Guest Post by Nigel Kahn
May the 19th is a date that lives forever in East End History, for on that date in 1536 Anne Boleyn, The former Queen of the country and rumoured resident of the Old castle that stood in the grounds of where the stadium is now, had her head cut off at the Tower of London. Fast forward 429 years and the Boleyn boys were celebrating this time, as they beat the Germans from 1836 Munich at Wembley to win the European Cup Winners Cup. Alan Sealey was the hero on the night with two goals in the game long thought to be one of the best games of football played at the old stadium.
A year and seventeen days since winning the FA cup at Wembley the Hammers were back at the stadium; this was only the 5th final of the ECWC & we were to become only the second British team in History to win a European trophy, the first being Tottenham in the same tournament two years previous. Only seven of the FA cup winning team remained with Kirkup, Peters, Dear and the Goal scorer Sealey. Of the eleven players that night only the keeper Jim Standen and Alan Sealey didn’t come from our youth ranks, only Kirkup and Geoff Hurst were born outside of what you would call modern London. So you can see this was a local triumph on a European stage, projecting the name West Ham United like no other game had done in the past. To honour the winners the local Authority, now called Newham, held a civic reception in their honour, and music was provided by an unknown band at the time, The Small Faces. The win led to west ham winning a couple of other awards as well, the BBC TV team of the year was bestowed as was the U.N.E.S.C.O gold medallion for sportsmanship was received, Also financially as well the club benefited, as revealed in the AGM held in Feb 1966. After expenses were removed the club banked an extra 40 grand for the Euro run, quite a sum of money 50 years ago for
To celebrate the upcoming 50th anniversary of the greatest night in the clubs history the club are producing a special commemorative Programme packed with special features and interviews. Also with every programme comes a reprint of the Actual programme from the Wembley triumph.Programmes were much smaller in size back then with only 16 pages and costing one shilling. And they weren’t over run with adverts, just 4, advertising Bovril, Double diamond beer, Yardley shower Talc and the Radio times. Sun columnist, west Ham fan, and father of Sports presenter Matt, Peter Lorenzo wrote about “Our Finest Ambassadors”. The Royal Artillery Band provided the pre game entertainment and Jack Rollin from World Soccer welcomed the German Lions to Wembley. It is a great insight to a sad lost era of football where local boys grew up to be European Heroes, though for three of them it was just a taster to world dominance a year later.
So when you are at the ground whether you buy normally or not or like I am, an avid collector of West Ham programmes, Make sure you buy this great Tribute to the players who really put this club on the map. If you can’t make it to the ground, you can buy the programme from the printers, Programme master, or get the digital programme which has interactive video content as well.
