Authors: Gordon Banks
How good are football pundits at seeing the future? In the summer of 1961 ten national newspaper journalists were asked to predict who would be among the honours in 1961–62. The consensus of opinion was that Spurs would retain their league title, Aston Villa and Birmingham City would contest the FA Cup final, Everton would land the League Cup, Liverpool and Sunderland gain promotion from Division Two and Queens Park Rangers would be champions of Division Three. Well, at least they got Liverpool’s promotion right.
One of the great attractions of football is that the game is so unpredictable. Following our improved league form and our appearance in the FA Cup final the previous season, I was convinced Leicester City would continue to improve this term and that we had a very good chance of winning some silverware. I was so wrong that I could have been writing for the national newspapers.
The close season had seen a flurry of activity on the transfer market and some notable moves. Jimmy Greaves eventually completed his £99,999 record move from AC Milan to Spurs, Brian Clough left Middlesbrough for Sunderland for a fee of £45,000, while at Leicester Ian King followed Ken Leek out of the door when he signed for Southampton for £27,500. Another transfer of note was completed in October when Stanley Matthews left Blackpool and signed for his hometown club Stoke City for the second time in his career. On the managerial front, the former Wolves and England captain, Billy Wright, took over from George Swindin as manager of Arsenal. Matt Gillies, meanwhile, seemed happy with his squad at Leicester because he made just one signing in the close season, Davie Thomson from
Dunfermline, shock winners of the Scottish Cup when, in the replayed final, they had beaten Celtic 2–0. Incidentally, Davie scored one of the Dunfermline goals that day. Unfortunately, Davie found the transition to English football too great a leap and, after being dogged by a troublesome cartilage, eventually returned to Scotland.
As Spurs had won the double they played an FA Select XI in the Charity Shield in the curtain-raiser to the season. Spurs were as formidable as ever, winning 3–2 against what was more or less the current England team before a White Hart Lane crowd of 36,595.
Spurs’ double success also benefited Leicester City. As Spurs were involved in the European Champions Cup for the first time, the FA ruled that Leicester, the Cup runners-up, would participate in the European Cup-Winners Cup. It would be my first venture into European football and I was looking forward to the experience with great enthusiasm.
In the close season I had travelled abroad for the first time when Leicester toured South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). I can’t remember too much about this trip, other than marvelling at the totally different culture and the natural beauty of those countries. Of the five matches we played we won all but the last, a 1–1 draw in Johannesburg against the Transvaal.
On the day Spurs were winning the Charity Shield, we lost a pre-season friendly at St Mirren 3–1. On the journey home we met the Burnley players who had been playing a combined Hearts and Hibernian XI. In these days of intensive tribal rivalry among some supporters, the notion of two neighbouring clubs fielding a combined team is unthinkable. But this used to happen quite often for a friendly or testimonial match as a way of attracting a larger attendance to a game that had no competitive significance. Indeed, some 21,000 had watched Burnley against the Edinburgh combination.
Pre-season preparation in the sixties regularly featured matches against continental opposition, usually part-timers from
Denmark and Holland who saw English football as the benchmark they had to aim for in their own development. Today a team of part-timers from the Continent would not be much of an attraction to an English club, or its supporters. In the early sixties, however, any team from the Continent held an attraction. Intercontinental flights were burgeoning, Europe was shrinking and the easy accessibility of England made it a popular destination for teams from across the North Sea.
In the summer of 1961 Danish clubs Odense, Aarhus, AGF Jutland, Aalborg, Holbaek BK and FC Copenhagen all enjoyed fact-finding tours of England as did the Dutch clubs, MVV Maastricht, Ajax, DWS Amsterdam, Sparta Rotterdam, FC Den Haag, Utrecht and FC Zwolle. Many English fans were curious to see what continental football was like, and study the different techniques of foreign players. The English game may well have been developing apace following the defeats of our national team at the hands of Hungary in the mid-fifties, but Danish and Dutch football was coming on in leaps and bounds. The old balance of power in which Italy, Spain, Germany, England and Scotland had been head and shoulders above the rest in Europe, was about to change irrevocably.
Our domestic programme began at Manchester City. Invariably a new football season kicks off under gold-leaf sunshine and our first game at Maine Road was no exception. Unfortunately for us, the opposition was just as hot as the weather, the home side running out 3–1 winners. Then when that was swiftly followed by a 1–0 defeat by Arsenal at Filbert Street on the Wednesday evening, all that pre-season optimism had taken a bit of a jolt. Still, a domestic football season is a long-distance race, not a sprint. We firmly believed that, in time, we would hit a vein of consistent form to put us within reach of the top of the table.
It never happened. Our play throughout 1961–62 was characterized by inconsistency. Only once did we string three victories together: against Manchester United, Cardiff and Chelsea in
April, and even that modest little run ended with a considerable bump when we lost 8–3 at Aston Villa. A team scoring three goals away from home should reasonably expect to get something out of the game. But on the day Villa scored from every chance they had. Matt Gillies in fact fielded an unchanged team for our next game at Bolton, which, to my mind, indicates he also saw the Villa match as being ‘just one of those games’.
We ended the season in mid-table. Combined with a third-round exit from the FA Cup, this was a considerable let-down after the exciting climax to the previous season and the high hopes that that engendered. I do remember some moments to savour among the dross. For one thing, we exacted a measure of revenge for our Cup final misery by beating Spurs 2–1 at White Hart Lane, with goals from Ken Keyworth and Colin Appleton. We were highly motivated that day and turned on our best display of the season. Another highlight came at the end of August when we drew 4–4 with Arsenal at Highbury. For players and fans alike this was a cracking game of football.
And there’s one more memory that stays with me, ironically from that frustrating FA Cup defeat by Stoke City at the Victoria Ground. In the Stoke team was Stanley Matthews, who at forty-seven years of age could still weave his magic, and appeared eminently capable of coping with the pace and rigours of the game. In the first half Stan latched on to the Stoke right half Bobby Howitt’s perfectly timed pass, which caught the Leicester defence pushing on. Stan raced on to the ball and was now one-on-one with me. He produced the shimmy he was so famous for, I committed myself to a save to my right, Stan coolly went the other way and calmly stroked the ball into the net.
Years later whenever I met Stan, he would always introduce me by saying, ‘This is Gordon Banks. Not many people scored against Gordon – but I did!’
The highlight of a dismal year was our involvement in the European Cup-Winners Cup. None of the Leicester players had
any experience of European competition. It was a journey into the unknown.
The first round pitched us against Glenavon from Northern Ireland, a gentle initiation against modest opposition. After our 4–1 victory in the first leg at Windsor Park the return tie at Filbert Street appeared to be a formality, which may have helped restrict the crowd to 10,000, less than half the normal average. We applied ourselves to the task in a professional manner, winning 3–1 (aggregate 7–2) to progress to the next round. Next we drew the plum tie everyone had been hoping for: Atletico Madrid. Everyone connected with the club was licking their lips at the prospect, but on the day of the first leg at Filbert Street, I found myself in a situation that today defies belief.
Two weeks previously I had been training with the rest of my Leicester team mates when I was called over by Matt Gillies.
‘Good news, Gordon,’ said Matt, ‘Walter Winterbottom has included you in the England squad for the Portugal game.’
This came as a huge surprise. I thought I had been playing reasonably well in goal for Leicester, but to be called up for England was a quantum leap in my career. My delight turned to shock when I discovered that England were due to play Portugal on the same day Leicester were playing Atletico Madrid!
I was in a real dilemma. I couldn’t let the club, my team mates and the Leicester supporters down, yet to decline Walter Winterbottom’s invitation to join the England squad might mean that I would never get another chance at international level.
I talked it over with Ursula, discussed it with my parents and spent much time mulling it over myself. I referred it to Matt Gillies and Bert Johnson, then came to a decision. I would attend both games.
In 1961 the Wembley floodlights afforded insufficient illumination for a football match. Consequently, England games took place on a Wednesday afternoon. With the October kick-off time set at 2.30 p.m. I reasoned that the England game would
finish at around 4.30 and, if I got my skates on, I could make it back to Leicester in time for the game against Atletico.
The idea of a player being involved in a World Cup qualifying game, then dashing off to play for his club in a European match on the same day would be unthinkable now, but it did have a precedent. Some years earlier the Arsenal goalkeeper, Jack Kelsey, had played on a Wednesday afternoon in Cardiff for Wales against England, then hurried back to London to play for the Gunners in a prestigious friendly against Juventus. I reasoned that if he could get back from Cardiff to London, I could make it from London to Leicester.
England beat Portugal 2–0, but what was notable about the game was the performance of Portugal’s young number 8, Eusebio. Countless times when running from deep, Eusebio posed all manner of problems for England, and gave every indication of being a great player in the making. Twice, from distance, he smacked powerful shots off the post with the first-choice keeper, Ron Springett, floundering on the ground. Ron was a super goalkeeper, but on that day was lucky to keep a clean sheet. At nineteen Eusebio was a totally unknown quantity, but his name was certainly on everyone’s lips by the end of the match.
Within twenty minutes of the final whistle I was on my way back to Leicester. Now, you might imagine that as a First Division player on the fringes of the England team, my mode of transport would be a sixties classic like a Ford Zephyr or Consul, the latter with its large bench seat in the front. Or a sporty number like an Austin-Healey Sprite, or perhaps a Vauxhall Victor, with the American-style fly-away wings. How about a Mk. II Jaguar, a Renault Dauphine or even a two-tone Vauxhall Cresta with white-walled wheels? No – what got me from A to B was a small Ford van (though not, I hasten to add, the same one with which I had terrified Duggie Livingstone at Chesterfield). Even driving with my foot flat to the boards for the best part of the journey I cut it fine, arriving at Filbert Street just half an hour before kick-off.
Atletico Madrid, like every other club in Spain – in the world, for that matter – lived in the shadow of Real Madrid. In the first round of the Cup-Winners Cup Atletico had beaten the French side Sedan home and away by 7–2 on aggregate. Though this was Atletico’s first time in the Cup-Winners Cup, they had played in the 1958–59 European Cup, having finished runners-up to the holders Real in the Spanish First Division. A storming campaign, in which they brushed aside Irish, Bulgarian and German opposition, eventually ended in a replayed semi-final against, inevitably, Real Madrid. They had also defeated Real in the Spanish cup finals of 1960 and ’61. So we had absolutely no illusions about their calibre as a team of quality and fighting spirit.
Despite my mad dash from Wembley I was raring to go, and so were my Leicester team mates. Gillies had not been to see Atletico play, nor sent anyone to spy on them. We knew nothing about their style of play, how they might approach the game and the best way to play against them. Atletico, however, had sent one of their coaching staff to watch our previous game, a 2–0 home defeat by Blackpool.
For the want of a better plan, we set about Atletico as we did any side visiting Filbert Street. We took the game to them from the start and laid siege to their goal. Technically accomplished and comfortable on the ball, Atletico seemed quite happy to soak up the pressure, though they were always looking to catch us on the break. This pattern would prove to be all too familiar in European competition in years to come, but it was a new and puzzling tactic to us then. They were clearly ready to leave with a goalless draw. But they didn’t get it.
Ken Keyworth put us ahead and had a second disallowed when the referee ruled that he’d been fouled en route to goal. This baffling decision was European lesson number two for me: referees from other countries interpret the rules differently from British officials.
None the less, it seemed as if Ken’s goal was going to be
enough. With less than a minute remaining, however, we were served European lesson number three. In the closing stages of the game we should have played possession football and killed the game off. Instead, we staged one last assault on the Spanish goal in the hope of extending our lead to make life difficult for them in the return leg. Our attack broke down; Atletico’s Ramiro brought the ball quickly out of defence and played it up to their number 8, Adelardo, who made ground fast with the Leicester midfield and rearguard struggling to get back and reform; he played the ball inside to Mendoza, who swept the ball into the net. Within seconds of the game restarting the referee blew his whistle for time. Through our inexperience of European football we’d fallen prey to a classic sucker punch.