March 7 – They think they’re all MBEs…

IN recent years the establishment has seen fit to award honours to David Beckham and Steven Gerrard, the former an OBE in 2003 and the latter an MBE in 2007. While they have both won trophies with their clubs, Beckham and Gerrard have won precisely diddly with their country.

In that light it is shocking that so many members of England’s 1966 World Cup winning team were not honoured in the same way for more than 30 years. Today in 2000 that wrong was finally righted when the so-called ‘forgotten five’ members of the side that secured England’s greatest sporting hour went to Buckingham Palace to see the Queen.

Nobby Stiles, Alan Ball, Roger Hunt, Ray Wilson and George Cohen were all made Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) at a service at the Palace. It was of course the second time they had received medals from Her Majesty, at it was she who presented them with their World Cup winners’ medals at Wembley all those years ago.

In the years since the World Cup all the other members of the team had been recognised, knighthoods for Sir Bobby Charlton, Sir Geoff Hurst and manager Sir Alf Ramsey, OBEs for Bobby Moore, Gordon Banks and Jack Charlton, and an MBE for Martin Peters.

Ray Wilson said he had given up hope. He said: “To be honest though I had stopped being bothered by it any longer, those times when the honours came out and you saw certain people getting awards and I’d ring up George (Cohen) for instance and say, ‘I see we’ve missed out again, mate’. It had just gone on too long.”

Before the ceremony the five staged an ‘impromptu’ kick about in St James’ Park for the media which looked about as unplanned as a plan; but no matter, their day had arrived. “It has been a long time coming but it is here now and we are all very happy,” George Cohen said. “We haven’t seen each other for a while. It means that we are the most honoured squad in British sporting history.”

So why had it taken so long for this to happen when even Ian Wright has an MBE? The late Alan Ball, at least in part, blamed the FA. “If anything disappointed me it was our own FA who didn’t put us up,” he said. “So if we’re going to criticise anyone for the fact that this has taken so long then let’s just say the FA should have done more without a shadow of a doubt. It was only last week that I discovered that if you played more than 50 games you were entitled to a pair of tickets for Wembley matches. You would have thought that someone might have bothered to let me know. But there you are.”

Wilson added: “You know if people had had a vote on this over the last 20 or 30 years we probably would have had this award by now.”

The assembled hacks couldn’t resist asking five of the men who were closest about one of the most controversial and disputed moments in sporting history: was it a goal? “Of course the ball crossed the line,” said Hunt. “I was desperate to score and I would have knocked it in otherwise.” That clears that up then.

That’ll just about do it for today sports fans, we hope you have a fabulous footballing weekend, but if not, come back tomorrow for a tale from yesteryear to take your mind off it. Until then, here is our humble offering from this day last year.