June 11th and I'm going back 35 years to 1986 and the Mexico World Cup once again for England's crucial Group decider against Poland.
If you have the feeling that you've seen this programme attached to one of my earlier articles well you're almost right. Today's programme cover is the English language version of the official programme of which I also have the Spanish version shown previously. This one I bought in the UK before the tournament began and, as is stated on the cover, I had to go to Rumbelows to get it. The programme cost £2 at the time but will set you back about £10 from a dealer today.
For anyone under the age of 35, Rumbelows was a consumer goods rental and retail high street store rather like Currys today but which was taken over and rebranded in the early 1990's. You may also remember their sponsorship of the League Cup from 1990 to 1992 (the three Rumbelows Cup winners were Nottingham Forest, Sheffield Wednesday and Manchester United and the curse of Rumbelows means that both Forest and Wednesday have won no major silverware since).
Unless you're very young indeed, I suspect that you'll be very familiar with the goals from this game because they've been replayed so often. It was the game where Gary Lineker, sporting a light cast on his left arm, scored a hattrick as England put the Poles to the sword. As often seems to be the case, England had failed to perform in their opening two Group games and had left themselves with a do or die game to be sure of progressing to the knockout phase. The words "failed to perform" hardly did their early lack of performance justice in 1986. They had crashed against Portugal losing 1-0 and then struggled almost catastrophically against Morocco, down to ten men following Ray Wilkins' uncharacteristically idiotic sending off before scrambling a 0-0 draw. One point from two games was simply not good enough and meant that England had to win against Poland. I had suffered along with the other England fans in Monterrey in those opening two games and now I was preparing to return to the UK immediately following this Group decider as my holiday was coming to an end. I wanted at least one win and qualification for the next phase to celebrate on the plane home!
You may not remember how close England came to falling behind against the Poles before Lineker eased the tension in the ninth minute with a predator's strike inside the six yard box. It was their first goal in over 400 minutes of World Cup Finals football. It was hard to imagine that Lineker would go on to become the winner of the tournament's Golden Boot with six goals before England's exit. With 15 minutes gone England and Lineker scored a second and we started to wonder what all the anxiety had been about. Before the first half was finished Lineker had his hattrick and the game was effectively over. Lineker was the supreme six yard box poacher and, if you total up the yards from the goal line for his three goals that day I doubt that you'd get to eighteen!
England progressed to, what is today known as, the "Round of 16" (although I think we referred to it as the Second Round at the time) where they would face Paraguay. Me? I progressed to the airport and the following week I was back facing my workmates with a lifetime of memories and tales to tell. Come on England!
CRB Match No. 446
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