14-02-2019, 21:45
All of us who are of a `certain age` know that time can play tricks on the memory and that it`s easy to look at the past through rose-tinted glasses. I`ve certainly done it more than a few times. To me, though, the game is definitely quicker than it used to be. Players used to have far more time on the ball than they have now and weren`t asked to carry out both defensive and attacking duties to the same extent. This demands a far greater level of fitness but perhaps reduces the emphasis on individual skill. I can remember stories of very well-known players smoking a couple of fags at half-time as matter of course; I don`t think they`d get away with that now.
Whether that means the game is `better` depends on how you define the word. Like beauty, the answer to that one lies in the eye of the beholder. Personally (although please bear in mind the above) I think the game was more entertaining 50 years ago than it is now. It was certainly more direct – you didn`t see the ball being passed backwards and forwards along the half-way line for minutes on end the way you do now – but I`m sure that tactically the game has moved forward in leaps and bounds over the last few decades. In just about every sport where performances (world records etc) can be compared objectively in terms of speed, height, distance and so on, levels of achievement now are far higher than they were and it seems to me to be completely illogical to think that in those where they can`t – like football and cricket, for example – they have stood still or gone backwards. Does that mean the game is `better`?
On the subject of Gordon Banks, I agree wholeheartedly with everything that`s been said. He`s the only future World Cup winner we`ve ever had playing for us, and the only one we`re ever likely to have, so to me it`s a complete no-brainer that he`s our `greatest ever`. I think I`m right (although, again, see above) in saying that I saw him play the very first time I went to Saltergate. I was 8 years old or so, so it would be about 1958; my grandfather took me to a reserve game on the basis that the size of the crowds were too big at first-team games for a little sprog like me (hard to believe nowadays, but true). I distinctly remember him saying that `that young lad in goal for us is going to be a good `un`, looking down at the single of a sheet of paper that passed for a programme and seeing the name Gordon Banks. Like all 8 year olds, I was convinced that my granddad and my dad were all-knowing in all things and made a point of remembering the name; I got a real kick out of seeing him play in the Cup Final for Leicester City only 3 years later.
Happy days and more innocent times.
Whether that means the game is `better` depends on how you define the word. Like beauty, the answer to that one lies in the eye of the beholder. Personally (although please bear in mind the above) I think the game was more entertaining 50 years ago than it is now. It was certainly more direct – you didn`t see the ball being passed backwards and forwards along the half-way line for minutes on end the way you do now – but I`m sure that tactically the game has moved forward in leaps and bounds over the last few decades. In just about every sport where performances (world records etc) can be compared objectively in terms of speed, height, distance and so on, levels of achievement now are far higher than they were and it seems to me to be completely illogical to think that in those where they can`t – like football and cricket, for example – they have stood still or gone backwards. Does that mean the game is `better`?
On the subject of Gordon Banks, I agree wholeheartedly with everything that`s been said. He`s the only future World Cup winner we`ve ever had playing for us, and the only one we`re ever likely to have, so to me it`s a complete no-brainer that he`s our `greatest ever`. I think I`m right (although, again, see above) in saying that I saw him play the very first time I went to Saltergate. I was 8 years old or so, so it would be about 1958; my grandfather took me to a reserve game on the basis that the size of the crowds were too big at first-team games for a little sprog like me (hard to believe nowadays, but true). I distinctly remember him saying that `that young lad in goal for us is going to be a good `un`, looking down at the single of a sheet of paper that passed for a programme and seeing the name Gordon Banks. Like all 8 year olds, I was convinced that my granddad and my dad were all-knowing in all things and made a point of remembering the name; I got a real kick out of seeing him play in the Cup Final for Leicester City only 3 years later.
Happy days and more innocent times.