England started the tournament with a limp, listless goalless draw but ended it in fine style by overcoming an old rival in a high-scoring game to win the whole competition. The year was 1966. The legendary commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme described it thus: “Those lucky enough to see this game will talk about it for years.” But they didn’t. In fact, this particular match has been lost in the mists of time.  The World Cup final is forever etched into the nation’s consciousness. If we ever let it slip our mind, we are endlessly reminded about it, especially this year, its 50th anniversary. Yet the triumph described above by Wolstenholme was not secured at Wembley in late July but in Glasgow in early April. It was the last game in that season’s Home International Championship, when England beat Scotland 4-3 to finish top of the table of the four competing nations.  His iconic commentary has quite rightly come to characterise England’s sole World Cup victory. Wolstenholme’s words at the end of the final – “They think it’s all over ... it is now” have also helped to all but obliterate the memory of the epic Hampden Park tussle and undermine his bold assertion that this was “an incredible match and one we won’t forget in a long, long time.”  Hardly celebrated and barely remembered, this match was a precursor to Bobby Moore lifting the Jules Rimet trophy a few months later. Alf Ramsey certainly took it seriously. Ten of the 12 players who won at Hampden Park went on play against West Germany, with Blackburn’s Keith Newton and Manchester United’s John Connelly featuring in place of Ray Wilson and Martin Peters. In front of a staggering crowd of 123,052 – compared to the mere 96,924 who packed into Wembley for the World Cup final – Roger Hunt scored twice and Geoff Hurst warmed up for his World Cup final hat-trick with the first English goal.  The match was an end-to-end affair with some astonishing refereeing decisions littered across the dramatic match. It is well worth checking the highlights to appreciate how lucky we are with the standard of officiating nowadays as some of the French referee’s denial of penalties on both sides beggar belief. Despite the mazy dribbles of Jimmy Johnstone and the insouciant skills of Jim Baxter, England’s “wingless wonders” controlled the game, became Home International champions and paved the way for further glory a few months down the line.  Moving away from the international scene to turn attention to the domestic league season of 1965-66, there were a few notable features that have again been swallowed up and buried beneath the euphoria of the World Cup win. The traditional curtain-raiser, the Charity Shield saw two of the greatest British club managers, Matt Busby and Bill Shankly pitting their wits against each other. The match ended 2-2 at Old Trafford and the title was shared between the previous year’s champions, Manchester United and the 1965 FA Cup holders, Liverpool.  All 22 players in the starting line-ups were from the British Isles. George Best was the sole representative from Northern Ireland, alongside four from the Republic, seven from Scotland and 10 from England. Compare that to the 2015 Charity Shield line-ups, when Arsenal beat Chelsea 1-0 and there were only four Englishmen, who were outnumbered by the handful of Spaniards. There were no Scottish or Irish players and Welshman Aaron Ramsey was the only other player from the British Isles among the 22 starters.  1966 was a particularly good year for the Merseyside clubs. Harry Catterick’s Everton winning the FA Cup by coming back from a two-goal deficit against Sheffield Wednesday with three goals in the last 30 minutes to prevail 3-2 at Wembley in May, watched reportedly by both John Lennon and Paul McCartney.  Perhaps it was the famous duo who inspired Toffees fan Eddie Kavanagh to stage what the Observer included in its 30 most outrageous sporting moments. Describing it in 2004 as “a solo pitch invasion, resulting in a Keystone Cops-style chase the length of the pitch. Kavanagh proceeded to make a mockery of Her Majesty’s constabulary, constantly eluding their clutches and even shedding his jacket in the process. Blues player Brian Harris added to the hilarity of the moment by picking up and donning the helmet of one of the floored bobbies.”  Meanwhile, on the other side of Stanley Park, Liverpool were crowned as convincing champions, six points in front of runners-up Leeds United, who pipped Burnley on goal average in the days when it was still just two points for a win. This was Liverpool’s second league championship in the space of three years and the fact that they achieved it with a playing squad of only 14 players makes it all the more noteworthy. They boasted the best defensive record, conceding only 34 goals in 42 league matches and had the joint top goalscorer, Roger Hunt, who shared the title with Willie Irvine of Burnley, with 29 goals each.  At the other end of the table, Northampton Town spent their one and only season in the top flight. Their meteoric rise from the Fourth Division to the First Division in the space of five years prompted Manchester City manager Joe Mercer to comment: “The miracle of 1966 was not England winning the World Cup, but Northampton reaching Division One.”  Despite creditable draws with Manchester United and Arsenal (twice) in their opening 10 fixtures, the Cobblers did not register a win until late October, their 14th league match, when they beat West Ham 2-1 at the County Ground. They returned from whence they came in equally rapid fashion and ended up seeking re-election to the Football League in 1972. In the space of a decade they had played in all four divisions twice. The only consolation for the Cobblers was that Blackburn Rovers were much, much worse and finished bottom by a fair margin, cut adrift by 13 points, but Northampton did contrive to lose 6-1 to Blackburn in mid-season.  Among the also-rans of the First Division were West Ham United. As their fans continue to revel in pointing out that their trio of England players “won the World Cup for England” it is therefore a little surprising to discover that West Ham finished a pretty ordinary 12th out of 22.  One of the few bright spots for the Hammers was an encouraging debut season for an 18-year-old midfielder from Poplar who scored his first ever goal for the club in their most impressive result of a disappointing campaign, a 4-1 win at White Hart Lane. As he had started his playing career as a youth for Tottenham, it was a particularly sweet and poignant moment for the teenage Harry Redknapp.  On the way up to the First Division were Division Two champions Manchester City, alongside Southampton, who were entering the top division for the first time. One of the most interesting developments in the Second Division was the live broadcast of the Cardiff v Coventry game back at Highfield Road, which was watched by 10,000 Sky Blues fans. As an experiment it seemed to have worked pretty well but it was not followed up and the idea withered away, only to be used sporadically in the future.  BBC’s Match of The Day was still in its infancy, having begun the previous year with the live coverage of Liverpool against Arsenal from Anfield. Following concern from certain clubs that ticket sales were being adversely affected by televised coverage, Match of the Day only began in October 1965 a full two months after the season started and was restricted to 45 minutes and could no longer be broadcast before 10pm, as it had been in its inaugural season.  Right at the bottom of the league pyramid, four clubs were forced to seek re-election but Rochdale, Lincoln City, Bradford City and Wrexham all survived, as was quite often the case with the self-preservation society in full swing. Having allowed the chairmen of the League clubs to vote on whether other League clubs should be jettisoned to the hinterland of non-league football, the Football League eventually abandoned the curious anomaly of the re-election system in favour of automatic relegation and promotion from the Conference some 20 years later in 1985.  A total of around 27 million people came through the turnstiles to watch the top four divisions, which was a continuation of the general decline of football crowds since its peak in 1948-49 when there were just over 41 million spectators. Twelve million watched the First Division that year, 44% of the total across all four divisions.  Against the backdrop of declining crowds, the league had been persuaded by their secretary, the indomitable Alan Hardaker, to launch the League Cup, with the full backing of the president Joe Richards. An idea that was first mooted as far back as 1892, according to football historian Simon Inglis, finally came to fruition in 1960. All the matches, including the final, were originally two-legged affairs to take advantage of the prevalence of floodlights at most grounds.  Related: Want to work in football? There are degrees for that at Wembley Stadium  The 1966 League Cup, or “Hardaker’s Folly”, as it had been dubbed, was won by West Bromwich Albion who overcame West Ham 5-3 on aggregate, winning the second leg 4-1 at The Hawthorns against a team that featured West Ham’s England trio of Moore, Peters and Hurst. This was the last time the League Cup final would be contested over two legs, with the 1967 final being staged at Wembley for the first time. West Brom’s win was laced with irony as they had been among the bigger clubs who had originally boycotted the new competition and they didn’t enter until the year before. West Brom also contested the 1967 final but lost 3-2 to Third Division Queens Park Rangers.  Attendances did receive a fillip from the World Cup victory and the following two seasons saw a rise to the 30 million mark, which represented the peak since the post-war heyday. By 1985 the numbers had almost halved to 16 million. In the 2014-15 season, 30.2 million people watched English league football, with the Premier League responsible for around 46% of the total, a similar proportion to 50 years ago. Plus ça change.  And so England duly carried all before them in July, adding the World Cup to the Home International Championship. The following year, in April 1967, Scotland gained sweet revenge for their defeat at Hampden Park the previous year by recording one of their most famous victories over the Auld Enemy at Wembley, thereby curtailing England’s unbeaten run of 19 games under Ramsey, which stretched back throughout the whole of 1966 and all the way back to October 1965. That was the year that was.  • This article is from The Agony and the Ecstasy• Follow Richard Foster on Twitter
West Ham ‘won the World Cup’ in 1966, but they also finished 12th in the league, behind champions Liverpool and FA Cup winners Everton. Here are a few more things you might not know about English football’s most glorious year