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THE LITTLE MASTER 2

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A re-worked piece, updated and prompted by Jimmy Greaves being awarded the MBE in the New Year's Honours List.

 

Those of us who follow football will no doubt be aware that Wayne Rooney stands as England’s most prolific goalscorer.

A Pretender in my view.

Cited in the New Year’s Honours List is one James Peter Greaves, formerly of Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur, AC Milan, West Ham and England.  He is a self-confessed lifelong alcoholic. He will maintain that you never recover, even if you don’t touch a drop ever again and that at the height of his addiction “one was too many and 18 not enough”.

Jimmy Greaves stands in 4th place of all-time England goalscorers with 44 goals and, you might argue, is therefore 4th best England goalscorer behind Rooney, Charlton and Gary Lineker.

But whereas Rooney’s tally of 53 goals were scored over 120 games, Charlton’s 49 goals  in 106 matches and Lineker’s 48 in 80, Greaves scored his 44 in only 57 matches.

A good strike rate for a player is reckoned to be a goal every 2 games.  Charlton and Rooney both fall below this benchmark while Lineker makes it.  Greaves’s average, by contrast, is almost a goal a game for England. At his career strike rate, if Greaves had played 120 games like Rooney he would have scored no less than 92 goals.

I am unashamedly biased in favour of the Little Master.  Memory (and nostalgia) plays tricks, of course, but my treasure chest is filled with such mental snips of him dribbling his way through the entire Manchester United defence in a 5-1 win in 1965.

The match reports in our Sunday People always seemed to end with the sentence, “Greaves, who had done nothing up to this point, collected the ball, turned on a sixpence and rifled home the winner in the 89th minute”.

As the greatest goalscorer of his and subsequent generations it must break his heart when his grandkids ask if he played in England’s World Cup Final win of 1966.  He was dropped by Alf Ramsey having been injured in an earlier round and watched from the sidelines – this in the days before substitutes - his bitter-sweetness electrified for him for all time by his replacement, Geoff Hurst, scoring a hat-trick in the 4-2 win.

It is a puzzle why it has taken over 50 years for recognition to have come his way.

🌷(4)

◄ WHEN SAMMY GOT LOCKED IN THE STORE

TALE FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY ►

Comments

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John Coopey

Sun 3rd Jan 2021 07:37

Thanks for the Likes, Trevor and Stephen.

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John Coopey

Sat 2nd Jan 2021 11:26

Thanks, Tom. I think he already is. I think the only thing that could sour it is if he left us for another English club.

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Tom Doolan

Sat 2nd Jan 2021 10:27

Nice tribute John. Let's hope that Harry Kane will be the next Tottenham legend. Come on you Spurs. T ?

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John Coopey

Sat 2nd Jan 2021 08:54

Thanks Brian and Graham. When I looked for the picture to accompany this, Graham, there was one of him and Harry Kane together. He looked in a bad way. The curious thing is that I mentally associated myself with Harry who is 45 years my junior rather than that sick old man who is 11 years my senior. (Not that anyone I have ever kicked a ball with would associate me with either!)

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Graham Sherwood

Fri 1st Jan 2021 23:33

I'm glad that you didn't wait for the Obit that we both know must surely come sooner than later JC.

Jimmy is rightly a legend, from the days when it really meant something.

Its a lovely tribute

<Deleted User> (18980)

Fri 1st Jan 2021 22:04

It's a funny old game...

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