Excerpt from the short film ‘Our Sporting Greats’ made for Kirklees Museums and Galleries by Chris Squire and Andy Wicks of Impossible Theatre (www.impossible.org.uk).

Archive footage courtesy of Pathe.

 

Film commentary:

Huddersfield Town and Everton left-back, Ray Wilson, is one of only nine remaining members of England's most famous sporting squad, and played his part in what is perhaps the country's greatest ever sporting success - winning the 1966 World Cup Final at Wembley.

 

Ray Wilson:

We were up very early, I used to run with Bobby Charlton at that time, and we both got up nine-ish, and we both had breakfast and we both went into London, just me and him.  And we just strolled round, and two or three times we were walking along and people you know, would go (does 'double take') and look at him, that was Bobby, not me!

 

When you come to get in the tunnel, then you're going out, and then when you get on the field you think, here we are, we've arrived. 

 

Archive film commentator:

Bobby Moore for England, Ball, Banks, Wilson, Hirst, Charlton, Bobby Charlton...

 

Ray Wilson:

If you hadn't come to terms with it then, if you hadn't got to grips with it, if they hadn't coped with a hundred thousand people balling and shouting and what have you, then you wouldn't be in the team anyway.  You have to have the equipment to do that.

 

I've got to say that sometimes when I look at myself, I look as if, er, you look a bit comfortable there, a bit casual, perhaps inside I wasn't.

 

It came, and I was on me back feet, tried to jump and it caught me, and just dropped down, because I couldn't get any power on it at all.

 

Archive film commentator:

Haller...a goal!

 

I've got to say that I recovered from that somewhat, probably look back and pretty happy that I was the senior player on the team, and I think if I'd have been in my early twenties I think I would have folded then.   You'd probably have never saw me again.

 

Archive film commentator:

Oh, free kick, in goes...

 

Ray Wilson:

Fortunately, we equalised pretty quickly.

 

Archive film commentator:

And here comes Hirst...he's got...some people are on the pitch...they think it's all over - it is now!  It's four...Hirst has got three!  It is all over, England are the World Champions.  England are the World Champions!

Ray Wilson:

Oh absolute delight, and I, like most of the players, was absolutely, if you don't mind me saying, knackered.  It was an accumulation of the occasion, how the game had gone, and then getting a bit about going into extra time, it was as though if you'd have made that into a film, not lot of people would say, and that's rubbish. 

I think it moves me more now than it did then.  It has got more important.  I do find it much more difficult to sit and watch it on the television and see me standing there, and the Queen, and I'm thinking - and I do, I say it to myself - how the hell did you do that?