Wednesday, August 24, 2005

An amazing night of telly.

Wow!
I just have to love the BBC.
I don't normally blog about TV but tonight was too good to miss.
3 hours of fantastic sports documentarys about everyone's favourite sport, football!
Firstly, an hour about how TV sports developed through the 1960s with an unhealthy emphasis on the coverage of British domestic and international footy.
This featured huge chunks about England's 1966 World Cup win and Glazer United's 1968 European Cup triumph. Marvellous. It also featured some great cricketing footage.

Then a show about how black footballers such as Luther Blissett, Laurie Cunningham, Justin Fashanu and John Barnes broke the colour barrier in English football and overcame all the inevitable prejudice and stuff. Great.

Then, an hour tribute to Sir Bobby Moore.
This made me cry (well, could also have been the many beers i sunk whilst slumped on the sofa).
It was such a heartfelt show all about what a glorious Englishman he was.
Filled with old players and friends, noone had a bad word to say. And the thing is, it was easy to believe, Bobby Moore was a genuine hero, even though his playing days ended just a couple of years after I was born I, and many like me have been brought up to respect and admire all that he was, and we still do so, with ease.
The film really brought it home in the way that so many of the people interviewed were clearly welling up during their reminincences, My personal moment was the footage of martin Peters and Geoff Hurst laying a wreath decorated in the likeness of a West Ham no 6 shirt on the field at Upton Park. Tears in their eyes.
I brushed past Bobby Moore in Wembley car park before the 1987 FA Cup Final.

1 comment:

Wisdom Weasel said...

Raised in our cynical age I always insisted Bobby Moore was too good to be true until one day when I was visiting my granddad in Whipps Cross Hospital and one of the porters told me that the rather well appointed visitors room had been paid for by Bobby Moore after he'd been to visit a relative and found facilities depressing. No plaque, no statue, just the odd porter letting people know. Nice chap- Pele's favorite player and all.