From the horse’s mouth …
A lovely quote from the late Jeff Astle, former West Brom and England footballer, as re-told by Geoff Hurst recently in the Scottish Daily Record (a lot of ‘context’ first, but well worth reading through to the punchline) …
“What a fantastic guy Jeff was – a real character. We were in the England squad together for the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, which is 5000ft above sea level. The squad was there about seven or eight days and the Duke of Edinburgh was also over playing polo against the Mexicans. He indicated via his equerry that he wanted to see us after training.
We were playing Brazil at noon so were training at 12 o’clock in preparation for that. When the duke turned up after training and all 22 of us were lined up, he started walking along and talking to the players. But he got to the end and Jeff was slumped over a chair in a state of huge distress.
So the equerry says, ‘What’s the problem?’ Jeff replied, ‘We’ve only been here for about 10 days, we’re acclimatising, it’s 105 degrees on the thermometer there and I’m just absolutely knackered.’
He said, ‘The Duke’s been here two weeks, he’s played six or seven games of polo and he’s not reported any signs of struggling physically.’
Jeff looked up and said, ‘Have you asked how his f*****g horse feels?’”
