Authors: Gordon Banks
I felt the draw was no more than we deserved. After a shaky start to both halves, we had grown in confidence and, at times,
more than matched the world champions. On my third appearance at Wembley I finally trooped off the pitch without the taste of defeat in my mouth and Alf Ramsey, in his third game as England manager, had gained a highly creditable draw against the best team in the world. I guess both of us were looking to the future with some optimism. I know I certainly was.
My performances for Leicester and my inclusion in the England team led to a number of clubs enquiring as to my availability. Newcastle United, Wolves and Aston Villa made official approaches to Leicester regarding a possible transfer but Matt Gillies and the City board were adamant. I wasn’t for sale. Which suited me fine as I was very happy at the club and with life in Leicester. Another club seemingly impressed by my performances was Arsenal. Their manager, the former Wolves and England captain, Billy Wright, appeared before the Football League accused of making an illegal approach to me. In Billy’s defence, I can honestly say that I have no recollection of this. I can’t remember Billy ‘tapping me up’ after any game between Leicester and Arsenal and he certainly didn’t telephone me at home because Ursula and I didn’t have a phone! I have no idea why Billy Wright was summoned to answer allegations of making an illegal approach for my services. All I can think of is that a bit of gentle nudging on the part of Arsenal’s George Eastham, who’d often told me that I’d enjoy life at Highbury, had been blown out of all proportion. Thankfully, Billy Wright was served with no more than a warning, though even that was unjustified.
In the long-awaited summer of 1963 I joined the England squad on their continental tour. The tour was highly successful and offered concrete proof that, after a disappointing start to his career as England manager, Alf Ramsey was getting it right. We began with a terrific 4–2 win in Bratislava over Czechoslovakia, the beaten World Cup finalists against Brazil just twelve months previously. We then beat East Germany 2–1 in Leipzig and rounded off the tour in some style with an 8–1 win over
Switzerland in Basle, Bobby Charlton scoring a hat trick. Alf played me in the first two of those games and his continuing belief in me was a great fillip to my confidence. I felt that now Alf saw me as England’s number one goalkeeper, and I was determined to work hard and continue my development in order to prove him right.
We have seen how, in the late fifties, football shirts evolved from the buttoned-collar-and-cuff style into V-necked shirts with short sleeves. Now, in 1963–64, football kit design underwent another major change as it kept pace with the style revolution taking place in British fashion.
Not to be left behind, Leicester dispensed with the V-necked shirts and short sleeves and adopted round-necked, long-sleeved shirts, still in blue, but the collar and cuffs were now white with a blue band circling the middle. Our stockings also changed, from blue with white turnovers to white with two blue hoops at the top.
Round-necked football shirts became de rigueur for just about every club, presumably influenced by the Beatles’ circular-collared suits, which themselves derived from the tailoring favoured by the Indian statesman Pandit Nehru. English football, keen to distance itself from the fifties when it had been shown to be second best at both international and club level, was determined to project its modernized image, and imitated this fashion trend. And just as slim jackets, tight trousers and miniskirts could be seen on Carnaby Street and the King’s Road, so footballers trotted out at Filbert Street and Stamford Bridge wearing long hair, body-hugging shirt and tiny shorts.
Phrases such as ‘With it’, ‘Fab’ and ‘It’s gear’ may appear antiquated now, but were the buzz words of the mid-sixties and on the lips of just about everybody between the ages of sixteen and thirty. There existed a general feeling that the past and anything connected with it had no part to play in this new, vibrant society of equal and ample opportunity. Work was plentiful, wages had improved and, though they were not aware of the
term at the time, people found they had ‘disposable income’ with which to indulge themselves in the latest fashions and advances in consumer technology. The sixties was a time of the biggest, most all-inclusive party that anyone could ever have imagined. Everybody was encouraged to ‘do their own thing’ and just about everyone under the age of forty came.
London emerged as the epicentre of world fashion, Liverpool as the creative hub of popular music and there, at the centre of everything, were the Beatles. Not only did Paul, John, George and Ringo influence popular music, their influence swept across popular culture. Television’s top variety show,
Sunday Night at the London Palladium
was hosted by a young mop-headed Liverpudlian comedian who wore round-collared suits just like the Beatles – Jimmy Tarbuck. For one so young to take over as the host of TV’s most popular variety show indicated that the sixties had little time for the old ways. The essence of the sixties was that anybody could play. For the very first time, older generations copied the young, because to be young was ‘where it was at’.
The Profumo Affair had shown the Establishment to be no purer than any other stratum of society. Lord Denning’s report on the Profumo Affair became a bestseller. The permissive society had arrived and its underpinning was the availability of the contraceptive pill.
Harold Macmillan with his cabinet of earls and aura of the grouse moor and the Athenaeum Club was a gift to the emerging satirists of
That Was The Week That Was
, and a new renegade publication,
Private Eye
. Macmillan gave way to Sir Alec Douglas-Home as prime minister, but the stigma of snobbery and aristocratic values lived on, in sharp contrast to what was happening elsewhere in society. In 1964 when the nation took to the polls, Harold Wilson’s Labour Party swept home on his promise of a new, modern society built on the fruits of the ‘white heat’ of technology.
As the sixties progressed, football strips became more standardized
(some would say dull), with the main club colour incorporated in shirts, shorts and stockings. The traditional designs, colour blends and nuances of strips that conferred on a club its own identity were ditched as clubs sought to project an image more in keeping with these revolutionary and radical times. By the late sixties Leicester City took to wearing simply blue shirts, shorts and stockings, appearing indistinguishable from others whose main club colour was blue, such as Chelsea, Ipswich Town and Hartlepool United. Individuality gave way to the formulaic. Liverpool adopted an all-red strip, as did Bristol City, Nottingham Forest, Middlesbrough, Rotherham United, Charlton Athletic and other teams whose primary club colour was red. Many teams chose not to display the club badge on their shirts. Sheffield Wednesday, who as long as I could remember had worn blue and white striped shirts and black shorts, took to wearing plain blue shirts with white sleeves. Similarly, Arsenal, famous for their red shirts with white sleeves, for a time simply wore plain red shirts devoid of their famous ‘Gunners’ badge, white shorts and red stockings. Even Bristol Rovers, whose blue and white quartered shirt was unique in English football, adopted an all-blue strip – though Blackburn Rovers stuck rigidly to their traditional blue and white halved shirts.
Of the clubs that retained the badge on their shirts, many adopted new designs. Badges based on the traditional town coat of arms, were considered too fussy and redolent of a bygone age, and many were replaced with minimalist designs. It was a case of out with the old and in with the new – a notion totally in keeping with what was happening in society and popular culture at the time. It was only in the nineties, when football clubs became fully aware of their commercial and marketing potential and the value of a branded image, that football strips and club badges reverted to more traditional designs – though, as with any mode of fashion, retro style is never an exact reproduction of the first time around.
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Leicester City kicked off the 1963–64 season at West Bromwich Albion with the same team that had played against Manchester United in the previous season’s Cup final, only the second time in the club’s history that a team which had concluded one season had begun the next. With that consistency in team selection it was no surprise that we enjoyed a super start to the season. We began on the traditional glorious summer’s day, and we made hard work of our 1–1 draw at West Brom. Our first home game produced a 3–0 win against Birmingham City, and when Arsenal were beaten 7–2 three days later, we once again had high hopes of enjoying a very successful season. But, as so often, our form was to ebb and flow.
Apart from a sparkling spell of form between 21 December and 18 January during which we registered five successive wins in the League, including a fine double over reigning champions Everton, we never realized what I believed to be our true potential. Our wayward form resulted in us losing more games at home (8) than we did on our travels (7), which is not the way to win the championship. However, it was the League Cup that was to occupy our minds during the months ahead.
In the three years since its inception in 1960 the League Cup had come on a bit. It would never possess the ivy-covered venerability of its big brother, the FA Cup, but after three finals it was beginning to grow in importance in the minds of club officials, players and supporters alike. There were still those in the game, however, who believed the competition only added to an already congested fixture programme, and that it was an untidy tournament that lurched through the season from August until the end of April. The League Cup was, in fact, a creature of the night (specifically, midweek evenings). It was rarely played on a Saturday, the only instance being one leg of the previous season’s semi-final between Sunderland and Aston Villa, when those clubs found themselves with a free weekend having both been knocked out of the FA Cup.
Having been given a bye in round one, we began our League
Cup campaign modestly enough with a 2–0 win over Fourth Division Aldershot. The club’s youth policy was beginning to bear fruit and Matt took this opportunity to blood one of our aspiring youngsters, Bob Newton, who scored our opening goal. (Sadly, that goal proved to be the highlight of Bob’s career at Leicester. He never established himself in the first team but later went on to make a name for himself in non-league football.) Newton’s appearance against Aldershot showed that Matt was not afraid to call youngsters up for the first team. Moreover, some of these youngsters were to play important roles in our success in the League Cup.
In round three Tranmere Rovers were beaten 2–1, one of our goals coming from Bobby Roberts, for whom Matt had paid a club record fee of £41,000 to Motherwell. Bobby’s form when he first arrived at Filbert Street mirrored that of the team itself – inconsistent, probably because Matt couldn’t decide his best position. At various times he played Roberts as a defender, a central midfield player, an orthodox winger and even at centre forward, always with wholehearted commitment irrespective of where he was playing. Once he settled into a holding role in midfield, Bobby began to repay his fee with consummate ease and considerable success.
Bobby was a terrific competitor with a cannon-like shot, but his accuracy rarely matched his power and his wayward shooting was often a source of frustration to Bert Johnson: ‘One of these days, Bobby, son, you’ll knock the hands off the town hall clock.’ Shooting high, wide and handsome became such a trait of Bobby that, when he received the ball twenty yards from goal and shaped to strike it, from my end of the pitch I often saw the Leicester supporters anticipate the destiny of that ball and brace themselves behind the goal before Bobby even hit it. Wayward finishing apart, Bobby was a super player and once established in our midfield proved himself to be a player of real class. Today, he is widely regarded by Leicester supporters as one of the club’s all-time greats and deservedly so. Bobby kept himself match-fit
even when he was manager of Wrexham in the eighties, for whom he played at the age of forty-three. I remember once coming across Bobby when he was a coach at Leicester. I had long since retired from playing, but there was Bobby, training as hard as ever. He is still involved in football, as chief scout for Derby County.
Following our defeat of Tranmere, Gillingham were our next victims, which set up a quarter-final meeting against Norwich City, who had won the League Cup in its second season. A Howard Riley goal cancelled out one from Ron Davies for Norwich and, with a semi-final against West Ham beckoning both teams, we met again in the replay at Filbert Street.
It was Norwich’s first visit to Filbert Street for twenty-seven years. The last meeting between the two clubs had taken place in the FA Cup at Norwich in 1954, back in the days when each Leicester player used to take a whiff of oxygen at half time in the hope that it would pep them up. I’m not sure what good this did – nor did anyone else, for this cranky idea was soon dropped. All we had in my time was an interval cup of tea.
Norwich proved to be tough opponents and included in their ranks Tommy Bryceland, a hugely gifted inside forward, Bill Punton, a speedy and tricky left winger, and the Welsh centre forward, Ron Davies, one of the best headers of a ball in the game at the time. This was a typical cup tie, full of blood and thunder and played at breakneck speed. With the score at 1–1 and the game into extra time, Howard Riley settled it to send us through to a meeting with West Ham in a two-legged semi-final.
West Ham’s style was in marked contrast to the ‘up and at’em’ style of Norwich City. Prompted by Bobby Moore, their build-up from the back was like distant thunder at a picnic. Just when we thought we were having a good time of it, the ominous presence of Moore would gather in midfield and the off-the-ball-running of Johnny Byrne, Geoff Hurst, Ronnie Boyce and John Sissons would soon swamp us. We’d score, only for West Ham to come straight back at us. Their attacks were sophisticated.