Gordon Banks: The steelworker's son who became a World Cup winner and goalkeeping inspiration

England goalkeeper Gordon Banks makes a remarkable save from a header by Pele of Brazil during their first round match in the World Cup at Guadalajara, Mexico
Among other things, Gordon Banks was remembered for his save against Pele at the 1970 World Cup Credit: 4k TV grab

In his 2002 autobiography, Gordon Banks, the only English goalkeeper in history with a World Cup winners’ medal, recalls why, when he climbed to his feet after that ­wondrous save from Pele at the 1970 World Cup, he did so with a chuckle. “I was laughing at what Bobby Moore had just said to me,” Banks would write years later of his most famous save. “‘You’re getting old, Banksy,’ Bobby quipped. ‘You used to hold on to them.’”

Banks, one of England’s boys of 1966, died on Tuesday as a consequence of kidney cancer, at the age of 81. He is the fourth of the XI who won the World Cup more than 52 years ago to pass away, and his death precipitated an outpouring of sadness and nostalgia across the English game and beyond, including by the great Pele himself.

Banks’s life will be remembered for that wondrous save, perhaps even more than for anything he did four years earlier when England won the World Cup, but his career was a lot more than that. Growing up in Sheffield, downwind of his ­local steelworks, the son of a steelworker and the youngest of four brothers – his was an unusual post-war career. He was voted the second greatest goalkeeper of the 20th century, behind Lev Yashin, yet he never played for any of the great clubs of the era, and alongside his World Cup winners’ medal were just two League Cups, won eight years apart with Leicester City and Stoke City.

When the loss of his sight in his right eye in a car accident in October 1972 forced his early retirement the following summer, Banks’s club career in terms of domestic trophies had been one of many near-misses. He played in two FA Cup finals with Leicester in 1961 and 1963, losing them both before he was unceremoniously sold in 1967 to make way for a young ­Peter Shilton. At Stoke he reached FA Cup semi-finals in 1971 and 1972, losing both times to Arsenal.

But it was elsewhere that Banks made an impression on the next generation of goalkeepers, as Neville Southall recalled. Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live, Southall said that as a coach, Banks had been way ahead of his time, focusing on the technical aspects rather than “working you into the ground” like so many coaches of that era did ­before many clubs had specialists for goalkeepers.

Banks was a keen observer of non-British goalkeepers in an era when there tended to be a mistrust of overseas influence. Even down to his gloves: in 1970 he had bought for himself the new, oversized variety, with a dimpled rubber surface, preferred by South Americans.

Banks’s professional career began at Chesterfield in the old Third Division North where, aged 15, he was given part-time terms on wages of £3 a week. He progressed to the reserves by the 1954-55 ­season, where he breezily recalled in his autobiography, Banksy, ­conceding 122 goals in 42 games, although without Banks it would have been many more.

At 17 he was called up for ­national service and joined the Royal Signals, with whom he was posted to Germany, where he met his German wife, Ursula. He made his first-team debut for Chesterfield aged 20 in November 1958. By the following summer he had impressed sufficiently that Leicester wanted to sign him. He recalls dancing around the kitchen with Ursula when he came home to announce his new salary: £15 a week.

At Leicester he had first to win the No 1 spot in the team. The ­manager Matt Gillies could be authoritarian at times, dropping centre-forward Ken Leek for the 1961 FA Cup final because he had been spotted in a pub in the week of the game. It was a decision which Banks felt cost his side dearly at Wembley. After the abolition of the maximum wage in football, Banks’s weekly salary at Leicester eventually climbed to £60, albeit at a time when he was England’s first choice.

Banks was first selected in an England squad in October 1961, but did not make his debut until April 1963, under Alf Ramsey. On the bench in that original squad in 1961, he left Wembley 20 minutes after full time and was driven to Filbert Street to arrive 30 minutes before kick-off to play in a European Cup Winners’ Cup tie against Atletico Madrid. It was in the days before European club football and the international game enjoyed a harmonised calendar.

Bobby Charlton raises the Jules Rimet trophy in the air following England's 4-2 victory after extra time over West Germany in the World Cup Final at Wembley Stadium, 30th July 1966
Banks is the fourth of the XI who won the World Cup more than 52 years ago to pass away Credit: Getty Images

Over the years at Leicester, Banks honed his craft as a goalkeeper. He was not allowed to train on the pitch at Filbert Street because his studmarks would have been spotted in the goalmouth and, as he recalls in Banksy, “players weren’t allowed on the pitch, except of course on match days”. 

He would instead set up behind the touchline near the halfway line, where the turf was naturally worn. Apprentices would be bribed to cross the ball and take shots. “Looking back it’s ridiculous to think I had to be so secretive about learning my trade as a goalkeeper,” Banks wrote.

By the time he reported for duty for the World Cup in May 1966, Banks had won 24 caps and that 1964 League Cup, played over two legs against Stoke.

He had taken over as England No 1 from Ron Springett in April 1963 and kept his place up to one game before his car accident in 1972. He was one of the party including Moore and Jimmy Greaves who found their passports on their hotel room pillows after an unsanctioned night out before a pre-tournament friendly in Lisbon. Ramsey forgave them, but the message was clear.

It was part of Banks’s preparation to chew sugar-coated Beech-Nut gum and spit onto the palms of his gloves to make them sticky. When Harold Shepherdson, Ramsey’s assistant, forgot the gum before the 1966 semi-final against Portugal, Shepherdson had to run the length of Wembley Way in the minutes ­before kick-off to buy some from a late-opening newsagent. The penalty Eusebio scored in the semi-final was the first Banks had conceded in the tournament. There would be two more in the final, but England went on to win the World Cup.

Gordon Banks photographed near his home in Stoke-on-Trent
Banks was the humblest of heroes right up until this death Credit: Andrew Fox

Banks was named by Fifa in its tournament XI and returned to Leicester for the new season as the game’s pre-eminent goalkeeper. A year later, at 29, he was told by Gillies his best days were behind him and was transfer-listed. Bill Shankly told Banks later he had tried to buy him, but had been denied the funds by a Liverpool board who felt £50,000 was too much for a goalkeeper.

At Stoke, Banks made a new life and it was where he chose to settle after football. Although the team spent the first couple of seasons fighting relegation, they went on to win the 1972 League Cup, which remains the club’s only major honour. His performance in the semi-final against West Ham United was regarded as one of his best. The 1970 World Cup may have been different for England had he not fallen ill before the quarter-final tie with West Germany. Assailed by a serious stomach complaint, he was ­replaced by Peter Bonetti, whose errors were costly.

On Oct 22, 1972, Banks was driving home to Madeley Heath from treatment at the Victoria Ground when he overtook a car on a country road in his Ford Consul. In the collision that followed, the windscreen perforated his right eye and he required more than 100 micro-stitches in the retina and socket.

Floral tributes and football scarves adorn the statue of England's World Cup winning goalkeeper Gordon Banks at Stoke City's Bet365 Stadium
Floral tributes and football scarves adorn the statue of England's World Cup winning goalkeeper Gordon Banks at Stoke City's Bet365 Stadium Credit: Getty Images

It was days later, when he reached for a cup of tea on his bedside table and grasped thin air that, at 34, he realised he could never play again at the top level. He did briefly come out of retirement to play in the United States’ new professional league, NASL, where he was voted goalkeeper of the year in 1978 at the age of 40.

His management career at Port Vale and then Telford United was largely unhappy. Telford sacked him in 1980 after he took time off for surgery. The chairman told him that in order to get his contract paid up he would have to accept another position at the club, selling raffle tickets, which Banks took out of “sheer bloody-mindedness”. He eventually got 50 per cent of what he was owed.

Later he ran a hospitality business in Leicester and then worked for the Pools Panel. But it was Stoke to whom he felt the strongest connection, where a statue depicting him lifting the World Cup was unveiled years later, and who announced, on Tuesday, the passing of another giant of English football’s post-war game.

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