15 April 1967, Wembley. Scotland 3–2 England. By Hamish McTavish
You already know the score. What you might not have is the Saturday itself — the whole evening, not just the goals, because the game was only the middle of it.
The Wembley Specials came into Euston and King’s Cross that morning with the support still half-asleep, lager for breakfast, tartan rosettes on hearts that Samuel Hunter said were half-ready to bleed. They had gone worried to Wembley, he wrote, because England were champions of all the world after a competition in which we had not been fit even to have a kick at the ball. A look in Soho, then out to the ground. Ninety-nine thousand in, a glorious spring afternoon, and at home the country was not even watching. The BBC had left the annual England–Scotland off the live list for the only time in the sixties. Radio took the second half. STV would put the pictures on after the whistle. If you were not on the special, you heard it first and saw it later.
England walked out as if the Jules Rimet was something they had remembered to bring. Sir Alf Ramsey had the knighthood still warm. Ten of the eleven who had won the World Cup the summer before were still in the side. They had not lost since Austria in October 1965 — nineteen games. It was a Home International and a European qualifier and, in the English head, a job that had already been done. Bobby Brown was in the dugout for his first match as manager.
They were “widely expected to beat Bobby Brown’s side and, what is more, beat them comfortably.”
Comfortably is the word they cannot leave alone. Nobby Stiles, who shared a club with Denis Law, saw him in the tunnel with the shinpads on and said he knew the Scots were taking it very seriously, because he had never seen Law wear them before. Then they kicked off anyway.
Jack Charlton lasted eleven minutes as the man he had been picked to be. He went into Bobby Lennox, came back from the treatment with a broken toe, and was sent up the pitch so England could call it courage, which it was, and also a centre-half hopping about while the world champions tried to remember where their defence had gone. For a long stretch of the first half they still looked like the side that had lifted the cup. Then Willie Wallace hit one, Gordon Banks blocked it, and Law was onto the rebound before anyone had decided the afternoon was allowed to change. Twenty-seven minutes gone, and Scotland were a goal up in the ground that had crowned them. Half-time the same. The radios would be coming on about now.
They had forty-five minutes to remember they were world champions.
The second half is the bit people still argue about, because that is when Jim Baxter started treating their pitch as if he had paid to get in. He did not sit on the ball. Glyn Edwards, filing for the Monday Herald, said he would cherish for a long time the memory of Baxter slowing the game to almost walking pace, juggling it with instep, forehead and knees while Stiles, no more than a couple of yards away, bobbed up and down, unsure whether to challenge at knee or head. Ninety-nine thousand people, and one of them was juggling.
Bobby Lennox made it stand up. Just after the seventy-eighth minute he had the ball fifteen yards out and hit it low, as casually as if he was playing in a practice game at Barrowfield, and the noise in the ground changed. Two-nil. Jack Charlton, still hopping, stuck a foot on Alan Ball’s cross and the thing went in off the post, and for four minutes the ground thought it might yet be a comeback. Two-one. Then Jim McCalliog, twenty years old and on his first cap, took a pass from Wallace and put it past Banks at the near post. Eighty-seven minutes. Three-one. Geoff Hurst headed one in from Bobby Charlton’s cross a minute later so the morning papers could print three-two and call it a game.
It was not a game. It was the first defeat of the world champions, and when Schulenburg blew, the support came onto the grass.
They hugged Baxter. They hugged Law. Ron Scott, there on his first Wembley weekend, remembered eightsome reels and said the only damage he would swear to was the turf going home in pockets. No posts down. No players assaulted. The crossbar belongs to another night — 4 June 1977, when they took the goals as well. This was hugs and grass and a bit of Wembley in a suitcase. Photographers on the park, a brass band, the twin towers still up. Then the specials north, or Soho if you were staying, and in the morning the ones who had gone home reached Glasgow Central desperately tired but taller than when they left.
Law had come to work in the pads Stiles had noticed. Lennox had finished what the first half had only started. McCalliog had found the near post. Baxter had made their half look like a piece of ground he owned. Bobby Brown, first game, said less than the men with the microphones and left with more. Banks had been beaten at the near post. Ramsey, afterwards, said Scotland deserved it, and hoped they would accept the injuries as a fact rather than an excuse, and that they were still a great team. The Evening Times, same afternoon, did not wait for the excuse. GREAT SCOTS! Scotland the brave, and the magnificent, given little chance, three-two. The Sunday Post, with a night to think, called the world champions chumps. English later print would cool it into indifferent, pedestrian, a hollow victory against injured men. They can have the hollow. We kept the turf.
They said comfortably. They said nineteen. They said a Home International. They said we are still a great team. If you still think it was only the Home Internationals, a funeral is only a Tuesday.
The film is up. Law, Lennox, McCalliog, and Baxter with the ball at his foot. Do not review it. Watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk3RZDwX6mY
They get surer. It gets worse. Next time they will leave the best player in the world in the stand. If you were not born yet, this is the night they told you about. Come back for the next one.