Upbury Manor Days: Wembley

No matter what the Scots claimed after they’d beaten England at Wembley, we were still the champions of the world. It sounded like a rubbish match anyway. From the reports I heard on Grandstand that afternoon it sounded like the Scots only won because defender Jackie Charlton spent a big chunk of the game hobbling around with an injury, though he did manage to score a goal when lending nuisance value to the attack. (There were no substitutes back then.) All in all it wasn’t a good day for English sport. Eighteen year old Keith Jarrett made a sensational debut for Wales in a rugby international, scoring nineteen points against England at Cardiff Arms Park.

Two weeks later…

The long weeks of anticipation were over. The big day had arrived. I was on board the coach as it left Marlborough Road, and on my way to Wembley to see the England schoolboys’ football team. Yes, Wembley, where we’d won the World Cup the previous summer, and where the Scots had got lucky just a fortnight ago. Never mind, the England schoolboys’ team would surely put the Jocks in their place.

The big match excitement grew when the coach stopped for a break at Blackheath, where opportunist souvenir sellers lay in wait for school parties bound for Wembley.

‘A Manchester United one, please.’

‘And a Manchester United rosette…’

‘And an England one…’

‘And a flag…’

At Wembley Stadium I staggered off the coach with my souvenirs and a plastic bag full of puke. Yes, the curse of the poor traveller had struck again. Leaving Mister Fisk and everyone else to gaze up at the twin towers and take in the atmosphere, I wandered off in search of a waste bin.

Concrete, lots of it: walls, passages and stairways; cold, grey, draughty and never ending. For a twelve year old visiting the home of football for the first time, everything inside the stadium seemed enormous. Then suddenly we were there, really there, high up in a corner of the ground. In a magical moment savoured in full colour, I realised I was looking down at the penalty area where Geoff Hurst had puffed his cheeks out and thumped home the gloriously emphatic ‘it is now!’ goal that sealed our World Cup victory.

As the stadium filled, a big gallows type contraption was wheeled out to the centre of the pitch, where a bloke in a white suit climbed its steps to lead the crowd in a pre-match community singing. Singing wasn’t for self-conscious me but I did follow the words on a song sheet handed out at the turnstiles. The crowd's biggest reaction came when they started singing Tom Jones’s The Green Green Grass of Home, a huge hit that hadn’t long slipped from the charts.

‘And there to meet me is my Mama and Papa…’ sang Keith Hovey, beside me.

‘Wave your flag! Wave your flag!’ Keith screamed down my ear. ‘Down the road I look and there runs Mary, hair of gold and lips like cherries… wave your flag! It's good to touch the green, green grass of home.’

Even in a stadium full of celebratory, flag waving kids, I felt unable to join in, but Keith had no such problem. He snatched the flag and waved it with wonderful exuberance while singing his heart out. How I admired his confidence.

‘Yes, they'll all come to meet me, arms reaching, smiling sweetly.
It's good to touch the green, green, grass of home.’

England 0 Scotland 2

The occasion was better than the game. A goal would have been something to cheer, but it wasn’t to be. As much as England huffed and puffed they never looked like scoring and it didn’t help that full back Lawrence Millichip got sent off for throwing a punch. Scotland deserved their win and in Norman Stevenson, a ginger nut in the Billy Bremner mould, they had the game’s outstanding player.

Of the Scotland side that day, none of them, as far as I know, went on to make a significant impact in league football.

Of the England side, Mervyn Cawston, Richie Pitt, Tommy Taylor and Len Cantello went on to have solid professional careers, as did reserve Steve Whitworth.

Another who made the grade was this young chap…