By The 1974 World Cup I Had Grown But We Had Declined

Brazil had been allowed to keep the Jules Rimet trophy after their third World Cup victory in Mexico in 1970. I think they kept a part of me too.

By 1974 I had been at the big school for three years and had already gleaned what seemed a lifetime of knowledge on every subject from the reproduction of cells to bodily urges whenever the girls from Werrington or Wittering came into the classroom.

Football, though, occupied my every waking moment. My secondary education was driven by a desire to totally immerse myself in Leeds United, Division One and England. Don Revie’s Leeds had, of course, made life difficult for me as they would always do. Whenever Leeds fell at the final hurdle, there was always plenty of jeering and cheering in what had once been called a playground.

Many of the other boys supported Spurs, as did Mr Perry the PE teacher. Martin Chivers was a major talking point and Martin Peters still a major player as he had been four years earlier at Wembley. Mr Perry, whose haircut had more bubbles than an Aero bar, let alone the Chivers version, thought he too could have played for Tottenham. Like Mr Griffiths before him, he wasn’t interested in teaching football to young boys – only in gathering around him supporters who would worship him as he scored the winning goal in every ‘match’ we played.

England couldn’t roll over Poland the previous year and so failed to get to the 1974 World Cup Finals in West Germany. The national team’s failure was compounded three days later by tragedy in my family when my grandmother had a brain haemorrhage and she and my grandfather had to go into hospital – never to return for extra time.

My father never recovered his love for the life which seemed to have turned against him. Sadly, he saw the rest of the family as doing the same. He turned his back on us in the same way that England would do on Alf Ramsay. My only friends were the Leeds United players on the radio and – on the few occasions when I was allowed to stay up – on Match of the Day.

On the same day that Granny went into hospital, Mick Jones scored the winner at Elland Road against Liverpool. Victories against Liverpool were rare and so I re-enacted the goal for silent hours on end at the bottom of the garden, punctuated only by my own winning commentaries that could easily have come from David Coleman or Hugh Johns.

The cornfield beyond the garden was now a building site with new houses in various stages of completion. My other grandfather, who had watched the World Cup Final at our house in 1966, had now moved to the neighbouring village of Northborough: so my little patch of grass under the apple tree was truly an island I never wanted to escape from and nobody wanted to visit.

My sister was preparing to leave for a nursing career in London that summer so eyes that weren’t focused on the hospital were focused on that instead. As a result, I was able to watch pretty much every game of the World Cup, quietly and quite alone, on the ‘new’ Hitachi colour television which had arrived the previous year, courtesy of Princess Ann getting married. I will always be grateful to her for giving us the time to tune it in properly before the World Cup started.

The first game was a dour affair between Yugoslavia and Brazil. The Brazilians seemed to feel my own insecurity abroad and didn’t smile as much as they used to do. Paul Breitner did score a wonderful long-range strike to get the completion moving the next day and Lawrie McMenemy made the TV panel smile with his calling of Rijsbergen ‘Rice Pudding.’ Unfortunately he made the same joke in every subsequent broadcast and the Dutch team had the last laugh by reaching the Final as I knew they would, having watched Ajax of Amsterdam win three consecutive European Cups.

Sparwasser’s goal for East Germany caused major arguments in the German ‘family’ just like the numerous kitchen debates in our house. But that was in the adjacent space. In the living room I was now a living part of total football. Johan Cruyff was every bit as amazing as my Uncle Dick told me he was on his annual trips over from Rotterdam. ‘How many World Cups have Holland won though?’ I would tease him. In 1974 they came very close until Gerd Muller popped up yet again.

See also:

1970: http://sportales.com/soccer/the-1970-world-cup-the-end-of-a-golden-age/

1966: http://sportales.com/soccer/i-was-six-in-1966-and-thought-the-world-cup-was-just-for-fun/

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