Bobby Moore: By the Person Who Knew Him Best - Tina Moore

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and I are clinging to each other, the way we’ve done for most of the game. Every conceivable emotion has been wrung out of us - pride, rapture, excitement, despair, euphoria, disbelief, hope, agony, exhilaration. We clenched our fists in anticipation when Martin Peters scored with twelve minutes to go. We plunged our heads in our hands when the Germans equalized with just moments of normal time remaining.

      We watched the shot from Geoff bounce in off the crossbar in extra time. Or did it hit the underside and bounce out again? Wasn’t it a goal after all? Judith was shouting, ‘It’s in, it’s in!’ and I was backing her up with, ‘Oh yes, it’s in!’ The German supporters behind us were shouting back, ‘No it isn’t!’ We must have sounded like the audience at a panto. But it was all right. Goal given. 3-2.

      The World Cup is nearly ours.

      Now the German supporters have fallen silent. A few seconds of tension seem like an eternity. Bobby finds Geoff, running way upfield, with the perfect ball. People start running onto the pitch. In living rooms all over the land Kenneth Wolstenholme is telling the nation, ‘They think it’s all over . . .’

      Geoff’s puffing out his cheeks, the way he always does when he shoots. The ball lands in the net. And to continue with those words of Kenneth Wolstenholme, which I think everyone in England must know by heart,’. . . It is now.’

      There’s too much noise to hear the final whistle, but around me is an explosion of delirious joy. I just sit in silence for a few seconds. I’m drained, physically and emotionally. The roller coaster of the last eighteen months that Bobby and I have lived through, the public adulation and success, the private terror and uncertainty, have suddenly got to me. I can’t take this in.

      I don’t stay still for long, though. Judith and I are out of our seats, hugging each other. I think of Doss, Bobby’s mother, who’s spent every game of the tournament pottering around the garden because she can’t bear the suspense of watching Bobby. Now she’ll be so proud and overjoyed.

      Bobby climbs the steps. He glances at the Queen’s lilywhite gloves and carefully wipes his sweaty, muddy palms on his shorts then dries them on the velvet balustrade before receiving the trophy. I can’t help smiling. It’s such an elaborately thoughtful gesture, so typical of Bobby. Mr Perfect.

      And when he holds up the cup, I cry. Not out of happiness because England have won but because of what he’s been through to be standing here today with the Jules Rimet Trophy in his hands. Watching him being carried round on his team-mates’ shoulders, I just think how magnificent he is. Here’s someone who, only a year and a half before, unknown to all but half a dozen people, has undergone a terrible ordeal with cancer and overcome it. Now he’s every schoolboy’s hero, holding up the World Cup. To me, that’s the real magic of the day. What a man.

      The thirtieth of July 1966 must be a date branded on every English person’s memory for all time. Even people who weren’t born then know about the day we won the World Cup. It’s part of British history. It was a unique occasion. Even if we won it again (wouldn’t it be great?), the boys of summer 1966 will always have a special place in everyone’s hearts. They were the first.

      When I think back on that time, the sun always seems to be shining in my mind’s eye, although in fact it rained on the afternoon of the Final. It must be something to do with the era in which it took place. The Boys of ‘66 were part of the fabric of the Sixties: Swinging London, the Harold Wilson government, student protests, flower power, the Beatles and the Stones, white boots and mini-skirts, Biba and Mary Quant. It was a gorgeous, glorious time when the whole of Britain seemed youthful, successful and optimistic.

      As Judith Hurst and I were driven in an England bus with the rest of the wives past the throngs of people in Wembley Way that day, we felt so proud and full of expectation. And the first people we saw when we took our seats were Terence Stamp and Jean Shrimpton, who was probably the face of the Sixties. She looked so glamorous, absolutely stunning. I had done a little modelling for a couple of catalogues but I just wasn’t in her orbit. She was the real thing. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She just stood out.

      The build-up to the Final had been overwhelming. Wherever you went, it was all anyone talked about, but I could still hardly believe what was happening to us. Yes, it was a time when the class system was breaking down and people from ordinary backgrounds like us were beginning to become cultural icons. And yes, Bobby had already become football’s first pin-up - Terry O’Neill’s photo of him, surrounded by models, had appeared in an edition of Vogue in 1962. Not only that - he had just graced the fashion pages of the Daily Express, kicking a ball in a Hardy Amies suit. But this was something else again. Before the World Cup, I’d been able for the most part to go about with my family in anonymity. But in those weeks leading up to the Final I had my first taste of what it meant to be a celebrity, just for being married to a footballer.

      I was being recognized in Bond Street. Shops would loan me designer clothes. Alfie Isaacs, a huge West Ham fan who owned an upmarket dress shop, gave me the outfit I wore on Final night - yellow silk chiffon with a flared skirt and a beaded top that I teamed with a tourmaline mink stole. Alfie had arranged for the photographers to be there when I tried it on and they followed me as I skipped up the road on a shopping spree. I caught sight of Alfie peering anxiously at me from round the corner, worrying that his ensemble was going to be upstaged.

      Taxi drivers wouldn’t charge fares. I discovered I could ring up a restaurant and say, ‘Tina Moore here, can I have a table?’ and the answer was never ‘No’. Ford gave us a white Escort, although as it had World Cup Willie, a cartoon character, on the side, it wasn’t the kind of vehicle you went anywhere in if you were trying to cultivate an impression of dignity. But let’s be honest, we were having the time of our lives. Loads of doors opened for us because of Bobby’s fame. I realized we were of value. A lot of it was hype and nonsense and I hadn’t expected it, but it was great.

      The point I’m making is that suddenly, for the first time ever, the game wasn’t just something stuck at the back of the newspapers. Football had married fashion and now it was feature page material as well. In March that year, Terry O’Neill had taken some fabulous shots of Bobby and me, including one of me leaning against a tree in Epping Forest, wearing thigh-high boots and an England shirt as a mini-dress, while Bobby knelt at my feet wearing drainpipes and a black polo-neck. If we hadn’t known it before, we knew it then - we were Bobby and Tina, the First Couple of football.

      My picture also found its way into the Sun, where it formed part of a collection called ‘Ten of the Best-Looking Women in England’, probably because someone thought I looked a bit like Joyce Hopkirk; we both had long, blonde hair. There the similarity ended: she was the editor of Cosmo magazine and one of the most powerful, glamorous women in Fleet Street, while I was a Gants Hill housewife. And I hasten to say that it was a terrifically flattering photo of me - when I first saw it, I thought, ‘Oh, she looks good’ and carried on turning the pages. I hadn’t recognized myself.

      Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t some new, unique star in the firmament - Tina Moore, footballer’s wife extraordinaire. It wasn’t just me on whom the press were focussing. All the players’ families found themselves to be of intense media interest. Martin Peters, Geoff Hurst and Bobby, the three West Ham players in the England side, all lived close by each other in suburban Essex and there were photoshoots in our back gardens, with toddlers crawling around our feet. Pictures of the girls of 1966 appeared in The Sunday Times - elegant Norma Charlton, pretty, coltish Lesley Ball, the lovely, warm Judith Hurst and tall, dark-haired Kathy Peters, looking haughty and Vogue-ish in her miniskirt. In actual fact, the real-life Kathy was one of the least haughty people you could ever meet. She had the most tremendous sense of fun. That girl was a real laugh.

      I suppose, in a way, we were the prototype Footballers’ Wives, but rather than being singers and models and celebrities in our own right, we were ordinary girls from ordinary backgrounds who only surfaced in the glare of publicity because we were married to the players. There was no pretentiousness or ostentation. Nobody was trying to cut anyone else out. There wasn’t a big hairdo amongst us and we would have died rather than do anything

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