ENGLAND'S 70S SUCCESSES

STEVE TOLMIE PICKS OUT SOME HIGH POINTS AMID A TOUGH DECADE FOR THE THREE LIONS...

- STEVE TOLMIE

THE 1970s were pretty desperate if you were an England fan, especially one who was too young to remember the joys of 1966, and quite a contrast to the current era.

For a start, it wasn’t so easy to watch the (usually unsuccessful) qualifying matches on TV. It’s hard for younger fans to understand what it felt like to be stood in a school playground in 1977 and hear an older lad shout over to his mates that England were 2-0 down to Italy.

In that moment, you knew that another World Cup was going to go ahead without England and, nearly as bad, double science was due to start in five minutes.

It all started going wrong in Leon in 1970, where England’s stunning collapse from 2-0 up to lose 3-2 to West Germany in the World Cup quarter-final set the ball rolling remorselessly downhill.

The decline became steeper as the West Germans (now with added Gunter Netzer) won 3-1 at Wembley in 1972, and worsened with the footballing calamities of Chorzow and Wembley (again) in 1973 with Poland winning their home match (Alan Ball getting sent off to put the brass hat on it) and famously drawing the return by restricting England to something like a mere 450 shots on goal.

The Poles went on to shine at the 1974 World Cup, while the 1966 winners found themselves very much out in the cold.

In that agonising Wembley match, where Jan Tomaszewski put in the performance of a lifetime, an incident at the death summed up England’s 1970s: even after Kevin Hector had nearly sniffed out a winner in injury time, England still managed to get back up the pitch and win a throw-in. Poor old Mike Channon rushed to take it… and got pinged for a foul throw. The Years of Hurt (©Skinner and Baddiel) had barely begun.