Ball: small man who stood tall

SOCKS rolled down round his ankles, sweat staining his shirt, legs and lungs still pumping when others were out on their feet.

That is the image we will remember of Alan Ball, the youngest member of Alf Ramsey’s ‘Boys of 1966’.

If Bobby Charlton was the elegant conductor of England’s World Cup victory and Geoff Hurst the hat-trick hero, then Ball, who has died aged 61, was the engine whose energy made it all possible.

‘Mr Perpetual Motion’ was the description which perhaps described best the lad with the red hair, the high-pitched voice and the chirpy character who confounded all those school masters and early coaches who said he was too small at 5ft 6in to be a footballer.

Ball might have been small but he stood tall when he pulled on a football jersey and that was because the game had been drilled into him as a schoolboy by his football manager dad Alan Snr who once explained: “I taught football to him not as a game but as a way of life.”

It was a philosophy which stayed with Ball throughout a career which saw him turned down by Wolves and Bolton before joining Blackpool.

But it was at the ‘school of science’, which was Everton in the 60s, where his career took off and when Bill Shankly teased him from across Stanley Park.

“Don’t worry Alan, at least you’ll be able to play close to a great team.”

No manager ever received less than 100% from the man who went on to play for Arsenal, Southampton, Philadelphia Fury, Vancouver and Bristol Rovers.

And certainly none of his international managers. Above all, Ball was a patriot, one who earned 72 caps for his country and epitomised everything that was golden about the years when England were a force at the business end of the major tournaments.

It was no surprise when, after hanging up his boots, he went into management, although like so many from that class of ‘66 he had mixed success.

The highlight was promotion to the top flight with Portsmouth in 1987, the lowlights were relegation with Portsmouth, Stoke and Manchester City.

That was Ball, a man whose name was made for a sporting headline and who rarely disappointed sports editors. A man who had no time for show ponies and prima donnas, one who demanded his players work as hard as he did himself. At times he could be prickly.

But if he was a brave footballer, he was also a courageous man.

He was devastated by his father’s death in a car crash in 1982 and needed the steel afforded by a topsy-turvy managerial career when his wife and daughter were diagnosed with cancer.

When his wife died in 2004 he decided to put his World Cup medal and cap up for auction to secure the financial future of his three grandchildren and raised £140,000.

“It can help them and I’ve always got the memories,” he reasoned.

So have we. Not least the lung-bursting run into the corner to rescue the ball for the pass which Geoff Hurst crashed against the crossbar for the most controversial World Cup goal of all-time.

And next time you watch Hurst’s hat-trick goal watch out for the little chap with whirling socks-down legs racing through the centre screaming squeakily for a pass.

Yes, it was Ball – the man who put the energy into English football.