Nobbled
THE PRESS
By DAVID FROST
This weekend, however, they had their revenge out there in the West Country, East Anglia and the Highlands. for it was they, and only they, who had the most interesting sports story of the week —a scoop by Sam Leitch which covered the whole of the back page of the early editions of the Sunday Mirror. The headline read : CHOOSE HOBBY STILES OR I RESIGN! RAMSEY, and told
the story of pressures on AN Ramsey from the FA's once-powerful International Selection Com- mittee to drop Nobby Stiles the day after the game with France, when FIFA had taken the extraordinary step of publicly branding Stiles. According to Leitch, when Ramsey heard of the attempt to re-convene the committee he said, `If you have a meeting, you will also have to find a new manager!'
An obligingly concise summary of the plot so far, as well as an interesting sidelight on the World Cup and, since it was part of the Mirror's announcement of Nobby's own story, starting next Sunday it sounded as if they had access to some pretty authoritative sources. Alas, it was not to be. By the time the Sunday Mirror reached London, the great scoop of a few hours earlier was now a small box at the bottom of an inside page: Nobby Stiles. His World Cup story begins exclusively in next week's Sunday Mirror.'
What had happened? Had Alf Ramsey been holidaying in Beccles, Penzance. or the Highlands, read the story and telephoned the Mirror? Impossible. By the time he could have seen the papers and done that, the others would have been long printed. In any case, he did not issue a denial of the story until days later. Did Nobby want to keep that story for his own series and not give it away to old Sam Leitch? Was there another sudden attempt to re-convene a meeting of the FA's Senior International Selection Com- mittee to deny the attempt to re-convene the earlier one?
Or is there a night editor somewhere in the Mirror building who decided that the Nobby Stiles/Alf Ramsey combination was not as news- worthy as the two stories that succeeded it on the back page of the paper-500 telegraph poles on the Goodwin Sands and shoppers in Colchester's crowded town centre being enveloped in a parachute?
And incidentally, shouldn't someone be finding out what the FA are going to do about the disciplinary action they have been ordered to take for calling the Argentinians 'animals'? Over to you, Nobby.
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