My memories of 1966 start when the tickets for the preliminary became available, when my late father, his friend Alan and myself applied for and bought tickets for the matches at Villa Park where we saw 3 excellent matches, Spain v. Argentina, Argentina v. West Germany and Spain v. West Germany.
Unknown to us if you applied for these tickets before a certain date your names were put into a raffle to give you the chance to entitle you to buy tickets for the final at Wembley. Luckily for us two of our names were drawn out and Alan generously agreed to let my father and I have them. We then applied and bought 2 tickets @£1.5s each.
We did not receive the tickets until 1 week before the final, but my girlfriend (now my wife) and I had accepted an invitation to our friends’ wedding, so I then had to decide whether to go to the wedding or Wembley (No choice really, Ha, Ha).
At the time we were dairy farmers and the cows normal milking times were 6.30am and 5.00pm, so we though the match would be over by 5.00pm and the cows can wait until we returned home at 7.00pm.What we did not allow for was extra time, so we didn’t get home until 9.00pm. We than had to go and milk 50 cows and finished just in time to see match of the day on the TV.
What a day! What an atmosphere! A brass band on the pitch at half-time, couldn’t hear a note! To our right a Brazilian with a drum never stopped drumming from start to finish. Afterwards walking back to the car German supporters were shaking our hands and congratulating us.
I still have the programmes from preliminary rounds and the final, also the ticket stubs and the rosette I wore to the final.
Philip Hodgskiss
Memory added on September 1, 2016
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