There is always fascination about the first: the first man up Everest; the first man in space; or, in football, the first man to score three goals in a World Cup final. Millions of words have described those three goals but until now, none from the only man who could have known how it felt to score them.
Geoff Hurst was that man “The World Game” is his fascinating story. He was, he confesses, hardly born to greatness. His skill was created artificially, step by step from his own efforts and the help of the men who have managed his career – Ron Greenwood and Sir Alf Ramsey. Lacking their guidance, instead of being the forward who won the World Cup for England he would have been plodding on as a clumsy wing-half. And he gets angry when he talks of the talent still being wasted week by week in English soccer. He tells of the weeks of preparation in the England camp, when a flaming row between famous players became the start of the understanding that finally brought success. He recalls the days of waiting and praying while a fateful decision was made: who would play in the final – Greaves or Hurst?
He tells about the man nobody knows, Sir Alf Ramsey. How does this sometimes cold, withdrawn man appear to his players?
What does he tell them, how does he treat them? And what is the secret Sir Alf keeps even from the players closest to him? Geoff Hurst has more than skill, he has ideas. He has ideas on how English football can improve… and he knows the men who can ruin the game. He names the players whom he has met… and talks of the men whose purpose in life is to ‘kill’ the stars by their ruthless play. And what of his club side, West Ham? This team achieved much but promised more until something went dramatically wrong. Was it too much bad play… or too much of the good life?
There is humility in the Hurst story, the record of a player who has touched the top without forgetting what it was like at the bottom. And there is humour, too. He tells of the day when a King’s Rolls-Royce drew up at his door to astonish the neighbours… of when he had to flee a mob at a supermarket… and when a hospital matron wore his England shirt to a dance!
For two seasons, Geoff Hurst has been the most powerful marksman in English soccer. He writes as he plays… with power and with deadly aim