EE-aye addio....we've won the cup !

I'm sad to say Alan Ball has died at the age of 61.

As a boy of 16, not much into football then, I didn't realise the huge contribution Alan Ball, and ten other men, gave to British culture.

A team governed by a huge dictator of a man with "issues" A team made up of personalities mostly, a few shyer men and at least five world class players*. Alan Ball scrapes into position six in terms of his rating at the time, I would say.

Alan always seemed to me to be a man who "belonged" He belonged to Britain. He belonged to 60's culture. He belonged to sporting excellence and he belonged to both straightforward decency and simple honour.

On the radio, it says he was watching, perhaps, one of the finest football matches ever seen in modern British history. And then........expired of a heart attack.

In 1982 Alan's father was killed in terrible car smash in Cyprus.

Sadly, Alan's wife died some 3 years ago with Ovarian Cancer and, it would seem, his daughter was diagnosed with the same thing.

In 2005 Alan sold his World Cup Medal for about 150 thousand pounds to raise money for his family.

In my estimation, what a sad old tale that maybe says something about those public issues that seem to affect our private troubles.

I started watching football as a result of England's World Cup victory and have stuck with it since in a small way until quite recently.

Pip is in my life now and with her growing interest, a spark has blown into a fire of growing passion and I just feel it these days

It would be true to say I organised my head about my relationship with football in talking with Pip. I rather grandly talked about the sociology of football and how it is a metaphor for life. This thought made me ponder more on this thing about sport, and how some of us relate to it.

I have high expectations of it. And expect it to behave honourably. Its governed hugely by money money money. And I go along with this capitalist milch cow because it's football and football is a passion. But don't expect me to condone a system that seems to let down ordinary decent people.

The whole nature of football has changed so much, in so many ways, over the last 30 years.

Today, I feel sure there are many more casualties of the rigorous and fiercely competitive world of the British Premiership. The biggest and best world league by common consent. Certainly, the Premiership is capitalism's victory over the nation state, in the shape of the lamentable and poorly led current English Team.

War baby Alan now seems a reluctant hero compared to our modern boys.

War-baby Alan turn out a traditional, self-effacing man who did not push himself on others. Isn't it a pity that we, you and me, did not see fit to keep such men in our hearts and value them as heroes should be valued ?

Many people have come to talk about him on the radio this morning. We should maybe have talked about him more, before today.

JVIP

*Bobby Charlton, Gordon Banks, Bobby Moore and Geoff Hurst. Our fifth did not play on the day but could be thought greater, in some ways, than the others.....Jimmy Greaves.