hat-trick in
the 1966 final;
right, playing
for West Ham
with Greavesdiagnosed a couple of years ago, when
I had a very mild stroke. I’d had a
moment — I wouldn’t even call it a
dizzy moment — four months ago, so
I decided to go back to see a couple of
specialists. You don’t want to have
a blackout when you’re driving. So I
had it fitted a couple of weeks ago.
“With health, when you get to a
certain age, it’s very much a lottery
of who gets what. Somebody said,
‘You’ve got to die of something.’ I
guess I’m fortunate with my health,
but it has been an extremely difficult
time with losing some of my team-
mates, starting of course with
Norman Hunter, who went down
with Covid right at the beginning of
all this [the pandemic].”
He records poignant memories of
Jimmy Greaves and Hunt in Eighty at
Eighty. Greaves died on September 19
this year, aged 81, and Hunt on
September 27, at 83. “It’s been a sad
time, because both the players I was
vying with for my position have
passed away,” Hurst says.
“I never dreamt I’d ever play for
England. I was competing with the
greatest players of the era, seasoned
international players. I always joke
that Alf Ramsey [the England
manager at the time] started off in ’66
with those two very average players,
Roger Hunt and Jimmy Greaves.
“It was a much better balance that
it was going to be myself and Roger,
or myself and Jimmy, because I had
the additional height. I once joked
with Roger, ‘Did you ever head a
ball?’ I met him a few months
later and he came back with ten
goals he scored with his head!
“He said [of the final], ‘While
you were up front scoring
the goals and grabbing
the headlines I was
doing all your f***ing
defensive work!’
“Jimmy, of course,
was an absolute
genius at football
but also a terrific
guy with a brilliant
sense of humour.
Not many people
talk about Jimmy’s
Chelsea [career].
They talk about his
great time at Spurs
and internationally,
which was fantastic, 44
goals in 57 games. But
at Chelsea from 17
[years old], he played
169 games and scored 132
goals in four years before
he went to [AC] Milan. It’s