MusicDating
Euro 2016 Prediction League Champion!!
Written by Oliver Kay in the Times -
They think it’s all over. In one sense, it soon will be. Their achievement will endure, their legend enhanced with each passing year, but, for many of England’s World Cup-winning heroes of 1966, dinner at Wembley next Saturday will represent a last supper of sorts. After 50 years of Hurst, there is a desire to savour the golden anniversary celebrations, treasure those fading, sepia-tinged memories, toast absent friends, embrace for perhaps one last time and then settle quietly into enjoying the rest of their deeply fulfilled lives.
They are old men now. Sir Geoff Hurst, the hat-trick hero in the final, is as bright as a button at 74, but others have found the passage of time less easy. At least three of Hurst’s former team-mates — Ray Wilson, Nobby Stiles, Martin Peters — have had Alzheimer’s disease diagnosed, cruelly erasing their memories of an historic triumph and, far more painfully, blighting their day-to-day existence; Jack Charlton admits his memories of the day fade in and out; Sir Bobby Charlton is described by friends as “an old man now”, at 78, and barely speaks publicly these days, his various ambassadorial duties becoming a chore; Gordon Banks, the great goalkeeper, is battling against kidney cancer; Jimmy Greaves is struggling to make any kind of recovery after suffering a stroke last year; George Cohen is still smiling after three fights with cancer but now finds it hard to move around.
With a few understandable exceptions, they will gather at Wembley 50 years to the day after their triumph — in front of almost 1,200 paying guests — in a vast suite named after Bobby Moore, the captain and golden boy, who died of bowel cancer in 1993 at the age of 51. Moore, unthinkably, was the first of the gang to die; the ebullient Alan Ball died after having a heart attack fighting a fire in his garden in 2007 at the age of 61; of the other members of the squad, John Connelly died in 2012 and Gerry Byrne and Ron Springett have passed away in the past 12 months; Sir Alf Ramsey, the manager, died in 1999, and his two assistants, Harold Shepherdson and Les Cocker, passed away years earlier. Yes, “absent friends” will certainly be a popular and poignant toast when Wembley stages the latest and perhaps the last large-scale reunion of England’s World Cup winners.
“We have kept getting together every year, most of us,” Jack Charlton says over breakfast, the morning after a 1966 dinner in Stoke-on-Trent. “We would play golf and the wives would go shopping and then we would all have a dinner at a big hotel in the evening. We went to Blackpool one year, Lytham St Anne’s. One year we were up near us in Newcastle, a couple down south. It’s just that … a lot of the lads are feeling that . . . ”
“There’s a feeling that this year might be the last big reunion they have,” his wife Pat says.
Because 50 years would seem like a perfect cut-off? “It’s not so much that,” she says. “It’s that a lot of the players aren’t really capable now. Most of them are in their late 70s. Jack’s in his 80s. A lot of them can’t do it any more. They’re not in a good way, some of them.”
Are you well, Jack? “He’s well in himself,” Pat says. “But your memory isn’t good, is it, love?”
“It’s bloody awful,” Jack says, still with that fantastic smile. “I’m sitting here trying to think and Pat’s having to keep reminding me.”
On some days, his memories of the World Cup final on July 30 1966 — England 4 West Germany 2 — are vivid, but they are more vague on the day we meet. “I remember [at the final whistle] I went down on my knees and sort of said a little prayer,” he says. “Then I ran up to one [a team-mate] and picked him up, put him down again and then went to somebody else and picked him up. I got to our Bob, my brother, and he hugged me and I hugged him. I remember running about with the lads on the pitch. We went off to the dressing room and then we left and went to a hotel and then we went for a couple of beers. Afterwards I met up with a journalist, James Mossop, who was a friend of mine, and we went out on the town.”
“That’ll be why he can’t remember,” Pat says with a chuckle.
“Aye, that’ll be right,” Jack says, appreciatively. “I just remember . . . I just remember . . . that it felt wonderful.”
It is a pleasant May morning in Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire. A clock ticks in the living room of a cottage. Pat Wilson is making tea and coffee. Her husband, Ray, is doodling, breaking off only to burst into song.
One day in May, I’ll come and say
Happy the bride that the sun shines on today
“He has always sung,” Pat says of her husband, the man who was regarded as the best left back in the world 50 years ago. “He used to wake up singing and it would drive me mad, but I like it now. I’ll put him his CDs on — mostly Frank Sinatra, although he’s taken to Sammy Davis Jr now and Ella Fitzgerald — and he sings. He loves the old ones. Frank Sinatra is his favourite. He’s happy. It’s all I can ask for, that he’s happy.”
It is a sweet, uplifting, yet humbling experience, spending a morning with the Wilsons. “Bittersweet” would probably seem more appropriate, given the devastating effects of Alzheimer’s, but this brief snapshot into their lives was, genuinely, heartwarming.
You would not know you were in the living room of a World Cup winner. There is no football memorabilia on show save for a row of mannequins on a shelf, among them three painted in the colours of Huddersfield Town, Everton and England. Instead, in pride of place, on the wall, is a collection of Ray’s drawings — “strange things,” Pat calls them. They are drawn in biro, looking like aliens on a totem pole. One of them has the caption: “I am a happy man.”
“The thing is, he had never even doodled before,” Pat says. “It has all come out since his Alzheimer’s. Our daughter-in-law, our son’s partner, is a chiropodist and she said that some of her older patients had these adult colouring books, so she sent for one for Ray. He started off doing the colouring and then he started the drawing. He’s been doing it for about two years. I wouldn’t say non-stop, but it has been more or less non-stop. We have hundreds of them.”
“I bought them,” Ray pipes up, out of nowhere.
Pat shakes her head in fond amusement, laughing along with her husband’s joke. He is full of them, little quips that tell you he is still sharp in certain ways, certainly still full of mischief. “Oh dear, dear, dear,” Pat says. “Don’t put that in the newspaper.” Ray is asked if he can explain what he is drawing. “I’ve got no idea,” he says. “I just start off and then I think, ‘Oh that’s a good idea. I’ll put that in.’ ”
It is clearly very therapeutic. “Oh yes,” Pat says. “And the thing is, if he wasn’t doing this, what would he be doing? He would be sat here watching that thing [the television] all day. We’ll watch sport — tennis, cricket, football — but put a drama on and he can’t keep track of what is going on. But he can watch the football and he’ll know exactly what’s going on — ‘That was offside. That was never offside’ — but he doesn’t bother that much about it now anyway because he’s more interested in his drawing.”
The gala dinner at Wembley is, sadly, a non-starter for the Wilsons — just as it is for Nobby Stiles, his fellow Alzheimer’s sufferer. “We kept going to the reunions until the last few years, not now,” Pat says. “Ray doesn’t like going out of his comfort zone really. We don’t go out much these days. He goes to daycare twice a week, absolutely loves it, but that’s about it.
“He’s happy, though. He always had a temper from when I first met him, but that has disappeared now. Sometimes he’ll bring me a big bunch of daffodils or bluebells from out by the reservoir; if anyone caught him he’d be in blooming jail because you’re not supposed to do that! Or he might bring me a bunch of weeds instead . . .
“Ray has been very good. He has never been in denial. It was 2004 when we realised — or I realised — that he was doing things that . . . well, he was starting to repeat himself, one thing and the other. He took himself off to the doctor’s about it. He went to a private clinic in Bradford and he was diagnosed and it has been very gradually downhill with it really. My dad had Alzheimer’s. He died after five years or something, but there was no medication in those days, so whatever Ray is taking, it’s obviously helping him. He’s not getting better and he’s probably slowly getting worse, but it is slow and he hasn’t lost his sense of humour. He’ll never lose his sense of humour. He’s daft. He’s bonkers — his words, not mine. He’s happy and that’s all I can ask for.”
They think it’s all over. In one sense, it soon will be. Their achievement will endure, their legend enhanced with each passing year, but, for many of England’s World Cup-winning heroes of 1966, dinner at Wembley next Saturday will represent a last supper of sorts. After 50 years of Hurst, there is a desire to savour the golden anniversary celebrations, treasure those fading, sepia-tinged memories, toast absent friends, embrace for perhaps one last time and then settle quietly into enjoying the rest of their deeply fulfilled lives.
They are old men now. Sir Geoff Hurst, the hat-trick hero in the final, is as bright as a button at 74, but others have found the passage of time less easy. At least three of Hurst’s former team-mates — Ray Wilson, Nobby Stiles, Martin Peters — have had Alzheimer’s disease diagnosed, cruelly erasing their memories of an historic triumph and, far more painfully, blighting their day-to-day existence; Jack Charlton admits his memories of the day fade in and out; Sir Bobby Charlton is described by friends as “an old man now”, at 78, and barely speaks publicly these days, his various ambassadorial duties becoming a chore; Gordon Banks, the great goalkeeper, is battling against kidney cancer; Jimmy Greaves is struggling to make any kind of recovery after suffering a stroke last year; George Cohen is still smiling after three fights with cancer but now finds it hard to move around.
With a few understandable exceptions, they will gather at Wembley 50 years to the day after their triumph — in front of almost 1,200 paying guests — in a vast suite named after Bobby Moore, the captain and golden boy, who died of bowel cancer in 1993 at the age of 51. Moore, unthinkably, was the first of the gang to die; the ebullient Alan Ball died after having a heart attack fighting a fire in his garden in 2007 at the age of 61; of the other members of the squad, John Connelly died in 2012 and Gerry Byrne and Ron Springett have passed away in the past 12 months; Sir Alf Ramsey, the manager, died in 1999, and his two assistants, Harold Shepherdson and Les Cocker, passed away years earlier. Yes, “absent friends” will certainly be a popular and poignant toast when Wembley stages the latest and perhaps the last large-scale reunion of England’s World Cup winners.
“We have kept getting together every year, most of us,” Jack Charlton says over breakfast, the morning after a 1966 dinner in Stoke-on-Trent. “We would play golf and the wives would go shopping and then we would all have a dinner at a big hotel in the evening. We went to Blackpool one year, Lytham St Anne’s. One year we were up near us in Newcastle, a couple down south. It’s just that … a lot of the lads are feeling that . . . ”
“There’s a feeling that this year might be the last big reunion they have,” his wife Pat says.
Because 50 years would seem like a perfect cut-off? “It’s not so much that,” she says. “It’s that a lot of the players aren’t really capable now. Most of them are in their late 70s. Jack’s in his 80s. A lot of them can’t do it any more. They’re not in a good way, some of them.”
Are you well, Jack? “He’s well in himself,” Pat says. “But your memory isn’t good, is it, love?”
“It’s bloody awful,” Jack says, still with that fantastic smile. “I’m sitting here trying to think and Pat’s having to keep reminding me.”
On some days, his memories of the World Cup final on July 30 1966 — England 4 West Germany 2 — are vivid, but they are more vague on the day we meet. “I remember [at the final whistle] I went down on my knees and sort of said a little prayer,” he says. “Then I ran up to one [a team-mate] and picked him up, put him down again and then went to somebody else and picked him up. I got to our Bob, my brother, and he hugged me and I hugged him. I remember running about with the lads on the pitch. We went off to the dressing room and then we left and went to a hotel and then we went for a couple of beers. Afterwards I met up with a journalist, James Mossop, who was a friend of mine, and we went out on the town.”
“That’ll be why he can’t remember,” Pat says with a chuckle.
“Aye, that’ll be right,” Jack says, appreciatively. “I just remember . . . I just remember . . . that it felt wonderful.”
It is a pleasant May morning in Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire. A clock ticks in the living room of a cottage. Pat Wilson is making tea and coffee. Her husband, Ray, is doodling, breaking off only to burst into song.
One day in May, I’ll come and say
Happy the bride that the sun shines on today
“He has always sung,” Pat says of her husband, the man who was regarded as the best left back in the world 50 years ago. “He used to wake up singing and it would drive me mad, but I like it now. I’ll put him his CDs on — mostly Frank Sinatra, although he’s taken to Sammy Davis Jr now and Ella Fitzgerald — and he sings. He loves the old ones. Frank Sinatra is his favourite. He’s happy. It’s all I can ask for, that he’s happy.”
It is a sweet, uplifting, yet humbling experience, spending a morning with the Wilsons. “Bittersweet” would probably seem more appropriate, given the devastating effects of Alzheimer’s, but this brief snapshot into their lives was, genuinely, heartwarming.
You would not know you were in the living room of a World Cup winner. There is no football memorabilia on show save for a row of mannequins on a shelf, among them three painted in the colours of Huddersfield Town, Everton and England. Instead, in pride of place, on the wall, is a collection of Ray’s drawings — “strange things,” Pat calls them. They are drawn in biro, looking like aliens on a totem pole. One of them has the caption: “I am a happy man.”
“The thing is, he had never even doodled before,” Pat says. “It has all come out since his Alzheimer’s. Our daughter-in-law, our son’s partner, is a chiropodist and she said that some of her older patients had these adult colouring books, so she sent for one for Ray. He started off doing the colouring and then he started the drawing. He’s been doing it for about two years. I wouldn’t say non-stop, but it has been more or less non-stop. We have hundreds of them.”
“I bought them,” Ray pipes up, out of nowhere.
Pat shakes her head in fond amusement, laughing along with her husband’s joke. He is full of them, little quips that tell you he is still sharp in certain ways, certainly still full of mischief. “Oh dear, dear, dear,” Pat says. “Don’t put that in the newspaper.” Ray is asked if he can explain what he is drawing. “I’ve got no idea,” he says. “I just start off and then I think, ‘Oh that’s a good idea. I’ll put that in.’ ”
It is clearly very therapeutic. “Oh yes,” Pat says. “And the thing is, if he wasn’t doing this, what would he be doing? He would be sat here watching that thing [the television] all day. We’ll watch sport — tennis, cricket, football — but put a drama on and he can’t keep track of what is going on. But he can watch the football and he’ll know exactly what’s going on — ‘That was offside. That was never offside’ — but he doesn’t bother that much about it now anyway because he’s more interested in his drawing.”
The gala dinner at Wembley is, sadly, a non-starter for the Wilsons — just as it is for Nobby Stiles, his fellow Alzheimer’s sufferer. “We kept going to the reunions until the last few years, not now,” Pat says. “Ray doesn’t like going out of his comfort zone really. We don’t go out much these days. He goes to daycare twice a week, absolutely loves it, but that’s about it.
“He’s happy, though. He always had a temper from when I first met him, but that has disappeared now. Sometimes he’ll bring me a big bunch of daffodils or bluebells from out by the reservoir; if anyone caught him he’d be in blooming jail because you’re not supposed to do that! Or he might bring me a bunch of weeds instead . . .
“Ray has been very good. He has never been in denial. It was 2004 when we realised — or I realised — that he was doing things that . . . well, he was starting to repeat himself, one thing and the other. He took himself off to the doctor’s about it. He went to a private clinic in Bradford and he was diagnosed and it has been very gradually downhill with it really. My dad had Alzheimer’s. He died after five years or something, but there was no medication in those days, so whatever Ray is taking, it’s obviously helping him. He’s not getting better and he’s probably slowly getting worse, but it is slow and he hasn’t lost his sense of humour. He’ll never lose his sense of humour. He’s daft. He’s bonkers — his words, not mine. He’s happy and that’s all I can ask for.”