‘The thing about sports, any sports, is that swearing is very much part of it.’ Jimmy Greaves

Sport; it’s compelling, life’s dramas laid bare on the field of play. Whatever sport you follow, if you are attached to it it’s like a mirror being held up to your life’s experiences. Not an ordinary one but a mirror that somehow misses the mundane and captures the extreme ends of the experiential spectrum. It’s more like one of those funfair mirrors that reflect back an exaggerated distortion of the original, the feelings of the fans magnified as they share some of the sensations their team is experiencing. Thousands of people riding the signature neurochemical waves that accompany the peaks and troughs of success and failure; all at the same instant. The more dramatic the action the greater the neurochemical surge or slump. It’s no wonder that sport and the shouting of obscenities, as Greaves noted, are so closely intertwined.

Mention the name Jimmy Greaves today and most people would be able identify a striker from the 60’s and 70’s who suffered the ravages of alcoholism in the twilight of his career before recovering to become an affable TV pundit in the 80’s. Some may mention he was in the England world cup squad of ’66, most probably wouldn’t.

If you asked the same fans to name the most prolific all-time strikers across Europe’s top 5 leagues you’d probably have the likes of Ronaldo and Messi quoted back to you. Depending on parochialism and age of the responder other names may join those two. EPL greats such as Shearer, Rooney, Henry. Names from European leagues such as Gerd Muller, Ronaldo (Brazilian) or Raul. Most wouldn’t know that the most prolific all-time goal-scorer across Europe's top five leagues was, until the record was passed in May 2017 by Ronaldo and later by Messi, the aforementioned Jimmy Greaves. It was a record he held for almost 50 years.
When you consider that in the era he plied his trade pitches were not of today’s quality and the protection afforded strikers by referees was minimal you can perhaps begin to appreciate the sustained, exceptional, standard that Greaves set. Were he playing today his prominence would be similar to that of Messi and Ronaldo but in Greaves’ heyday of the 60’s and 70’s the media cult status of footballers was still in its infancy.

Jimmy Greaves began his career with Chelsea, who at that time were not the current day high flying side. He scored 124 goals in 4 seasons before joining AC Milan for an unhappy short stay (still scoring 9 goals in 14 games). He returned to England’s then premier league, the First Division, with Tottenham Hotspur where he took his total to 353. He ended his 14 year stay in European elite leagues with a year at West Ham where he added another 13 goals taking his total to 366, a record that stood for 46 years until surpassed by Ronaldo in May 2017. Typically Greaves was complimentary to the Portuguese noting records were there to be broken.

He was the leading top flight goal scorer in England a record six times. His goals per game ratio was a phenomenal and consistent 0.78, 0.7 and 0.77 for Chelsea, Spurs and England respectively, ratios not likely to be beaten any time soon. Had current England record scorer Wayne Rooney converted at Jimmy Greaves rate he would have had 91 goals to his name instead of 53.
In style his contemporaries drew comparison to Messi rather than Ronaldo. Alan Gilzean, his long term strike partner at Spurs said ‘It was just his awareness and calmness under pressure. When I watch Lionel Messi now, that was like watching Greavsie all those years ago. Greavsie was that good. He was quick-silver’.

The noted sports writer Hugh McIlvanney said of Greaves ‘he had an innate subtlety in the timing of his runs into space and his striking of the ball was so refined with either foot that Jack Nicklaus with a full set of golf clubs could not have produced a wider variety of effects or more consistency of precision.’

Without a doubt it was his injury plagued ’66 world cup campaign, resulting in him sitting out the competition’s latter stages and in particular the final that cost Greaves the recognition his talents undoubtedly deserved. Instead it was Greaves’ stand in Geoff Hurst, who scored in the quarter finals, played in the semis and then netted his hat trick in the final to whom a knighthood and sporting immortality beckoned. It wasn’t until 2009 that Greaves received his ‘squad’ medal, a medal he was forced to sell a short time afterwards.

In the later stages of his career and its immediate aftermath Greaves descended into a protracted battle with alcohol famously noting that at his lowest point he was drinking 20 pints and a bottle of vodka a day.

On February 28th 1978 Greaves took his last drink overcoming the demons of alcohol more effectively than many other sports stars of that or subsequent times; perhaps his most significant victory.

In the 80’s TV punditry started to evolve from the staid fare on offer during the previous decades into it’s current more character based variant. Jimmy Greaves ready wit made him a natural for this incarnation of punditry and he successfully teamed up with Ian St John as The Saint and Greavsie between 1985 to 92.