World Cup Kickoff
In 1966 there was football on the pitch – and murder off it!
When I joined my first newspaper as a reporter, it soon became clear that I wasn’t going be a star football writer.
The Worthing Herald had a good newsroom, including two reporters who covered all sports – from archery to weightlifting. (Well, there aren’t many sports than begin with X, Y and Z.) So the sports guys couldn’t be at every soccer match the paper wanted to cover. Sometimes general reporters, like me, had to help out.
I’d been on the paper for three weeks when I got my first – and only – call from the sports team. The town’s leading football club – Worthing – had an important match against rivals Seaford Town.
For Worthing, it was an away match – in a town about thirty miles to the east. My brief: get myself to Seaford – a journey involving two changes of train – cover the match, and get post-match comments from the teams’ captains and managers.
Oh, and by the way, at the break, telephone the half-time score to the sports desk of the Evening Argus. They needed it for the stop press in their Sports Extra edition.
Come the day, that proved to be my downfall. At half-time, the match was a no-score draw. I had 10 minutes to call the Argus before the second half kicked off. Plenty of time. Or so I thought.
But remember, this was 1966. There were places where a dedicated landline phone was something of a privilege. Shared phone lines – you called it a “party line” if you had one – were common.
(You were supposed to put the handpiece down if you picked it up and heard your neighbour having a heart-to-heart with her loved one. But no wonder so many people knew everyone else’s business in those days. Party lines weren’t phased out in Britain until the early 1980s.)
Anyway, there was no phone line – even a party one - at Seaford’s ground. These were the days long before the ubiquitous mobile. A helpful steward pointed me to a red telephone box a hundred yards down the street. Some help! The cable connecting the handpiece to the cradle had been neatly sliced through.
In the next box I visited there’d been a fire. It took me fifteen minutes to find a working phone box. And when I called the Argus, I was told I was too late for the Sports Extra. “But not to worry. Syd had phoned Larry who’d run round to Elsie’s and she’d heard the score from Algie!”
So my hunt for a phone had been wasted all along. And worse was to come. By the time I arrived back in the press box, the second half was already nine minutes in. And what proved to be the only two goals of the match had been scored by Seaford.
I managed to reconstruct how the goals had been scored – and by whom – but my piece wasn’t cutting-edge sports journalism. It lacked colour and excitement. Neither of the sports guys complained. But I wasn’t asked to watch another football match again. I wonder why!
But little more than three months later, I was watching another football match. The final of the 1966 World Cup between England and West Germany. On a black-and-white screen television. It proved to be one of the most thrilling World Cup finals of all time.
The score was 2-2 at full time. England’s two winning goals both came in extra time. So when I started to think about writing a Crampton adventure set in the world of football, the 1966 World Cup final was the first match I considered. (Actually, it was the only match I considered!) But there was a real-life mystery about the World Cup’s Jules Rimet trophy that clinched it.
On 20 March 1966, only weeks before the tournament’s kick-off, the gold trophy was stolen. It had been the star exhibit at an exhibition mounted in the Central Hall, Westminster, a corner kick from London’s Houses of Parliament.
The trophy was in a locked display case and protected by guards, but it wasn’t actually watched every minute. The thieves chose their moment to force open the case, grab the gold trophy, and leave by a back exit. The thieves tried to ransom the trophy for £150,000 but it appeared the police hunt for them got too hot.
A week after the cup was stolen, a dog called Pickles snuffled at something wrapped in an old newspaper, tied with string, and dumped under the hedge of a house in south-east London. When Pickles’ owner, David Corbett, retrieved and opened the parcel, he was astonished by what he found.
Corbett handed the Jules Rimet trophy to the local police. They took it to the London offices of the Football Association. There, it was formally identified by Harold Mayes, the FA’s head of press relations.
Three years later, Harold had become editorial director of a Fleet Street publishing company. He gave me my first job in newspapers after I’d graduated from university. I remember him as a generous man with a taste for bread pudding and a fund of seemingly improbable tales. Like the fact he’d identified the Jules Rimet trophy. So, improbable until you found out they were true.
Anyway, to get back to the theft, police never caught the main thieves. And they never discovered how the trophy ended up under a hedge in south-east London… Until I wrote a fictional account in The World Cup Mystery! I’ve wrapped the Jules Rimet theft in a larger mystery which unwraps piece by piece to reveal a series of surprises as the story develops.
And to start you with a single clue. Which newspaper do you think the Jules Rimet trophy was wrapped in? Well, in my story, it’s the Brighton Evening Chronicle, of course. Where Colin Crampton is crime reporter. I’ve blended facts about life in 1966 with fiction, and I challenge you to tell which is which.
“Full of jokes, big and small, funny comments and sharp improvisations.”
- Northern Reader
Read The World Cup Mystery today …
A murder with a hidden motive.
A secret conspiracy behind the killing.
A crime reporter chasing a scoop.
It’s July 1966 – and England is football crazy as fans cheer their team on to win the World Cup. There are millions who’d kill for a ticket to the final in London’s Wembley Stadium. Then café owner Sergio Parisi is found murdered in his own kitchen – and his World Cup Final ticket missing.
As Evening Chronicle crime reporter Colin Crampton chases down the story, he finds a link to the theft of the World Cup’s Jules Rimet trophy. And Colin has a race to beat the final whistle to prevent an even deadlier crime.
“Mixes fact and fiction giving an exciting read.”
- Me and My Books
~Peter Bartram
http://www.headlinehero.co.uk/
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P.S. If you know someone who’s been bit by the mystery bug, help them scratch that itch and take life a little easier. Refer them and win prizes! (And many thanks to all of you who have recommended Spellbound to your friends and colleagues. We really appreciate it!)