Chasing Shadows: Gordon Banks

First featured in last season’s matchday programme, Daily Mirror sports writer Mike Walters recalls some of the best individual displays he has witnessed the Hornets come up against…

Ahead of Watford’s Sky Bet Championship fixture against Stoke City on Friday night (December 29, 7.45pm KO), this piece focuses on a Potters legend...

Watford’s FA Cup run to their first-ever major semi-final in the 1969/70 campaign included a narrow 1-0 win against Stoke City in the fourth round.

It was the last time – and to my knowledge the only time – Hornets fans saw England’s 1966 World Cup-winning goalkeeper Gordon Banks play at The Vic, and it took a supreme 25-yard shot from Colin Franks, making only his sixth appearance for the club, to beat him for the winner.

Franks was a decent utility player who would go on to finish runner-up in the inaugural Watford Observer Player of the Season poll three seasons later, although his record of nine goals in 124 appearances did not do him much justice until Sheffield United signed him for £60,000 in 1973.

Tony Currie, Keith Eddy, Stewart Scullion, Franks... the Blades certainly knew where to come shopping for most of their best signings 50-odd years ago, didn’t they?

As for Banks, some of his greatest hits were still ahead of him after the Potters’ defeat in front of more than 23,000 fans at The Vic little under 54 years ago.

Despite helping England to World Cup glory just nine months earlier, Banks had been dropped by Leicester City towards the end of the 1966/67 season to accommodate promising young keeper Peter Shilton.

Foxes manager Matt Gillies told Banks: “We think your best days are behind you and that you should move on.” Football is a game of varied opinions, but it certainly didn’t look like Banks was washed-up when he made the greatest save of all time to keep out Pele’s header at the 1970 World Cup.

The great man modestly compared that scintillating feat of gymnastics with “lying down in the middle of the road” because the Guadalajara pitch was rock-hard – but he didn’t even rate it as his greatest save.

When he helped Stoke to win the League Cup in 1972 – still the Potters’ only major trophy – his last-gasp penalty save, diverting England team-mate Geoff Hurst’s thunderous penalty over the bar in the semi-final against West Ham at Upton Park forced a replay.

Stoke won the encore 3-2 on a neutral swamp at Old Trafford – but only after another England legend, Bobby Moore, had saved Mike Bernard’s penalty, although he couldn’t keep out the rebound. Moore had taken over as an emergency keeper after the Hammers’ first-choice Bobby Ferguson was carried off with concussion.

Banks was not only a tremendous goalkeeper but, in the experience of this earnest hack, a regular and ever-helpful source of copy until his death, aged 81, in February 2019.

The last time I saw Gordon was by the 18th green at a golf course somewhere in Staffordshire’s hinterlands. In an act of misadventure, I had promised to get a yellow replica England jersey – as worn by Banks in the 1966 World Cup final – signed for a school quiz night auction. I cut it so fine that the only place I could intercept him before the function was at the end of his round before he headed north to an after-dinner function.

After draining his putt on the last hole, he hadn’t even reached the locker room before doing the honours with a Sharpie marker pen. What a legend.