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Last update: 6/3/16

Sir Geoff Hurst, England’s World Cup hat trick hero, has experienced the highs and lows of life. One of only eleven English players to lift soccer’s greatest prize, and a Knight of the Realm since 1998, his life has also been marred by financial mismanagement and personal tragedy.

Interviewed by Esquire magazine in 2014, he was ambivalent about the subject of religious conviction.

‘A long time ago, my late father-in-law said, “I have fallen out with God.” That’s an expression I use when I’m asked about religion; my daughter died in 2010 [after a 10-year battle with a brain tumour]. When you see your daughter suffer for a long time, you’re not sure whether there is anybody up there. I’ll leave it at that.’

For the England manager Alf Ramsey, winning the World Cup made a rod for his own back. The win confirmed a nation’s preconceptions about a game it had invented. We believed we were the best – lifting the Jules Rimet trophy seemingly confirmed this fact – and yet nearly fifty years on, only now are people realising that 1966 was a blip, by an under-achieving football country, and not something to do with divine right.

At the time, the success seemed to breed complacency born of a superiority complex. The press constantly moaned about the national teams’s way of playing, instead of cel­e­brating the fact that we had won the tournament at all. From today’s perspective, we’re simply grateful it happened and rightly so. There are those who suggest that we probably wouldn’t have won it away from home, and yet I choose to disagree. Notwithstanding that freakish quarter-final defeat at the hands of West Germany, Ramsey’s squad would, and should, have competed against Brazil in the 1970 final. Success in Mexico at high altitude, would have confirmed the nation’s pole position in the world game.

For Hurst, his sudden elevation to the world stage would make him one of the most, if not THE most closely marked forward in the English game, in an era where protection from referees was minimal. For anyone of a certain age, the names of soccer’s hard men trip easily off the tongue – Graham Williams (WBA), Ron Harris (Chelsea), Peter Storey (Arsenal), Norman Hunter & Billy Bremner (Leeds), Tommy Smith (Liverpool), Dave Mackay (Spurs) – men totally committed to ensuring that if the ball went past them, then their opponent wouldn’t. By 1971, the 29 year old Hurst, bedevilled with recurring back problems and by his own admission, would no longer feel as powerful as he had five years earlier. This sentiment was due in no small part, to the weekly punishment meted out by the aforementioned, and those defenders of a similar ilk.

http://www.westhamstats.info/westham.php?west=2&ham=345&united=Geoff_Hurst

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2257176/Sir-Geoff-Hurst-finds-West-Ham-8-0-Sunderland-tape-Twitter.html

Sir Geoff was born near Manchester in December 1941, but the family moved to Essex when he was six, settling on a council estate in Chelmsford. His dad, a toolmaker, was his early hero. Charlie Hurst may only have played for the local team in the Southern League, but he spent hours helping his football-mad son kick a ball around the small back garden and train in the local gym. After an inauspicious trial with West Ham when their goalkeeper broke his thumb parrying a shot from the youngster, the young Hurst began training with the club twice a week and occasionally played for the fifth team. At 15, straight from school, he joined full time: “I wasn’t naturally gifted like some of the other young players at the club, but I was determined to compensate for that with hard work,” he writes in his autobiography, ’1966 And All That.’

The turning point came in April 1961 when Ron Greenwood joined West Ham as manager. An innovative leader, with a reputation as something of an academic in the football world, he introduced techniques that would usher in the modern game.

“He taught us that there were finer values to football than winning simply for the sake of winning,” Sir Geoff says. “I wouldn’t say he was ridiculed for those views but a lot of people felt it was a bit highfalutin.” It was Ron who moved the young Hurst from mid-fielder to centre forward; who took the team abroad to test them against foreign teams when competitive European club football was still in its infancy.

And so the young Hurst began to make a name for himself, scoring when West Ham won the FA Cup in 1964, and as part of the winning team for the European Cup Winners Cup the next year. But when he was called up for his England debut by Sir Alf Ramsey in 1966, it wasn’t at all certain he would play. His chance came when Jimmy Greaves, Sir Alf’s first-choice striker, badly cut his leg in the final group match. Though Greaves recovered, Hurst would keep his place. One of the lasting images of England’s victory is of Greaves in suit and tie, watching from the England bench, looking dumbstruck, though he would later insist he felt nothing but delight at the final whistle.

From the age of seven until I was thirteen, he was my favourite player. It goes without saying that young boys seek role models in life, and soccer heroes are an obvious choice. Even more pleasingly, he has remained a true sporting hero, and on the two occasions I met with him in 1972 and 2006, he was gracious with his time, and both happy to talk and sign my memorabilia. Inwardly I was smiling at the second meeting, for whilst I was far from dumbstruck, I did feel ten again, if only for the twenty five minutes I spent with him.

We share similar views on the state of a national game, for whilst he finds much to praise in today’s world, different though it is from 50-odd years ago , it’s obvious, too, that there are changes he rues. When West Ham won at Wembley in ’64 and ’65, most of the players were Londoners and all of them were English. There’s no question of xenophobia, his comments are merely practical ones.

“The relationship between the fans and the players is now almost extinct, I guess. Players are closeted away. You used to see a young player coming up from the fifth team, the fourth team; nowadays, all of a sudden, a player is drafted in from Colombia.”

Hurst was essentially a one club man, or rather he would have been with a little more forethought.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/2323687/Programme-Notes-West-Ham-v-Sunderland.html

http://thegreensoccerjournal.com/sir-geoff-hurst-england-world-cup