Guernsey football veteran Geoff Martel helped an England team relive history this week when he led them to victory against Germany on the anniversary of the country’s 1966 World Cup win.
Mr Martel, 81, led out the England Over-75s – the ‘Silver Lions’ – at Oldham Athletic’s Boundary Park on Thursday for what he later said was a match against the best team they had ever played.
But a challenging game ended with neither side scoring and so it went to a dreaded penalty shoot-out, which saw Mr Martel lining up with his teammates to take shots.
This was perhaps just as tense as in a professional match, with both sides missing or having shots saved.
‘It was two-all, then our last guy scored and their captain comes up and I thought it was a dead cert [that he’d score] but he put it wide,’ he said.
What followed was a celebratory frenzy worthy of any big match.
‘At the end everybody was shouting and screaming for us,’ he said of the crowd. ‘I think we had a good 700 there and they were really good for us.’
And that is not to mention the national media interest, with television cameras following the game, being featured on the national news and being very much in demand, particularly in the 24 hours before the kick-off at 3pm on Thursday, 60 years to the second since the World Cup final had kicked off.
Mr Martel also praised his opponents. ‘I’d say they’re the best team I’ve ever played against at that level.
‘They were fit and good, but that’s what you need. You need to be tested, otherwise you’re in your comfort zone all the time.
‘It makes people more aware of what they’ve got to put into their game to be able to compete at that level, and I think that’s important.’
A legend in local football for his age-defying abilities, he said he owed a lot of his own level of fitness to the Aztech Centre, where he often spends time practising on his own in its ‘tech zone’, and his daughter Rachel, who travelled to Oldham with him as the team’s physio.
‘I’ve got a small group that I also play with down at Aztech. We go down every Wednesday, play down there, and you know it just helps,’ he said.
He still plays weekly, too, at Victoria Park on a Monday, and is full of praise for the new stadium.
‘It means you can play all the time. The surface is brilliant.
‘In the old days, you’d get to the middle of the winter, and you know you’re going to have to stop.’
Mr Martel has led the England team since he was ‘spotted’ at a walking football tournament in Zurich several years ago, where he was playing for the English team, and asked to join the England ‘running football’ team.
‘It was never on my radar that I would be capable of that,’ he said.
But he took up the challenge and was later appointed captain, and has now led his country in matches all over the world. He thanked his family for their ongoing support, especially with his travelling.
‘Every couple of months you’d have an England game or a tournament which would involve several countries. There was one in Cardiff, probably about four weeks ago. Two weeks before that, it was Denmark. I’ve played out in Japan. It’s just wonderful how how this has all happened for me out of nothing because I just didn’t just didn’t realise it was going to happen.’
Mr Martel might well be the most all-round sportsman the island has ever produced, having represented Guernsey not just in football but basketball, diving, hockey, swimming, tennis, water polo and cricket.
The retired teacher has earned coaching qualifications in 10 sports – archery, athletics, badminton, cricket, diving, football, gymnastics, swimming, tennis and trampolining.
His football career in Guernsey initially saw him playing for Rangers and later, after moving away from the island for many years, teaching in the UK and Saudi Arabia, he came back and played mainly for Rovers.
But he has no plans to cut short his international career, and he said the Germans have already invited them all back for a rematch next year.
One other way in which history repeated itself this week was in relation to the winner’s trophy.
Back in 1966 the World Cup went missing when it was stolen several months before the final, famously being found in a hedge by a dog called Pickles a week later.
This time, the smaller mock-up trophy appears to have vanished after the team had celebrated their victory. Mr Martel said he had seen urgent messages from the manager asking if anyone had taken it home with them.
At the time of writing its whereabouts were still not known, nor whether the manager had recruited any four-legged detectives to try to sniff it out.