CLIVE GAMMON
The oddness of seeing England take the field without Bobby Charlton the other day against East Germany. That methodical un- gainliness, that awkward, thrusting power, that unbeautiful domination: it's more or less the end of it as far as international football goes, though there'll doubtless be the odd reappearance for a season or two, I guess. For me, though it was Nobby Stiles's name that was chanted like a rune by the crowds in the 1966 World Cup series, Charlton was the great archetypal English hero. Most of all I remember the ferocious power of the second half goal he scored from, it must have been, at least thirty yards against Portugal in the semi-final. I watched this on an ancient Irish television set in a pub in West Cork and it even brought a few strangulated grunts of appreci- ation from the locals sitting there willing England to lose. Later, I watched only fifteen minutes of the final in Killarney. I couldn't bear the tension any more, and so left to drive down to Dingle. I told the man in the car .siih me that if nobody said a word to us when we got into the bar of Benner's Hotel there, we'd know England had won. And so it 7sroved.
Plenty of people will tell you Ramsey should never have taken Charlton off the field in Leon this year against West Ger- many. I don't know. The tenacity, the deter- mination, the courage and effort were all still there, but so much else was gone. saw him play a league match against Black- pool early this season, and even in the light of the modest skills ranged against him then, you could see that this was Bobby Charlton in decline. Despairing runs to inter- cept, for which the pace was no longer there, misjudgments of distance, miskicks. All a bit sad. The only entertainment I had that afternoon was after the game, watching a panda car playing cat-and-mouse with a drunken sailor weaving his way home from the match. They picked him up when he finally found and recognised a bus-stop.
The only entertainment, that is, if you discount the one and only Wee Georgie Best, hamming it up in style: groaning collapses, melodramatic, arm-shaking appeals, the whole classic repertoire. 'Georgie Porgie' my schoolboy son con- temptuously calls him, which prevents neither himself nor the other thespians on the under-thirteen eleven from imitating his every gesture while on the field„of play, even the goalkeeper. The distasteful truth is that Best just happens . to be the finest footballer playing in England today. If his aid had been available, I think we would have brought the World Cup back from Mexico.
As a matter of fact, the under-thirteens are a lot more pleasure to watch than most league teams. They drew a gate of more than a dozen last Wednesday afternoon, mostly mums of course, but a couple of idle men like myself as well, one of whom ran the line shouting 'Up school!' like a male Joyce Grenfell. The rest of us were pretty silent because by half-time our side was 4-1 down
and although a rout was prevented later there was no chance of a revival.
'Supporters, ho, ho, ho,' one battered player snarled bitterly at us as he came off the field after the humiliating ritual of three cheers for the winners. But the passion had gone by the time tea was over, and the alibi brought out for display. .
The alibi was an enormous boy on the visiting team who, the mums all agreed, couldn't conceivably have been -under thirteen, more like fifteen, they said. He had powered his way through for all four goals, leaving a trail of writhing, George- Best-imitating players on the ground behind him; and the only reason that he didn't score in the second half was that, in a courageous kamikaze attack, a home player brought him down painfully and heavily, so that he took little further interest in the game.
The real hot word going round after the match, though, was that Gargantua's father owned a fairground. As a winning bonus, all his team- mates would be permitted free rides on the dodgems. Pretty unfair, our under-thirteens thought.
Not the kind of bonus that George Best gets, nor that Bobby Charlton can expect for a year or two yet. But amongst the under- thirteens a powerfully high inducement.
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