With the impending visit of Sunderland this weekend, my memories flow back 47 years ago to one of the most memorable games I have witnessed at Upton Park. In front of 24,718 fans, Geoff Hurst banged six goals past Sunderland goalkeeper Jim Montgomery in an 8-0 whitewash. Four and a half years later that same keeper performed heroics in the Cup final to beat the then might of Leeds against all the odds. However, that day in October ‘68 on a soggy Boleyn ground, he was to have a day he would rather forget. Not that he was to blame for such a heavy defeat, West Ham were unplayable and his team mates struggled to come to terms with the feast of attacking football from the home side. In the West Ham team that heaped such misery on Sunderland that day were Bobby Moore, Martin Peters, Trevor Brooking, Billy Bonds and Geoff Hurst. Brooking and Moore scored a goal each but Hurst’s double hat trick was to go down in Hammers folklore. He later admitted to punching his first goal into the net when everyone thought it was a diving header, but notwithstanding that, six goals in a top flight game is an incredible feat.
However, this was no Barcelona performance. There was no retaining 80% possession, no knocking the ball sideways and anyways and no billionaires sitting in the grandstand admiring what their bank balance has bought them. This was good old fashioned attacking with Sissons and Redknapp providing swashbuckling raids down the flanks with a constant supply from a team on top of its game. Eight of the West Ham players that day had come through the Academy and only one was not English, Scotsman and goalkeeper Bobby Ferguson. West Ham were like that in those days. Earlier that season they had scored a total of sixteen goals in successive games against Burnley, West Brom and Bolton. On the downside a few months later we were to be embarrassed 3-0 by third division Mansfield in the Cup and we failed to win any of our final nine matches of the season.
If there was a “West Ham way” back then, I had never heard the expression. We were known as an attractive attacking team, probably the most attractive in England. We were admired for producing our own talent. The attractive label described our flowing attacking intent, especially down the flanks. It was certainly different from the later halcyon years of Brooking and Devonshire at their best, where there was a lot more guile in our play. It was not always as good as our rose tinted glasses may remember though. We were also renown for having a soft underbelly. We may have thought “if you score three, we will score four” but too often it did not work out that way. A look back at our end of season League placings over those years will pay testament to that theory.
Most of the players that played against Sunderland that day in 1968 were born within a short walk of Upton Park. Football was played by kids in the streets back then and the East End was a honey pot for West Ham scouts. John Charles played at left back against Sunderland and for some time he was the only black footballer in the first division. Times have changed dramatically but thankfully I still have my memory (I think). This weekend could possibly be the last time Sunderland play at Upton Park but I will never forget that day in October 1968.