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12 - Following the Final at home Paul Duggan: watching at my aunt's house - but not understanding what was going on

I was 4 years old during the 1966 World Cup and growing up in Wiltshire. I knew little of football as a concept and nor did I know that by 1970 I would be football mad.

The weekend of the final we stayed with friends in Croxley Green, not far from Wembley itself and indeed Abbey Road where The Beatles would have been completing "Revolver". I vividly remember my Dad, my "uncle" (as you called friends of your parents in those days), his son and a school friend of his sitting on the sofa in front of the telly. My Mum and my "auntie" were in the garden but I was fascinated as I'd never seen adults interact with television before. A new word entered my vocabulary that day, "England". As the crowd on the telly chanted it so did the four on the sofa, by turn I witnessed their joy and despair, luckily in unequal measures, while gazing at black and white images of men kicking a ball around.

Occasionally I would get between them and the TV to impassioned cries of "get out of the way!". Eventually my auntie came into the room and made a deal with me, this involved an entire packet of Opal Fruits and a toy tractor providing I desisted from obscuring their view of history.

I remember being aware that this was certainly some sort of monumental event but quite what I didn't know.

By 1970 I was following England on TV in Mexico, Bobby Moore became my idol and I a lifelong West Ham United supporter. As I painfully watched England fail to qualify for the '74 and '78 tournaments then more than once I regretted not taking my seat on the sofa on that hot July Saturday afternoon in 1966 ... and all that!

Paul Duggan

Memory added on August 26, 2016

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