Bobby Moore was the captain of the England football team when they won the world cup in 1966. That’s the only time our team has done so. They came close in 2018 with Harry Kane as captain and it seems that the current team is in the quarter final against France, only three games away from a possible second world cup win. Maybe we should not say that out loud as we might put a hex on it.
I write all this confidently sounding as though I know what’s going on. I must confess that I have no idea!
Checking facts led me to wonder why the team is called the Three Lions. Here’s what I found:
“The history of the nickname refers back to the Three Lions which feature on the England national team badge.
Three Lions have adorned the England national team badge since 1872 as the symbol of the English FA.
Explanations over the exact history of their usage differ, depending on historical interpretations, with 12th century historical battles including English armies bearing the standard of three gold lions on a red field.
There are also historical connections dating back to Henry I taking the throne in 1100 and Richard the Lionheart (1189-1199) using three golden lions on a scarlet background as a symbol of the English monarchy.”
There you go. Historical lions even before we played football.
So, as I know little or nothing of any value about football, why am I rabbiting on about it? Because I saw a headline about Bobby Moore’s ex-wife asking whoever currently has the shirt he wore in the 1966 world cup final to please return it to her.
“I would really love to get that shirt back where it belongs – with me, with my family, and with the nation, for everyone to have a chance to look at it and marvel at Bobby’s achievement,” she said.
Apparently she got all his football memorabilia when they divorced in 1986. If they were divorcing why did she want the memorabilia? You would think the last thing you would want was a load of stuff reminding you about the person you were divorcing. Did she not want to be divorced? Or did she simply recognise its financial value?
Maybe the shirt should be in a football museum, like the one in the centre of Manchester.
However, I find it strange how we are attached to things like shirts or other items that our heroes wore, rather like collecting relics from saints. Sometimes the old relics are still used, such as Hank Williams’ old guitar which Neil Young plays from time to time and sings about in his song “This Old Guitar”.
I tried to find out how Neil Young acquired it. This is one story I found:
“The story goes that Hank Williams, Jr. had traded the guitar for some shotguns, and it then went through a succession of other owners until it was located by Young's longtime friend Grant Boatwright who secured it for Young from Tut Taylor, the *dobro legend who owned the GTR music store in Nashville.
Young has toured with it for over 30 years. A story about the guitar and the song it inspired, "This Old Guitar" can be seen about 50 minutes into the "Neil Young: Heart of Gold" film. It was Young's primary guitar on the "Prairie Wind" album.”
*I looked up dobro: “Dobro is an American brand of resonator guitars owned by Gibson and manufactured by its subsidiary Epiphone. The term "dobro" is also used as a generic term for any wood-bodied, single-cone resonator guitar.” The wonders of the internet!!
I love the fact that Neil Young doesn’t really regard the guitar as his - “this old guitar isn’t mine to keep, it’s mine to use for a while”. I wonder who he will pass it on to.
We have an old rocking chair in our house that, like that guitar isn’t really mine to keep. My grandmother used to sit and rock in that chair, rubbing her hands on the ends of the arms so that the polish is quite worn off there. My younger sister always hankered after that rocking chair. She decided it had her name on it. Then she went off and married a Spaniard and ended up living in the south of Spain. When Grandma died we had a little quandary about that rocking chair. Nobody even truly considered shipping it to Spain. But nobody wanted to just get rid of it. Our older sister declared it was too old fashioned to go in her house. And so it came to my house where it fits in fine but our younger sister still maintains that it really belongs to her. I am the custodian!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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