Authors: Gordon Banks
It was a bitter blow to concede such a late goal. Back in the dressing room Ken Keyworth was still fuming about the goal he had had disallowed but Colin Appleton tempered our disappointment, telling us it was all square, all to play for in Madrid. He was convinced we’d win the return leg.
The return leg was a belter of a game. It wasn’t in our nature to sit back, absorb pressure and hope to catch Atletico on the break, so we adopted Matt Gillies’s usual game plan: ‘Go out there and give it a go.’
In front of over 50,000 vociferous Spaniards in the Vincente Calderón stadium we gave a good account of ourselves, but it was not to be our night. In front of their own fans Atletico were far more positive in their approach and I soon found myself busy. Eventually their pressure bore fruit when Atletico were awarded a penalty following a foul on Mendoza. Fortunately, I anticipated correctly and managed to save Collar’s waist-high spot kick to my right. The respite, however, proved only temporary as Atletico were later awarded a second penalty. As Collar stepped up again I found myself with a dilemma on my hands. Would he hit the ball to my right as he had done previously? Or, having failed with his first attempt, choose the other side of the goal? As Collar prepared to take the kick I watched his eyes intently,
hoping that they might give an indication as to which side of my goal he was going to choose. In addressing the ball his face was inscrutable, his eyes gave no hint as to which side of my goal he would choose. I quickly made my mind up to dive to my right as I had done before. Collar had hit his first penalty at waist height, which for a goalkeeper is the optimum height at which to execute a penalty save as vital time is not taken up trying to get either down or up to the ball. Yet again Collar hit the ball to my right. This time, however, he fired high. There was no way I could get even a finger to the ball and 50,000 Spaniards roared their approval.
We never relented in our efforts to push them back. Howard Riley and Ken Keyworth both went close to equalizing but when Atletico added to their tally in the second half they were content to play keep-ball, and frustrate all our efforts to get back into the game. Leicester City’s first European adventure was over, but there was no disgrace in losing to such a good side, one much more experienced in the ways of European competition than us. Atletico Madrid went on to win the competition, beating Fiorentina of Italy in a replayed final that was held over until September of the following season!
With Jimmy Greaves now in their ranks, everyone expected Tottenham Hotspur to retain their League title in 1961–62. They didn’t. The champions were a team widely expected to struggle to maintain their First Division status. Ipswich Town had been promoted from Division Two the previous season and their manager, Alf Ramsey, worked a minor miracle in guiding his unfancied side – largely the same one that had won promotion – to the First Division title.
Ipswich Town may not have had any star players, but they were a proper team. They were a very well-balanced side that possessed creative players, a resolute defence and a pair of rampaging forwards in Ray Crawford and Ted Phillips, who between them notched over sixty goals. But the key to that Ipswich team
was the veteran Scot Jimmy Leadbetter. Originally brought in as an orthodox left winger, Alf Ramsey gave Jimmy a new role as a deep-lying, left-of-centre midfield player. Opposing teams were perplexed as to whose job it was to mark him, which left him a lot of space to exploit his vision and superb distribution.
Alf Ramsey proved himself to be a great motivator of his players and a wily strategist, qualities that, in time, would greatly benefit England and yours truly. His method at Ipswich was to get the players to fulfil their potential as individuals, while at the same time devising tactics that blended those players into a formidable unit. After they beat fancied Burnley 6–2 in September, they really hit their stride. Throughout the season Ipswich vied with Spurs, Burnley and Everton for the top spot in Division One. Both Spurs and Burnley were involved in Europe and both enjoyed runs in the FA Cup that eventually saw them meet in the final. Without such distractions Ipswich could concentrate on the League and when Spurs and Burnley both faltered at the wire, Burnley winning only one of their last seven games, Ipswich’s fresh and fluent football reaped handsome dividends. They finished three points ahead of Burnley and four ahead of Spurs to be arguably the most surprising Football League champions in the history of the game.
Having won the title, many football writers were still unconvinced about their pedigree, especially as our representatives in the following season’s European Cup. The
Daily Sketch
was among the doubters: ‘Ipswich, in the end, proved worthy champions. But they still lack sufficient quality in their ranks to make an impact in Europe. One fears that when they do take their bow in the European Cup, their first meeting with continental opposition will prove their undoing.’ That writer underestimated Alf Ramsey and his team. In Ipswich’s first European tie they beat Floriana Valletta of Malta 10–0 and 4–1!
Of all the clubs I visited as a player the one that provided the best hospitality was Ipswich Town. Whatever the result, a visit to Portman Road was a joy. This had much to do with the board
of directors, in particular their chairman John Cobbold and other members of the Cobbold family who were connected with the club. They owned Tolly Cobbold Ales, at the time the premier brewery in Suffolk, and were renowned for their hospitality, sense of humour and liking for a good time. When the Leicester City party arrived at Ipswich station for a game at Portman Road, the Cobbolds, and often other Ipswich directors such as Cyril Catchpole and Sir Charles Bunbury, would be there on the platform to meet us. Their cars would act as an escort for our team bus to Portman Road and once the game was over, the Cobbolds would accompany us back to the station and wave us off.
Never in my time in football did I come across directors like those at Ipswich. When Alf Ramsey was appointed Ipswich manager in 1955, John Cobbold took him into the boardroom and poured a couple of drinks.
‘This is the first and last time I’ll be serving you a drink in the boardroom, Alf,’ said Cobbold, who then threw Alf a key for the drinks cabinet. ‘From now on help yourself!’
Alf was never much of a drinker, just the occasional glass of wine with a meal, and I doubt whether he ever took Cobbold up on his offer in his entire time at Ipswich. But that gesture was typical of John Cobbold and, indeed, his fellow directors.
We once played Ipswich Town on Boxing Day and, it being the festive season, the Cobbolds were more than ever in party mood. After the game the Leicester directors were enjoying the considerable hospitality of the Ipswich boardroom when John Cobbald walked in with a pound of frozen sausages on his head. At first no one said anything, but eventually Leicester director Dennis Sharp plucked up the courage to ask Cobbold what he was doing.
‘Defrosting my tea, old boy,’ replied John Cobbold.
When Ipswich clinched the championship, Peter Wilson of the
Daily Mirror
interviewed the Ipswich chairman.
‘Champions! I suppose for the Ipswich board this has been a season of wine, women and song,’ Wilson suggested.
‘I can’t remember us doing much singing,’ replied Cobbold.
Immediately following Ipswich’s 2–0 victory over us at Filbert Street in March, the Leicester chairman Walter Needham extended the club’s hospitality to John Cobbold and his co-directors.
‘Would you care to join me in the boardroom for a quiet drink?’ asked Needham.
‘Yes,’ said Cobbold, ‘and six very loud ones!’
The Cobbolds’ ebullient nature, sense of humour and penchant for a drink and a good time were in sharp contrast to Alf Ramsey, who was, ostensibly, a quiet, sober and serious individual. Yet they got on famously. When Alf left the club to become manager of England in 1963, Ipswich as a team went into sharp decline, but the hospitality of the Ipswich board never faltered. To this day Ipswich Town enjoy a reputation for being a very friendly, family club whose board has continued to make considered rather than impulsive decisions – something exemplified in the fact that the club have only had ten managers since they gained entry to the Football League in 1938.
The next year, 1963, was a remarkable one, both personally and historically. This was the year of the Beatles and the Cuban missile crisis, Concorde and the death of JFK, Dr Beeching and Lady Chatterley, the Profumo affair and the Great Train Robbery, Charles de Gaulle’s ‘Non’ and
Dr No
. (Who could forget the sight of Ursula Andress rising glistening from the sea in that first Bond film?) Before the year was over I was to be in the running for the league and cup double, make my full debut for England in the most important game in our international calendar; and follow that up by facing the best international side in the world.
The summer of 1962 had been a frustrating one for me. When my name was listed in the England–Portugal match programme as being one of only two goalkeepers in Walter Winterbottom’s squad for the World Cup in Chile, I had high hopes of making
the final squad. But it wasn’t to be. Though both World Cup goalkeepers were from Sheffield, I wasn’t one of them. Wednesday’s Ron Springett and Alan Hodgkinson of United were Walter’s choices for the World Cup, while I was put on stand-by. I dutifully kept myself fit, spending countless hours on my own lapping the Filbert Street pitch.
At Leicester Charles Maley retired as secretary and was replaced by Eddie Plumley. While Maley, a highly efficient administrator and stickler for detail, lacked personal warmth, Eddie exuded warmth and friendliness, and his modernizing approach, not least in his handling of the press, was a revelation. His appointment in 1962 was indicative of football’s increasing willingness to adapt and take on new ideas as evidenced in a blueprint issued by the Football League Management Committee that summer. That the document was titled ‘The Football Revolution’ shows the League’s seriousness of intent. It contained a number of proposals for the reorganization of football in England:
• The football season to be extended by three weeks into May. The new football season to begin in mid-August with Saturday and mid-week League Cup matches. The Football League programme to commence at the end of the first week of September.
• International matches to be played on fixed dates, with all home nations to play on the same day to minimize disruption to League clubs.
• The Football League to be extended to 100 clubs – divided into three divisions of 20, with a Fourth Division split into Northern and Southern sections each of 20. In the latter, clubs to have the option of being fully professional or part-time.
• Promotion and relegation to be four-up, four-down in every division.
• First round of the FA Cup to take place on 1 December, not early November; third round on 26 January with the final on the last Saturday in May.
• Once the season has commenced, no club to arrange a friendly match until after the third round of the FA Cup.
• The League Cup to be divided into regional zones which would play on a league basis at the start of every season, the winners then going on to a straight knock-out competition with a single final staged in mid-December taking place at a neutral venue. All League clubs to enter.
The clubs, however, gave the blueprint a lukewarm reception. Meeting after meeting took place between Football League officials and club chairmen, working committees were set up. That the enthusiasm of the Football League, and in particular that of their secretary Alan Hardaker, for change was not shared by club chairmen was no surprise to many players. The weeks of debate turned into months and eventually, the League’s brave new blueprint for football was shelved – though, in time, one or two of the proposals did come into being.
In 1967 the League Cup final reverted to a single tie and was staged at Wembley, while international matches did eventually take place on fixed dates with the home countries all participating. (It was clearly to the advantage of clubs not to lose their best players for key league games.) The Football League still has ninety-two clubs, with only the top flight being reduced to the prescribed twenty (to facilitate the increasing involvement in European competition). The fear of change was symptomatic of an unwillingness of club chairmen to relax their control over the game. Only much later, with the saturation coverage of football by television, did the fabric of the league programme change. Even then the catalyst to that ‘revolution’ was money alone, not a genuine desire to make football more appealing to spectators and players, or to retain its advantage over alternative forms of entertainment.
Matt Gillies yet again proved himself to be a wily operator in the transfer market. He brought in Mike Stringfellow, a lithe but
speedy winger from Mansfield Town, and a mercurial midfield player, Davie Gibson, who joined us from Hibernian, both for modest fees. And so began a new season with little to suggest it would be very different from the last, still less that we would end it as contenders for the league and cup double.
Every club and every player has a ‘bogey team’. There’s no logic to it – often they can’t remember how or when the superstition began. Mine was Fulham, particularly at Craven Cottage – I never played well there. True to form, I had a nightmare of a game at Fulham on the opening day of the season, not helped by the fact that I broke my nose when diving at the feet of the Fulham winger, Graham Leggat. As I was first to a through ball I expected him to pull out of his challenge. He didn’t, and as if to rub salt in my wound, he went on to score both Fulham goals in our 2–1 defeat.
Unlike the previous season, however, we quickly put that opening-day setback behind us. We showed great resolve when we drew 3–3 with much fancied Sheffield Wednesday, then defeated Nottingham Forest 2–1. Mike Stringfellow was proving himself to be a fine player with keen predatory skills. Just seven days after sharing six goals with Wednesday we went up to Hillsborough and won 3–0, Mike taking his goal tally to six in four games.