It's 52 years today and England were World Champions.

It's 52 years today and England were World Champions.

It only seems like yesterday and for those who followed the Beatles the musical coincidence could hardly have been more bizarre. It was day unlike any other day and one that will be etched indelibly in the minds of hundreds and thousands, millions nay less, England football supporters. It was 1966, the year England won the World Cup, the Jules Rimet Trophy, the year we danced in the Trafalgar Square fountains after the World Cup had been won, the year we cheered the England players as they emerged from the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington and out onto the balcony.

It was the 1960s, the decades that unashamedly gave us outrageous fashions, hilarious haute couture, crazy but happy, clappy psychedelic music, Woodstock, Vietnam and catastrophic world events that would shape the world we would inhabit for many years after the decade had drawn to a close. But on one Saturday afternoon at the end of July in 1966 England achieved something that most of their vocal critics were convinced would never happen in any lifetime least of all theirs.

After all the teeth gnashing, soul baring, melodramatic weeks leading up to the World Cup opening evening when England could barely scrabble a goal-less draw in their opening group match against Uruguay, none of us could have known the sheer enormity of the events that would follow that game. With the benefit of hindsight it still seems like some huge dreamscape where the things England supporters must have thought they'd never see again, flared into life with all the vibrancy of a Woodstock or maybe that show stopping cabaret at the Talk of the Town at London's West End.

It's now 52 years since a young, shy, modest and humble man with blond hair stepped up to the Royal Box at the old Wembley Stadium, wiped any dirt he thought may have existed on his hands and accepted football's most valuable of all trophies with the broadest smiles. For those who witnessed it all the occasion, in isolation, now assumes an almost historic significance. The man with the blond hair and an engaging smile was West Ham captain Bobby Moore and Moore, overnight, became one of the most celebrated and iconic figures in not only footballing culture but a global superstar.

And yet frustratingly and incredulously, England have never won the World Cup since but it hasn't been for the want of trying. Recently, they reached the semi finals of a World Cup for the first time since 1990 and a vast majority of the nation bit their fingernails once again, privately hoping but never suspecting that maybe it could be this time. But then for reasons that can never be properly understood England graciously acknowledged that they'd got as far as they could and that realistically we were never really destined to reach a World Cup Final because maybe that final obstacle could never be overcome.

Still, there can be no harm in misty eyed recollections and perhaps nostalgia can have its ample consolations. As a three year old child the memories are simply non existent but my grandfather and his colleagues did proclaim both accurately and victoriously that indeed West Ham had won the World Cup. The football historians are many who will tell you that three West Ham players were instrumental in the downfall of West Germany. They were right and the English were besides themselves with delight.

Undeniably Bobby Moore, Sir Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters were trained, coached, nurtured, guided, coaxed and cajoled by the patient and avuncular Ron Greenwood at the old Upton Park. Sir Geoff Hurst had ghosted swiftly into acres of space in the West Germany penalty area before leaping like the proverbial salmon and, criminally neglected by the German defence, glanced his header sweetly into the net for England's equaliser after the Germans had taken the lead. Bobby Moore could never have struck a more perfectly weighted free kick for Hurst if he'd rehearsed it a thousand times.

Then in the second half England gained a stronger foothold on the game and always looked the likelier of the two sides to break through decisively. Once again the ball had travelled back into the West German penalty area and after a surge of electricity had run through the six yard box, Martin Peters of Dagenham and West Ham picked up a loose ball and thrashed the ball home for England's second. Peters jumped into the air, a thrilled and elated figure who reacted in much the way any of us would on receiving good news.

For the rest of this elegant epic, Alan Ball gave us his impersonation of a combustion engine that keeps exploding, tireless, indefatigable, immense, running here and there, hither and thither, the lightning bolt in England's relentless attack, full of sound and fury. There was Bobby Charlton, the Manchester United wonder kid who had survived one of the most horrendous of football related tragedies when literally on the brink.

In 1958 Charlton was about to fly back to England after United had just played Red Star Belgrade in the European Cup and then found himself stranded on a Munich airport runaway. While the rest of his closest friends would die in the plane that should never have been allowed to take off, Charlton would embark on the most heroic rehabilitation. Then ten years later after a loyal and emotional attachment to his beloved Manchester United, Charlton would lift the European Cup for United in a stunning 4-1 victory against Benfica.

But on World Cup Final day, Bobby Charlton, he of the dynamic, dynamite shot from long distances, would cry seemingly indefinitely because this had been his day in the sun. Then the explosive Charlton would glance over to his brother Jack, weep ever more copiously, hug his sibling and just embrace both the family feeling engendered by the day and the closely knit communality of this day of all days.

There were the defensive titans of the day, players such as Nobby Stiles. Stiles of course was that toothy kid in the playground who didn't care what the score was as long as he could take the ball home and tell his family all about it. Stiles was hard running, hard in the tackle, totally, remorselessly devoted to the cause. Stiles quite literally, wore his heart on his sleeve, aggressive because he knew he had to be but unforgivably uncompromising. Nobody messed with Stiles and nobody knew more about the opposition he was facing.

Jack Charlton, Bobby Charlton's brother could never be erased from anybody's memory bank. When the final whistle went for the end of the 1966 World Cup Final, Charlton slumped to his knees, looked to the skies and wondered if life could get any better. Our Jack was naturally exhausted but many of us knew that Charlton had been a rock, a deeply inspirational presence, an almost evangelical presence at the heart of the England defence. He was tall if not taller than the average giraffe, patrolling the centre of his back four like a security officer employed by the Bank of England.

The story was that after the game Jack Charlton had wandered away from the joyful hokey cokey celebrations in the West End of London and decided that he just wanted to be alone. Eventually and allegedly Charlton ended up knocking on a stranger's door in Leytonstone in Essex and asking quite innocently whether he could share his World Cup experience with them over a cup of tea.

In the hullabaloo and high fiving revelry, the contribution of Liverpool striker Roger Hunt may have been conveniently overlooked. And yet Hunt was the one man at Wembley that day who simply assumed that the debatable third Sir Geoff Hurst goal had crossed the line by quite a distance. Hunt tore around Wembley, hunting, niggling, pestering, badgering, always making himself available in space for those important touches, tussling for possession and invariably winning it.

And so we come to that moment when the world stopped for a moment, paused for breath, sighed pessimistically and then hit the roof in the full knowledge that nobody could take that moment away from us. When Sir Geoff Hurst turned smartly in the German penalty area after excellent work by Alan Ball the whole nation took another sharp intake.

But we should never have worried for a single second because fate had suddenly intervened. Hurst adjusted his body, moved his feet quite brilliantly and strategically and flashed a thunderous first time shot that hit the crossbar, scraped the white goal line and then bounced out of the goal rather like one of those silver balls in one of those old fashioned pin ball machines. What on earth had happened there?  It must be a goal because the whole of the England team had thought it had.

Then all hell broke loose. White shirted West Germany defenders chased the referee around the old Wembley Stadium as if the whole England team had stolen all of their worldly belongings. They surrounded the man at the heart of it all as if a grievous sense of injustice had been visited upon them. Couldn't the referee see the obvious evidence in front of everybody's eyes? The ball had never crossed the line and the Germans were livid. This had to go before the learned judge at the Old Bailey.

After what seemed an eternity and judicial deliberation the jury delivered their considered verdict. The Russian linesman- for that was his title in 1966- thrust his flag in the air with an officiously serious look on his face and England had scored their third goal. Hurst looked around him briefly, shocked for a minute or three and was then relieved at the end of that hiatus in the action. Hair matted with sweat and bemusement on every feature of his face, Hurst jumped up and down again, knees and legs in unison and then there was the realisation that he had scored. Yes, he had scored for England again.

With the game stretched beyond belief England flowed forward over and over again, determined to put their West German rivals well and truly in their place. The Germans had nothing more to give and it was now that English doggedness and red blooded gallantry took over. England were gambling and gambolling around the Germans like the proverbial sheep in springtime. It was almost game over for Helmet Schoen's Germans and the minutes were inexorably ticking away.

With minutes to go the ball had found its way back in their own defence. Now Bobby Moore would encounter one of those life changing decisions he would never regret. Picking up the ball tight near the touchline, Moore controlled the ball with all the time in the world at his disposal except Moore couldn't hear the cries of exhortation from Jack Charlton. Charlton apparently told Moore to dispose of the ball with all the haste of a man with an unexploded bomb in his hands. Please Bobby. Just get rid of it or words to that effect.

But Moore did heed the well intentioned advice of his esteemed colleague. He looked up, surveyed the geography of the Wembley pitch like a Roman emperor before chipping the most glorious through ball over the top of the fading West German defence. Galloping into vast and open acres of empty grass, Geoff Hurst raced away like the most accomplished sprinter, pulling the ball towards him and then rifling a shot which bulged the German net for the fourth and conclusive goal.

So it was that 52 years ago today, England, that green and pleasant land, that peaceful, serene and placid land where the pubs used to shut at 11pm and Sundays were sacred, were declared winners of the 1966 World Cup. In years to come we may come to believe that such days in our lives will never be witnessed ever again although we can only hope that they might.

Still we love anniversaries and those great state occasions when everything goes exactly according to plan. We did win the World Cup 52 years ago and although the gap is widening and the years are increasing England made all of us proud to be associated with everything that the country had so fondly held dear. But England had created its very personal niche. For one year it was our World Cup rather than the one that dog called Pickles had found, a World Cup we were temporarily deprived  of Still dogs have always been our best friends and when was the last time a dog scored a hat-trick in the World Cup Final? 1966 hey, what a year that was.