Ron Greenwood by Mike Miles

Author:Mike Miles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Blackpool

The Imperial Hotel looks out on to Blackpool’s seafront. On the first day of 1971 the hotel was still filled mostly by those who’d taken advantage of the establishment’s new year packages. It was also a temporary home to an additional party who had checked in during the late afternoon, the footballers of West Ham United, there to face Blackpool in an FA Cup third round tie the following afternoon.

Icy weather threatened a postponement, and with the game likely to be called off, Greenwood had placed no restrictions on his players’ activities. There wasn’t much on television to grab the attention of young, red-blooded males, the centrepiece of BBC One’s programming being a gala performance of ballet and opera from the London Coliseum, while ITV was pinning its late-evening hopes on a two-decades-old movie. The one scheduled sports programme of the evening, BBC Two’s highlights of the second day of the third Ashes Test in Melbourne, had been washed out.

The tie was played, though arguably the Londoners did not bother to turn up. After West Ham had been thrashed 4-0 on an icy Blackpool pitch it emerged that four players – Bobby Moore, Jimmy Greaves, Brian Dear and Clyde Best – had spent the early hours of Saturday refreshing themselves in a local nightclub.

All four, who admitted breaching club rules, were fined a week’s wages, and with the exception of Best – who hadn’t drunk alcohol – were excluded from a team desperate for points. It was the first time that Moore had been dropped in over a decade.

It’s a matter of debate whether more damage was done to the England captain’s public image, having just featured on the ITV programme This Is Your Life, or to his relationship with Greenwood, who described what became known as the ‘Blackpool Affair’ as the lowest point during his 16 years at West Ham.

Within 24 hours of the match on the Lancashire coast, word had reached Greenwood back in London that a fan had phoned the national press, claiming that he saw four players, along with physio Rob Jenkins, drinking in ex-boxer Brian London’s 007 nightclub until the early hours of matchday.

They had failed to keep their late-night visit a secret and a devastated Greenwood was all for sacking the guilty parties there and then. That included Jenkins, who he ‘really had a go at’ and said should have known better. Moore was the captain, but the manager felt so badly let down that he was prepared to sacrifice his leader on the altar of integrity and discipline. ‘There is a right time for a drink – and a wrong time. A nightclub in Blackpool a few hours before an important cup tie is the wrong time,’ he said.

Greaves would describe it as ‘the day Fleet Street went mad’. A Sun headline was ‘Lights Out for Bobby Moore’ and even The Times considered the incident worthy of its front page.

After Blackpool, the manager was in no mood to indulge his big-name players. He felt his trust had been abused beyond repair and wanted to take drastic action.

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