Ian Black shares the same view about the effect of the war:
The wages were decent compared to manual work. I think footballers of my generation were more concerned about conducting themselves properly. Most of us had been in the forces, not the best times of our lives, and I suppose coming from that environment created a deep impression. Many of us just felt lucky to be playing football and did not want to spoil it.
Apart from the dismal financial rewards, the other drawback that the players of Alf’s generation had to contend with was the poor equipment and facilities. The bleak, down-at-heel atmosphere of post-war Britain extended all too depressingly to football. Training kit was poor, pitches were a mud-heap – when they were not frozen – and the cumbersome boots were more fit for a spell in the trenches. The classic English soccer footwear remained the ‘Mansfield Hotspur’, which had first been designed in the 1920s and made a virtue of its solidity, with its reinforced toe and protection for two inches above the ankle. The two main types of ball, the Tugite and the Tomlinson T, were equally robust. Both tended to absorb mud and moisture, becoming steadily heavier and larger as a match progressed. As goalkeeper Ian Black recalls: ‘There was not much smacking in the ball from a distance then. When it was wet, if you managed to reach the half-way line, it was an exceptional kick.’ Bill Ellerington says:
The ball was so heavy in those days. Beckham could not have bent it on a cold, damp February night. The ball used to swell right up during a game. If you did not hit it right, you’d have thought you’d broken your ankle. If you headed the ball where the lace was, you felt you’d been scalped. You had to catch it right. Our shin pads were made of cane and the socks of wool so they got heavy in the damp. The facilities were terrible at the Dell. We had a great big plunge bath and just one or two showers. In February, when the pitches were thick with mud, the first in got the clean water. At the end, the water was like brown soup. On a cold winter’s day, the steam from the bath would make the walls drip with condensation. You did not know where to put your clothes. If you had a raincoat, you would place it first on the hook so your clothes did not get wet. But you just accepted it.
But this was the environment in which Alf was now proving himself. By early 1948 he was in the middle of a run of 91 consecutive League games for Southampton, and was winning increasing acclaim from the press. After a match against West Bromwich Albion, in which he twice saved on the goal-line, he was described in the Southern Daily Echo as ‘strong, incisive, resourceful’. The team were pushing for promotion and also enjoyed a strong FA Cup run which carried them through to the quarter-finals before they were beaten 1-0 at home by Spurs on 28 February. The Echo wrote of Alf’s performance in this defeat:
Alf Ramsey is playing so well that he is consistently building up a reputation which should bring some soccer honour to him. He certainly impressed highly in this game and is steadily and intelligently profiting under the experienced guidance of partner and captain Bill Rochford.
Of Alf’s burgeoning influence, Ian Black says:
The spirit of our side was first class and my relationship on the field with Alf was very good. He was such a great reader of the game. He always seemed to know what was going to happen next. He lacked a bit of pace but he made up for it with his wonderful positional sense. He was a first-class tackler because he had such a good sense of timing. He never went diving in recklessly. He was never a dirty player. He hated anything like that. Nothing ever seemed to ruffle him. He was always very smart, conducted himself impeccably. Unlike some players, he was never superstitious. He never caused upsets or became aggressive. He was very confident of his own ability, which is half the battle in football. Alf had a natural authority about him. His approach, his knowledge of the game would influence players. So it was no surprise to me that players responded to him when he was a manager. He was the boss; they would understand that. There was no messing about with him, even when he was a player. I don’t mean that he was difficult, but he was able to impose his views and because they were often so right, he was all the more respected.
At the end of the 1947-48 season, the Football Echo described Alf as Southampton’s ‘most improved player’. Though Southampton had failed to win promotion, as they finished behind Birmingham City and Newcastle, the sterling qualities of Alf attracted the interest of the national selectors. In May, Alf received a letter from Lancaster Gate informing him that the FA were ‘considering’ him for the forthcoming close-season tour of Italy and Switzerland. Then a few days later, as he sat in his digs listening to the six o’clock news on the BBC Home Service, he heard to his joy that his place in the sixteen-strong party had been confirmed. Alf was rightly thrilled at this elevation; ‘I could not believe my good fortune,’ he wrote later, and for the first time in his life he was the focus of intense national media interest, with photographers and reporters turning up at the Dell to cover the story of the delivery boy made good. ‘While his choice as the sixteenth member of the party will occasionally surprise in many quarters, Ramsey nevertheless deserves the honour. He has had only one full season in League soccer and has made such rapid progress that the selectors have watched him several times,’ reported the News Chronicle.
He came down to earth when he reported for duty at the Great Western Hotel in Paddington, prior to England’s departure for the continent. To his surprise, on his arrival at the hotel, he was completely ignored, not just by a succession of England players like Billy Wright, Tommy Lawton and Frank Swift, but also by the England management. ‘For a very long time, in fact, I sat in that lounge waiting for something to happen.’ Eventually he went up to the trainer, Jimmy Trotter, to introduce himself. Even then, Trotter did not recognize Ramsey and it took him a few moments before he grasped who Alf was. The humiliating experience, reflective of the shambolic way England was run before the 1960s, taught Ramsey an invaluable lesson. When he became national manager, he made sure that he personally greeted every new entrant to his team, as Alan Mullery recalls:
My first meeting was with Alf in 1964 when I turned up at the England hotel in London. It was a very nice introduction. He came straight up to me, shook my hand and said, ‘Welcome to the England squad. Make yourself at home.’ He did it extremely well. From the first moment, I found his man-management superb.
The next day, Alf travelled with the England party to Heathrow Airport, which had opened less than two years earlier and was still using a tent for one of its terminal buildings. It was the first time Alf had been near an airfield, never mind an aeroplane, and he was initially an anxious passenger as the 44-seat DC-4 Skymaster took off. But as the plane flew over the Alps on its way to Geneva, Alf forgot his nerves and admired the breathtaking views of the snow-capped mountains. At Geneva, the England party was transferred to a pair of DC-3 Dakotas, before flying on to Milan, whose airport was too small to accommodate the Skymaster. From Milan, the squad was then taken to the lakeside resort of Stresa, prior to their game against Italy at Turin. It was a world away from the austerity of post-war Dagenham and Southampton, and Alf found it a shock to see ‘the apparently well-fed and beautifully clothed people’ of northern Italy. The Italian football manager, Vittorio Pozzo, appeared to understand the severity of food-rationing in Britain, for when he greeted the England team to the Grand Hotel in Stresa, he gave every member a small sack of rice. What today might seem an offensive present was only too eagerly accepted by each player, for, as Alf put it, ‘in those days rice was almost as valuable as gold’. Later in the trip, he was given a trilby hat, an alarm clock and two bottles of Vermouth as gifts, which he handed to his mother on his return to Dagenham.
Given his limited experience, Alf never expected to be in the full England team for the game at Turin. It was, thought Tom Finney, ‘the best England side I played with’. And this was to be one of England’s finest post-war victories, winning 4-0 thanks largely to some superb goal-keeping by Frank Swift and two goals from Finney. What interested Alf most, watching on the sidelines, was that because of the England team’s fitness, their players lasted the pace much better than the Italians. It was something he would remember when it came to 1966.
The England team then travelled to Locarno, where they stayed in another luxurious hotel and enjoyed a full banquet on the evening of their arrival. Again, Alf could not help but be struck by the contrast with the drabness of life in Britain. Amidst all this splendour, Alf had another cause for celebration: he was picked to play his first representative