HAMMER TIME

MIKE MILES RECALLS WHEN WEST HAM UNITED BAGGED THEIR FIRST EUROPEAN SILVERWARE ALMOST GO YEARS AGO...

- MIKE MILES

IN 2023 West Ham United won the UEFA Conference League, over half a century since their first, and only previous, European triumph, the now defunct Cup Winners' Cup, in 1965.

Ron Boyce had headed the winning goal in the final minute of an enthralling FA Cup final against Second Division Preston in May 1964, which earned the Hammers competitive European football for the first time.

Just 144 days after they had lifted the FA Cup at Wembley, West Ham began their first European campaign. Their challenge began in the Belgian city of Ghent against La Gantoise, a team of part-timers.

They travelled back to London with a 1-0 win. So unused were the side to travelling abroad that two of them turned up without passports.

While West Ham's Cup Winners' Cup success involved many glorious moments, history will not recall the second leg home 1-1 draw with La Gantoise as one of them.

The headline in the next morning's 'Times' told the story: "West Ham scraped through on aggregate - Belgian amateurs take the honours in an inefficient match."

Before the second round against Spartak Prague the club announced that captain Bobby Moore would be out of action for three months after undergoing a "groin operation", although it is now clear that his absence was caused by the first brush with the deadly cancer that would tragically kill him three decades later.

The Czechs were a typically dour, well-drilled 'Iron Curtain' side and the same soubriquet could be used to describe their defence, as the Hammers were to discover in the first leg at Upton Park.

The East Europeans packed their defence with nine or ten men and did not stand on ceremony, inflicting a catalogue of gruesome fouls on the home side.