July 9 1966 and, like the rest of the country, the TV Times was looking forward to the Word Cup taking place in England.
At ITV, all eyes were on the opening game taking place on Monday 11 July and featuring England taking on Uruguay. It was a very different world from the hours of preview and post-match summary we’d get today. Introduced by Eamonn Andrews, the programme kicked off at 7.25pm, five minutes before the game. By 9.15pm, we were back in the hands of the News From ITN.
There were no more live games that week, just a string of highlights shows, each screened after 10pm and just 45 minutes long, featuring commentary from the likes of Hugh Johns and Barry Davies, along with analysis from Jock Stein and Bill Shankly among others.
Catch up with an age when football apparently wasn’t more important than a matter of life and death here.
