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Museum Object. Ball from 1966 World Cup Final. Geoff Hurst's hat-trick is still the only one from a World Cup final. |
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Sir Geoff Hurst
| Category: | Male Player |
| Year Inducted: | 2004 |
Profile by Robert Galvin, the author of Football's Greatest Heroes, the official book of the National Football Museum Hall of Fame:
Geoff Hurst, the prototype ‘target man' in English football, emerged as a household name almost overnight after becoming the first and so far only player to score a hat-trick in a World Cup final.
Those three goals at Wembley, a superbly timed header, a shot on the turn with his right foot, and a thunderous drive with his left foot at the end of a 40-yard run, illustrated the all-round ability of an often under-rated player.
His third goal was the last kick of the match. ‘I knew I would never hit a better shot so long as I lived,' he recalled. ‘The sound, the feel of the leather on leather was exactly right.'
The hat-trick did wonders for his confidence. ‘I came back from the World Cup feeling ten-feet tall,' he wrote in 1967. ‘I know I have skidded past opponents and scored goals this season in a way that would have been quite beyond me a year ago.'
In the autumn of 1966, Hurst scored 22 goals during one run of 14 games, justifying the decision by West Ham to make him one of the highest paid footballers in the country, on a new six-year contract.
Their resolve to hold onto him was tested in 1967, when Matt Busby put in a bid of £200,000, double the existing record, by telephone from Poland, where United were playing in the European Cup. Ron Greenwood sent a now famous telegram in reply. It read: ‘Busby, Manchester United, Gornik. No. Greenwood.'
Alf Ramsey had a long list of requirements for an England forward: he had to be mobile, hard-working, unselfish, physically robust, and a goalscorer with all-round ability. Geoff Hurst fitted the bill.
Ramsey selected Hurst as his first-choice in the attack for six years between 1966 and 1972, the longest run of any forward during his time as manager. At club level, West Ham lifted the FA Cup and European Cup-winners' Cup in the mid-60s. In 1972, Hurst left West Ham for Stoke City, having scored 248 goals in 499 first-team games.
For all the power of his shooting in both feet [he had a habit of blowing out his cheeks at the moment of impact] and outstanding ability in the air, it was his running off the ball that most impressed managers.
‘I took it as a professional compliment when the Spurs manager Bill Nicholson sent his new signing Martin Chivers to watch me and study the way I played,' Hurst said.
‘His movement off the ball was fantastic,' Greenwood said. ‘Sometimes he was a decoy. Other times he would just knock the ball off, one touch, and then away; sometimes he would go wide to give the attack width and create space for others.'
At more than six feet tall and 13 and a half stone, Hurst had the ideal build to hold off defenders. ‘I was always more confident that we would keep possession when I hit long passes if Geoff was in the side,' Ray Wilson, the England left-back, said.
England went into the World Cup final without an orthodox winger. As a result the ball tended to be played forward from deeper positions. It was his job to hold the ball until support arrived. Although the term had yet to enter the football vocabulary, Hurst was the ‘target man'.
At the end of his career, Hurst said: ‘I never considered myself a world-class player like Bobby Moore or Bobby Charlton, even at my peak, but I was comfortable in world-class company.'