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Captain of the Swinging Sixties
World Cup winner Bobby Moore was a leader on the pitch and in the fashion stakes too. By Daniel Evans
The first time I met Bobby Moore was in the autumn of 1986. I was a young sports journalist trying to make my way, he was England’ s World Cup winning captain who had ended up writing sports reports for what was, then, Britain’ s newest national newspaper.
The Sunday Sport had launched the day before my first shift and it was clear it wasn’ t aiming at the highbrow market. As I sat in the office waiting to find out what needed to be done, I clearly remember the man in charge, who had been quite happy with all the production and distribution side of things, telling his editorial team that they needed to“ up the nipple count. We need more nipples per page”.
It was into this intellectual atmosphere that Bobby Moore walked a day or two later to discuss what was needed for his next column. Can you imagine David Beckham or Steven Gerrard, Wayne
Rooney or John Terry catching the Tube to prepare for the following weekend’ s big match preview? But Moore was there, on time and keen to learn. And, even though it was only an informal meeting, I couldn’ t help but notice – probably because nobody else was – that Moore was immaculately dressed. He listened carefully as we talked about how he was going to approach his next column – how different players respond better to different types of encouragement, if I remember correctly.( He was also pleased to hear that the nipple count edict did not apply to the sports pages).
At the time, it did not occur to me that, instead of sitting in some nondescript office in north London, Moore should have been working in football, at the very least as an ambassador for the FA, travelling the world and encouraging youngsters to take up the game and play it in the right spirit. R
SAVILE ROW STYLE MAGAZINE 65