“Knowing Christ is the best thing that has ever happened to me, although winning the US Open was a pretty good second.”
Bobby Moore, the man in full
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Matt Dickinson, London, Yellow Jersey, 2014. ISBN 9780224091725
I am old enough to remember that glorious day in 1966 when Bobby Moore lifted the World Cup Trophy. I remember too Bobby Moore’s cultured play at the heart of the West Ham and England defence for so many years.
Matt Dickinson’s attempt to “humanize” Bobby Moore is successful but the reader will be as surprised as the author at the things that emerge about the secret life of Bobby Moore. The most surprising was his excessive drinking. As the author puts it: “The paradox of Moore the upstanding skipper set against the errant drinker is a strange one, but there is no doubt that the contradiction existed”.
Sadly the highly successful footballer was less successful in the rest of his life. He was not a success as a football manager and never got a top job. He had several spectacular failures in business, losing most of the money he made through football, resulting in him taking coaching jobs at places like Oxford City as well working at low level journalism.
Things I bet you did not know about Bobby Moore include:
• His obsession with order: “He would turn all the pans in the kitchen so that they were neatly stacked a particular way. In the cupboards, the labels on cans must all face out”.
• Surviving testicular cancer and keeping it secret.
• The breakdown of his relations with Ron Greenwood.
I had quite forgotten that he was not an automatic selection for England with many people preferring the no nonsense defending of Leeds United’s Norman Hunter to Moore more sophisticated West Ham way – a kind of North V South divide which the book brings out.
The account of Moore’s arrest in Colombia just prior to the 1970 World Cup is described in detail. The author sums it up: “There is no more heroic expression of Moore’s ability to lock away his troubles than his resumption of duties after his incarceration in Colombia, and the brilliance with which he played at the 1970 World Cup… lesser men would have been thrown completely out of step.
One amazing passage tells how on the morning of the 1966 World Cup final several of the England players took a bus down to Golders Green to pass the time shopping. One wonders how often the current England team catch a bus! How things have changed.
The book noted that Moore’s mother’s family had a “strong Salvationist streak” but this is not developed and there is no reference to faith in relation to Bobby.
Bobby Moore was an outstanding player and captain. He was also what Sir Michael Parkinson called “the last of the polite footballers”. This is an excellent and yet readable biography.