The current flood of football documentaries shows no sign of abating; the recognition certain teams and individuals enjoy means that it’s not likely to any time soon. Geoff Hurst, the hat-trick hero of the 1966 World Cup final, is no doubt a natural subject for the “legacy” strand of these things: along with the likes of Jack Charlton, Bobby Moore and Bobby Robson, Hurst stands for a misty-eyed idea of Proper Football, when men were gods on the pitch and ordinary semi-dwelling blokes off it.
Hurst was all this and more, even if this profile focuses, football-wise at least, on that three-goal game at the expense of almost everything else. (Though that title might need a bit of nudging since Kylian Mbappé pulled off the same feat in 2022.) A rollcall of greats line up to heap praise on his sterling work against West Germany, with Gary Lineker (his nearest equivalent) being particularly enlightening on how Hurst exemplified the striker’s art – it’s all about “percentages”.
The film is produced and fronted by Matthew Lorenzo – another example, along with Gabriel Clarke, of lesser-known TV presenters successfully moving sideways into documentary-making. Rather impressively, Lorenzo’s idiosyncratically flat-toned interview style manages to draw Hurst out, and a player who has hitherto appeared to have not much behind the mask is revealed as a vulnerable and indeed wounded figure, with two family tragedies and a difficult post-playing career to be reckoned with. (Counterbalancing this is the thought that Hurst’s everyman features and somewhat bland personal style would make him an excellent candidate for insurance sales, which is exactly what he did after the footballing opportunities dried up.)
I’d like to have heard more about Hurst’s club career, as well as more detail on what happened at the 1970 World Cup, while losing a bit of the matey icon/legend/immortal talking-head filler. Nevertheless, this turns out to be a valuable document, with Hurst’s decision to open up for the camera all the more impressive when you suspect the prospective audience would have been happy simply for the nostalgic charge.
• Hurst: The First and Only is released on 27 March on digital platforms, DVD and Blu-ray.
