Banksy (49 page)

West Ham were a superb footballing side but we felt we had the measure of them. The second leg was an epic cup tie. John Ritchie scored deep into the second half to send the match into extra time on the aggregate score of 2–2. There wasn’t a cigarette paper’s width between the two teams and, with three minutes of extra time remaining, a replay looked a certainty. It was then that my heart almost jumped into my mouth.

I managed to parry a shot from Geoff Hurst. When the ball ran loose an almighty goalmouth scramble ensued resembling a pinball machine as the West Ham players fired one shot after another only to see the ball cannon back repeatedly from a thicket of legs. I decided to seize the initiative.

I had drummed into my defenders that, if I shouted ‘keeper’s’, they would leave the ball regardless. The ball skidded across the mud towards Mike Pejic, who was standing in front of me. ‘Keeper’s!’ I shouted. Mike seemed not to have heard me, for he shaped to clear. I relaxed, only to find that Mike had let the ball go. I then had to scramble again to get near the ball, fumbled it, snatched at it and watched it squirm away from me. Harry Redknapp half-collided with me as he came across in front. I thought he was trying to prevent me from reaching the ball, so I put my hand around his midriff and yanked him to one side. Harry was actually obstructing me, but the referee, Keith Walker (yes, him again), didn’t see it my way and awarded West Ham a penalty. I was furious, not with the ref but with Mike Pejic. It was his indecision that caused the mayhem in the first place.

Up stepped my old mate Geoff Hurst. As he ran up to take the kick, an eerie silence descended on Upton Park. Geoff always relied on sheer power when taking penalties and it looked as though he was really going to tank this one. When he had scored from the spot in the first leg, he’d taken a big run-up and hit the ball to my right. I got a hand to it, but couldn’t stop it going just inside the post. Now Geoff was setting himself to take the same sort of run-up.

I thought, ‘He’s not going to change here. I’ll gamble,’ and hurled myself to the right as he thumped it at shoulder height to that side.

I was flying through the air with both my arms pointing skywards. Geoff had hit the ball so hard that when my left hand made contact with it, I had to tense the muscles in my arm and wrist. Otherwise the ball would have knocked my hand aside.
To my great relief, the ball ricocheted up into the murky gloom of the East End night and over the bar.

My team mates could hardly believe their eyes. They ran up to me en masse to shower me with their congratulations. We were still in the League Cup.

A press photographer standing behind the goal captured me executing the save from Geoff’s penalty. It’s one of my favourite photographs, it often turns up in books about football (including this one – see the frontispiece), though I haven’t got a copy myself. It’s very atmospheric, with the floodlight piercing the gloom above our heads. In contrast to the animated action of penalty-taker and goalkeeper, three Stoke defenders stand with their hands on their hips, presumably resigned to an inevitable goal. The Upton Park pitch looks like a ploughed field and my jersey is caked in mud. I like the photograph, not only because it exemplifies how British football used to be, but also because it captures both the drama and the atmosphere of the occasion. As I study the photograph, the save ceases to command my attention. I pick up the incidental but evocative detail in the image: the players are not dressed like advertising hoardings for their club sponsors; in the background the packed terraces where not a single replica shirt can be seen, and the half-time number board – it is this detail that conjures up the flavour of football of that era. Football as a central force in people’s lives.

Over the years football photography has changed almost as much as the sport itself. Most of today’s press reports are accompanied by a shot of two players in competition with each other for the ball in pin-sharp detail. Telephoto lenses are wonderful, but what they have done is to take all the atmosphere and sense of occasion out of football photography. The telephoto lens limits the photographer’s field of vision to a very small area, so that what we often see now is a close-cropped image of two players challenging for the ball in a combative tangle of limbs. The bigger picture – the context of crowd, weather and so on – is excluded, precisely the details that are so evocative in that
shot of me saving Geoff Hurst’s penalty. This narrow focus on the individual at the expense of the panoramic view (or, if you like, the social context) is an apt symbol of the way the game is today.

It took another two games before Stoke City eventually got the better of West Ham, and so progress to that history-making first appearance at Wembley. First, at Hillsborough, ninety minutes plus half an hour of extra time failed to produce a goal. In the second replay, at Old Trafford, Bobby Moore deputized in goal for a spell while West Ham’s keeper Bobby Ferguson was receiving treatment for concussion. After goals from Mike Bernard, Peter Dobing and Terry Conroy finally secured a thrilling and hard-fought 3–2 victory, we could begin to look forward to our day in London.

Our opponents there were Chelsea. They were the bookies’ favourites to win the League Cup, but our confidence was sky high. Chelsea were stylish and swaggering. In Alan Hudson, Charlie Cooke, Peter Houseman and Peter Osgood they could boast players with as much flair as their flared trousers. Dave Sexton’s side were far from being simply a collection of football artists and King’s Road poseurs, however. David Webb, Paddy Mulligan and Ron Harris provided Chelsea with steel and backbone. They were a formidable team, but on the big day they were not quite formidable enough.

Terry Conroy gave us the lead with a choice header following a cross from George Eastham. Following his goal, Terry appeared to go off into a dream. I’d seen this sort of thing before – a good player gets a few nice early touches on the ball, scores a goal and then thinks his day’s work is done. How easy it is to lose momentum and a superior position thrown away when one player reacts like this.

Seeing Terry start to coast, I shouted to Jackie Marsh to get upfield and snap him out of his stupor. A few well-chosen words from Jackie did the trick and moments later Terry was back to his old self, hustling and harassing the Chelsea defence, making
darting runs across our front line and tracking back with John Dempsey when Chelsea pushed forward.

With the half-time interval approaching, Chelsea put themselves back into the game. Alan Bloor, who up to this point had been having a fine game, failed to clear his lines and the ball found its way to the feet of Peter Osgood. As he was about to get in a shot on goal, Ossy lost his footing on a divot. His tumble made me hesitate for a moment in coming out, and Peter, lying prostrate on the ground, hooked the ball past me. We went into half time level.

Both sides battled to gain the upper hand in the second half. We were two evenly balanced sides but the deadlock was broken after seventy-three minutes and, thankfully, it was Stoke who achieved what proved to be the decisive breakthrough. Terry Conroy beat Ron Harris and his far-post cross found John Ritchie, who cushioned the ball back into the path of the oncoming Jimmy Greenhoff. Jimmy hit one of his trademark volleys, Peter Bonetti parried and there was the oldest player on the pitch, George Eastham, to prod the ball home to secure a 2–1 win.

George, at 35 years and 161 days, became the oldest recipient of a League Cup winner’s medal, while Stoke City’s victory over Chelsea gave me my second such gong and not a little satisfaction. My conviction on joining Stoke that they had the potential to win honours had now proved well founded. Happily I joined my team mates and the population of Stoke in celebrating our success to the full.

When a team from the provinces with no history of success wins a major trophy, the players and supporters go overboard. For days the city of Stoke took on a carnival atmosphere. It was reported that productivity in the potteries and coal mines of North Staffordshire suddenly rose dramatically. The city council gave us a civic banquet and over a quarter of a million people thronged the streets to see us parade the League Cup. The Lord Mayor, Arthur Cholerton, was in the process of arranging for
Stoke to be twinned with a town in Germany. At the civic banquet Mr Cholerton told us that his German counterpart had asked him, ‘Where is Stoke?’ ‘It’s where the League Cup is,’ replied Cholerton.

Our success in the League Cup was the highlight of what had been a marathon season for Stoke City. The records show that we played a total of sixty-seven matches in 1971–72, not to mention a number of friendlies. On top of my club commitments I was also involved with England. Our full back Jackie Marsh played sixty-five games that season, sixty-nine if you include the friendlies. Did I mention our rotation system? When you collapsed from exhaustion, you got a game off!

To cap what had been a great season for me, I had the honour of being voted the football writers’ Footballer of the Year. I was very proud to be the first goalkeeper to receive this prestigious title since my boyhood hero, Bert Trautmann, in 1956. I was delighted not just from a personal point of view, but also because the award acknowledged the importance of goalkeeping in general. As if to emphasize the point, Tottenham Hotspur’s Pat Jennings won it the following year.

When we were together in the England squad I was forever ‘selling’ Stoke City to Geoff Hurst. I firmly believed Stoke had a team good enough to win the First Division title. I kept telling Geoff that if he wanted to top up his collection of trophies with a League Championship medal he could do worse than take a trip to the Potteries. When West Ham decided to sell Geoff, I had a word with Tony Waddington, to the effect that Geoff would be a super acquisition for the club, and that he might be inclined to listen to an offer from Stoke.

Geoff duly signed for Stoke City in August 1972 and immediately made his presence felt in a team with high hopes of making a concerted challenge for the title. By October Stoke were established as a top ten team and had a good chance of catching the pacesetters Liverpool, Leeds and Arsenal. On 21 October we
travelled to Anfield, where we lost 2–1. Just another game, I thought. Little did I know, however, that this match was to be my last in English football.

The following day I reported to the Victoria Ground for treatment on a minor injury sustained against Liverpool. I was driving home to Madeley Heath, when I approached a part of the country road flanked by trees where it dipped before taking a sharp turn to the right. A car was idling along in front of me. Not a great place to overtake, but I was keen to be home with Ursula and her Sunday dinner. I swung my Ford Consul on to the other side of the road ready to pass the slower vehicle. Suddenly, I saw another vehicle approaching. I slammed my foot hard on the brake as a prickle of adrenalin rushed across my forehead. There was an almighty bang. There was the sound of glass shattering. Then nothing.

I’ve never liked the smell of hospitals. The stuffy, clinical fug was the first thing I sensed when I awoke from a deep, drug-induced sleep. I tried to open my eyes but nothing happened. It was as if someone had glued down my eyelids. I broke out in a cold sweat. I started to panic. A cool, clean, gentle hand held mine. Another hand eased me forward, then guided me back on to a tower of crisp pillows.

The nurse gave me a welcome cup of tea. She told me I had been in the operating theatre. That I’d had surgery on my eyes.

‘How bad?’ I asked.

‘You can’t see out of your left eye because it’s so swollen. But that should clear up in a day or two,’ she said.

‘And what about my other eye?’

‘I’m afraid you will have to wait until the surgeon pays you a visit,’ she said. ‘You’ve had a very delicate operation.’

It seemed an eternity before the surgeon eventually arrived at my bedside.

‘The operation went smoothly, Gordon,’ he said. ‘It lasted three hours. I had to do a lot of repair work. Fragments of the
windscreen perforated your right eye. I have to tell you, there has been damage to the retina.’

I summoned every ounce of courage I had to ask him the inevitable question. ‘How bad?’

‘It will be a couple of weeks before I know for sure. With damage of this nature there can be all manner of complications. You have a deep wound extending from your scalp to your forehead, but that will heal in time. A colleague of mine is an excellent skin surgeon, he’ll see to it that the scars will not be too obtrusive.’

‘How bad?’ I asked again, trying to pin him down.

‘Your right eye?’

I nodded. At last he committed himself. ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t put the chances at better than evens.’

Three days later the swelling on my left eye had subsided sufficiently to allow me to see. I asked for a mirror. I wasn’t a pretty sight. When a nurse arrived to change my dressing, the full extent of my injuries was brought home to me. I had more than two hundred stitches running from my face to my scalp. I was later to discover that this was only the half of it. The surgeon had also inserted over a hundred micro-stitches inside the socket of my right eye and around the periphery of the retina. I hadn’t a clue how much that surgeon was paid for his skills and care. But whatever it was, in my book, it could never be enough.

I can’t put into words the extent to which the love and support of Ursula, our children and the rest of our family helped me through the most harrowing and desperate time of my life. Nor can I ever truly express my gratitude to the surgeon, doctors, nurses and other members of the North Staffordshire Hospital who gave me such tender care and attention. Even now, all these years later, remembering the kindness and love I felt from everybody brings a lump to my throat.

As the days passed I made a concerted effort, both mentally and physically, to come to terms with my disability. At first I
thought I could simply carry on as if enjoying sight in both eyes. Then one day I leaned over to pick up a cup of tea that was standing on my bedside table and was shocked to grasp thin air. That’s when the reality of my situation really hit home. I prayed that when the dressing was removed once and for all, the sight in my right eye would return. I remember thinking, If I can’t even get the angle right to pick up a cup of tea, how will I ever judge the flight and speed of a football again? Perhaps I shouldn’t have been thinking about it, but football was all I knew. How could I provide for my family if I couldn’t play again?