Middlesbrough Football Club Foundation and the Sporting Memories Foundation have teamed up to stage ‘1966 & the Boro’, a free public event at the Riverside Stadium celebrating the role Boro played in the historic 1966 World Cup.
Fans of all ages are invited to the Hardwick Suite of the Riverside Stadium to share and capture memories of Ayresome Park staging the world’s greatest football tournament. Taking place from 10.30am to 12.30pm on Monday 20 June, the event will celebrate the 50th anniversary of England’s proudest achievement in football – lifting the World Cup.
Staff and volunteers from the Sporting Memories Foundation, as well as participants from MFC Foundation’s ‘Team Talk’ project, for Teesside men aged 40 and over who’ve lost jobs, will be on hand. They will interview visitors, collect memories and add them to www.memoriesof66.com, the official digital archive of the #memoriesof66 project, which has been set up in partnership with the FA, and will form part of an upcoming exhibition at Manchester’s National Football Museum.
Visitors are encouraged to bring their own memorabilia from 1966 along to the event, including football, music and fashion items, and to share the stories behind them and the memories the items hold.
It was revealed in April that 1966 World Cup winners Martin Peters, Nobby Stiles and Ray Wilson are living with dementia, and that Jack Charlton is also experiencing severe memory problems. Sporting Memories Foundation run projects across the UK with older fans to tackle dementia, depression and loneliness. Sporting Memories is an official charity partner Middlesbrough Football Club for the 2015/16 season.
Greg Dyke, Chairman of the FA, said: “Good luck to all involved in this special event to recognise Middlesbrough’s important role in the 1966 World Cup. As much as we remember with pride England’s triumph at Wembley Stadium, we should also use this year to celebrate what was truly a national story with places like Ayresome Park helping to welcome the world. I know there are many great memories that continue to be shared across the generations.”
Helena Bowman, Head of MFC Foundation, said: “We are excited to be working with the Sporting Memories Foundation on this event, bringing the community together and using the powerful memories of England’s World Cup win to such positive effect.”
Tony Jameson-Allen, co-founder of Sporting Memories Network, said: “We are looking forward to finding out just what it was like living in Boro during the World Cup and capturing the memories this event helps trigger.”