Yesterday marked the fiftieth anniversary of Britain stamping its cultural majesty onto the world. On October 5th 1962 the Beatles released their first single Love Me Do while just a few short hours later on Shaftsbury Avenue the film premiere of Dr No took place.
On one glorious day the Beatles and Bond were born.
Yet these were not the only momentous events that occurred in October ’62 that helped to forever define and shape us. In sport we enjoyed our own dawn of aquirius as two weeks later the FA turned to a dour, pragmatic figure to take charge of a national side that had consistently underachieved under Walter Winterbottom during his sixteen year reign.
The man the FA chose to reignite a proud nation was completely at odds with the flowering liberalism and freeing of post-war shackles that the sixties came to represent. Indeed he was an inhibited, neat and fussy man who had just guided a backwater club to the title and was nicknamed the ‘general’ as a player.
But as football was assimilated into the creative, funky boom of culture with the Kop singing She Loves You and the players buying DB5s and growing their hair England still needed glory on the pitch to match the effortless style on our screens and sounds that came through our record players that got the whole planet dancing.
Alfred Ernest Ramsey was just the man we needed for that.
So if the emergence of Bond and the Beatles is rightfully celebrated why not too the moment English football first joined the party?
The Cutter plays its part by printing some ace photographs from an era all-too-often over-looked. Not the Jules Rimet trophy held aloft in a sunny Wembley but the times – and the man – that led us there….
The title-winning Ipswich side of 61-62.
Freddie Goodwin clears for Wolves as they beat the reigning champions Ipswich 3-2 at Portman Road.
English referee Ken Aston struggles to impose order during the infamous Battle of Santiago at the previous summer’s World Cup. The clash between Chile and Italy was described by David Coleman as ‘the most stupid, appalling, disgusting and disgraceful exhibition of football, possibly in the history of the game”.
A mother flanked by her scarf-clad children cheers on her team.
Denis Law tries on his United shirt after signing from Torino for a British record of £115,000.
In a FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough Jimmy Greaves bags an early opener for Spurs against Manchester United. In 1962-63 Greaves was the league’s top hitman with 37.
Just months after Greaves’ strike another of England’s prolific greats saw his career draw to a premature close. Here Brian Clough recoils from a collision with Bury keeper Chris Harker on an icy Roker Park pitch, an injury that resulted in retirement at just 27 years of age.
Arthur Riley, head groundsman at Anfield for 54 years, and his team work through the night to clear snow off the pitch during the January and February 1963 big freeze.
The Big Freeze in the winter of 62-63 had a dramatic effect on fixtures with the FA Cup 3rd round alone taking until March to complete. Here Halifax triumph against Brighton at the Goldstone Ground.
Alf Ramsey after taking charge of England in October ’62.
World Champions Brazil are surprisngly held to a draw at Wembley during Ramsey’s third game in charge. A positive omen of things to come.
