In what amounts to a statement of the obvious, for the England team the 1960s, (in actuality, their entire history), can be divided into eras before and after winning the 1966 World Cup.
Roughly speaking the second half of the 60s were just underway when England became world champions, the years since the appointment of Alf Ramsey in 1963 spent formulating a plan to back an assertion made early in his managerial tenure that ‘England will win the World Cup in 1966.’
This bold statement, outrageously so given the guarded approach he took when speaking to the press, was made to sound fanciful on a number of occasions during the circuitous journey that eventually led to glory – ‘Sir Alf” as he was destined to become, reaching his ‘told you so‘ moment on July 30 1966, self-effacement preventing him from reminding the faithless of Fleet Street of their constant doubts.
Not that reaching the summit of world football was one long joyous procession to the top with Ramsey in the role of drum major. There were episodes along the way that looked distinctly humdrum, a plethora of players and various systems of play appraised then erased before the framework had the right shaped peg in each hole.
As the 1966 World Cup Finals drew ever nearer, Ramsey, on reshuffling the pack often turned up an ace, although even then did not settle on his strongest hand until the tournament had begun.
After England emerged victorious Sir Alf became reluctant to unduly disturb the deck, changes kept to a minimum as time fast approached to defend their title. Eight of his World Cup winning stalwarts were in the party of 22 that flew to Mexico for the 1970 World Cup, the core of his team a straight flush of Banks, Moore, Bobby Charlton, Ball, Peters and Hurst – the squad without any discernable wild card element.
Between 1966 and 1970 a relatively small number of players had been offered the chance to impress but were quickly judged unsuitable and consigned back to their clubs. More were given the once over (literally in some cases), during the long run up to 1966 and while for them international football was also a fleeting experience, in the time before and after the most momentous year in English football, this group, however brief the moment, at least had the consolation of winning a cap or two.
Others however, despite producing impressive displays on a weekly basis, never experienced the feeling of esteem generated in taking the field for England.
SAMTIMONIOUS.com hereby salutes a dutiful dozen of 60s unfortunates………….
PETER SIMPSON (Arsenal): Even in a team whose cool efficiency eclipsed expansive extravagance, Simpson was the unsung hero of the 1970-71 Arsenal double-winning side.
His central defensive partnership with skipper Frank McLintock, which developed through the late-60s, proved a formidable barrier to most opposition and while the captain brought man-marking attributes to the pairing, Simpson contributed excellent positional play and an antennae that rarely failed in dealing with danger.
Recipient of ‘Arsenal Player of the Year‘ in 1968-69, the next few seasons brought a Fairs Cup winners medal in 1969-70, simultaneous League and FA Cup honours the following season and another FA Cup Final appearance in 1972 – in the midst of which came selection for the initial squad of 40 named by Sir Alf for the Mexico World Cup.
Simpson failed to make the final cut of 22, but through an accomplished Arsenal first team career that spanned fourteen years (until 1978) and 477 appearances, he remained a performer of the utmost reliability.
Few doubted his all-round excellence as a defender – Simpson just unfortunate in the fact that at his peak, playing in the same position England had a bloke named Moore who was somewhat special.
TERRY DYSON (Spurs): When Alf Ramsey became England manager in May 1963, the World Cup winning concept of ‘wingless wonders‘ was still a long way from being discovered. So during a period when wide players remained part of the equation it remains a surprise Spurs 1960-61 double-winning flank man Dyson was overlooked – especially as he was a goal scoring winger to boot.
Being a hero at White Hart Lane, where Ramsey had been a league title winning full-back in the early-50s, was also of no advantage to Dyson. His penetrative running and pinpoint centres were vital components in an attacking threat posed by a dashing Tottenham outfit, who became the first side of the century to secure the league and FA Cup double.
Spurs, with Dyson in his pomp, retained the FA Cup in 1962 and then became the first British club to win a European trophy, Ramsey only days into the England job when Bill Nicholson’s side saw off Atletico Madrid in May 1963 to lift the Cup Winners’ Cup.
Sweeping aside the Spanish side by virtue of a 5-1 win in Rotterdam, Dyson not only scored twice in the final, but is also the only Spurs player to net a hat-trick in the North London derby (taking home the match ball after a 4-3 triumph over Arsenal in August 1961) – all the headlines earned as a Tottenham man still not enough to see his name ever printed on an England team sheet.
BRYAN ‘Pop’ ROBSON (Newcastle United): When the great Jimmy Greaves calls someone ‘the best uncapped player I have ever seen’, it is a comment worth noting – such was the label he attached to early 70s West Ham team-mate Bryan ‘Pop’ Robson.
Robson, in fact, could count himself unfortunate to miss out on England recognition in both the 60s and 70s – not even receiving a call-up on topping the Division One goalscoring charts as a Hammer in 1972-73.
By then being prolific had become second nature to Sunderland-born Robson, whose late-60s goalscoring exploits for Newcastle, (before a 1971 move to Upton Park), coincided with a period when England often misfired in front of goal.
Netting 30 times in 1968-69, a season when the Fairs Cup went to St James’ Park, Robson could not have knocked the door any louder, still not receiving an answer in scoring a further 25 in the campaign that followed – a solitary U-23 cap scant reward for such remarkable consistency.
NEIL YOUNG (Manchester City): At a time when Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were kings of the counter-culture, Lee, Summerbee, Bell & Young were kings of the Kippax – although unlike his Canadian namesake, Manchester-born Young was first rather than last in of a celebrated quartet.
In what proved Young’s only representative game he scored a hat-trick for England in a youth international and while City were relegated at the end of his first season (1961-62) in the senior side, Young became a Maine Road mainstay as they returned to the top flight under the guidance of Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison in 1966.
As an accomplished team began to develop their momentum became unstoppable, Young scoring 20 goals in an against-the-odds title triumph of 1967-68 and after the goal rush of that campaign, he scored 14 the following season – including the only goal of the 1969 FA Cup Final when City overcame Leicester.
Young was ruled out of the 1970 League Cup Final victory over West Brom due to injury, but was back in harness by the time City contested the European Cup Winners’ Cup Final ten weeks later, scoring the first goal as Mercer’s men secured the trophy with a 2-1 win over Polish outfit Górnik Zabrze.
All through this glittering period Lee, Summerbee and Bell were regularly selected by Ramsey, but a full cap invitation never came the way of their team mate – whose nearest brush with international football came with selection for an England ‘B’ tour to South America in 1968, from which Young withdrew through injury.
PHIL BEAL (Spurs): Another fine exponent of the sweeper centre-half role, Beal, like Simpson, was no stranger to praise and prizes at club level while all the time an England opportunity failed to materialize.
Unfailingly composed and reliable, after making his Tottenham debut during the 1963-64 season, he became a fixture in the team, usually in tandem with Welsh international stopper Mike England.
Denied a place in the 1967 FA Cup winning side through injury, in the years that followed Beal went on to win a couple of League Cup winners tankards (71 & 73) and appear in two UEFA Cup finals (72 & 74), Spurs beating Wolves in the first, but losing to Feyenoord in the latter.
Yet any number of fine displays among the 420 made for Tottenham were still not enough to earn a run out under Ramsey.
HENRY NEWTON (Nottingham Forest): Born exactly a month later than Young (18/2/1944), this tenacious midfielder was another highly competent performer never summoned by Sir Alf.
Nottingham-native Newton came to prominence as part of a talented Forest team who were talked of as potential double winners when the 1966-67 season entered its final throes – these hopes dashed when Manchester United beat them to the league title after Spurs had edged past the City Ground side in an FA Cup Semi-Final.
Despite 1966-67 ending in frustration for the team, Newton had gained personal recognition in the form of England U-23 caps and while Forest failed to make similar headway in the seasons to come, his form stayed at a level that compelled league champions Everton to buy him for £150,000 in October 1970.
While there would be a downturn in fortunes on the blue half of Merseyside during the early-70s, Newton still had admirers and although Ramsey continued to look elsewhere for midfield ballast, Brian Clough had no hesitation in paying out £110,000 in September 1973 – the signing of Newton the last he would make as Derby manager.
Clough departed the Baseball Ground a fortnight later although Newton would go on to play a key role when The Rams lifted the league title in 1975.
JOHN HURST (Everton): Even beyond the horizons of Evertonia, for many football followers of a certain age there remains something alluring about the league title triumph of 1969-70.
That Division One could still be won in such Corinthian style, this at the end of a decade when defences had become altogether more miserly and uncompromising, was a wonder of the age. While the sublime Ball-Kendall-Harvey midfield trio were rightly heralded for their monumental contribution, Everton too had a rock solid rearguard on which they could depend.
Indeed, Messrs. Wright, Labone and Newton all featured for England at the 1970 World Cup, the only absentee from their durable defensive unit being the calm, assured presence of Hurst – another first-rate operator to have Bobby Moore as a contemporary.
As a teenager and playing as a striker, he won England youth caps and in 1965 an FA Youth Cup winners medal. Toffees boss Harry Catterick then decided this fast developing talent was better suited to defending than attacking and on converting Hurst into a centre-back, subsequently slotted him beside Labone to form a top-notch pairing.
They were together when Everton won through to the 1968 FA Cup Final, Hurst an ever-present as the league champions pennant was flown at Goodison Park come the end of 69-70 – but despite another six seasons at the top level, he was never invited to walk the international boards.
ROGER MORGAN (QPR/Spurs): As the 60s drew to an end, winger Morgan appeared destined for even bigger things that had already come his way.
After making his QPR debut in 1964, Morgan, like Rangers as a whole, thrived under the guidance of Alec Stock. In a season never to be forgotten in Shepherd’s Bush, 1966-67 ended with the third division title and the League Cup on display at Loftus Road. Division Three was won by a street, with Stock’s side coming from 2-0 down to win the first Wembley League Cup Final – Morgan sparking an astonishing revival by scoring their opening goal as QPR came back to score a 3-2 victory over Division One West Brom, who were also the cup holders.
Helping Rangers secure successive promotions, Morgan was a first division player when he crossed from W12 to North London in February 1969. Bill Nicholson invested £100,000 in signing him for Spurs, money that looked well spent following a run of encouraging early displays in a Tottenham shirt.
Sadly injury would come to blight his time at White Hart Lane, Morgan retiring at the age of 25 in 1973 (just 68 games into his Spurs career) on failing to overcome an ankle problem.
RONNIE BOYCE (West Ham United): While scoring the winning goal for your local team in the FA Cup Final (Boyce doing so for West Ham in their 1964 triumph over Preston) was an undoubted career highlight for this stylish midfielder, there is still a sense his mantlepiece has a space where an England cap should be.
During the exhilarating seasons West Ham enjoyed in 1963-64 and 1964-65 (the FA Cup success followed by European Cup Winners’ Cup glory 12 months later), Boyce played over 100 games through the duration and was the epitome of consistency – the Upton Park faithful quick to acclaim his telling passes and shooting ability.
Indeed, it is by no means a huge leap of plausibility to imagine the England World Cup squad of 1966 including a Hammers quartet with Boyce the fourth man, rather than the triumvirate of Moore, Hurst and Peters.
But the call to Boyce never came, which is not to say his West Ham form deteriorated, the 1970s barely two months old when he posted an early contender for ‘goal of the decade.‘ Manchester City goalkeeper Joe Corrigan, like all those to have seen it since, left dumbfounded when his clearance is fired straight back past him and into the net from 45 yards.
The technique displayed by Boyce in mastering a heavy ball atop of a quagmire surface would have been deemed magnificent in the Maracanã, let alone on Moss Side.
PETER BAKER (Spurs): It does the beg the question of how many excellent full-backs must England have been blessed with in the early-60s for Baker not to win a cap.
Neither Walter Winterbottom or his successor Ramsey gave Baker a game – a puzzling state of affairs as between 1960 and 1964 he was part of Spurs side that won the double, retained the FA Cup and enjoyed success in Europe by winning the Cup Winners’ Cup.
Surprisingly there was no empathy from Alf for a fellow title-winning Tottenham defender – their career paths overlapping at White Hart Lane in the mid-50s – although by way of irony, Baker saw Cyril Knowles, his long-term replacement in the Spurs rearguard, win four caps before the 1960s were over.
PETER GRUMMITT (Nottingham Forest): While competent centre-backs had their England ambitions thwarted by the unerring consistency of Bobby Moore, so good goalkeepers found the road closed to them by an incomparable figure named Gordon Banks.
One prime example of a highly-regarded ‘keeper just failing to make the cut is Grummitt, three U-23 caps never manifesting into a senior appearance.
Over 300 first team outings for Forest between 1960 and 70, many conducted in unflappable manner, endeared him to attendees of the City Ground – this through an era when England had Banks serving them supremely well.
GRAHAM LOVETT (West Bromwich Albion): When the title ‘soccer’s unluckiest player‘ was bestowed on Lovett, a skilled and powerful midfield man, it did not relate to him missing out on an England cap – but involvement in two car crashes that each had an adverse effect on his career.
Within three weeks of turning professional at The Hawthorns in November 1964, seventeen-year-old Lovett made his first team debut, Albion boss Jimmy Hagan comparing the youngster to the great Duncan Edwards. Lovett was prominent as West Brom won the League Cup in 1966, but on Christmas Eve the same year suffered a broken neck in a traffic accident.
On manfully overcoming this set-back and regaining full fitness, Lovett returned to the Albion side in time for the triumphant 1968 FA Cup run, collecting a winners medal as West Brom, now managed by Alan Ashman, won the trophy with an extra-time Jeff Astle goal against Everton.
But just over a year later misfortune struck again. In late May 1969 the car he was driving collided with a bus being driven on the wrong side of the road in Birmingham and although West Midlands Transport Executive accepted liability and paid out damages, Lovett sustained a broken thighbone, fractured ribs and collapsed lung, injuries that all but ended his career.
After being sidelined for two years, in November 1971 he spent a brief, three-match loan spell at Southampton, but on returning to West Brom became a peripheral, non-playing figure and was released from his contract six months later – fate, beyond that on a football field, keeping the last nominee outside the realms of the national team.
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