Robert Green, eh? It’s going to haunt us for a good while yet.

It all used to be so different.

There was a time when there seemed to be a production line producing green-shirted England goalies, comparable to British Steel or British Leyland, turning out products that we liked to think were the envy of the world. England fans would gleefully poke fun at Scottish keepers and their error prone performances. (Alex Rough, anyone?)

Once upon a time we were able to leave very good keepers like Phil Parkes and Joe Corrigan virtually uncapped, because we had not one but two world class keepers in Ray Clemence and Peter Shilton.

Shilton is still England’s most capped players, winning 125 caps in an 18-year international career, a fact that is made even more remarkable by the fact that for a large part of his career he was sharing duties with Clemence, who won 61 caps himself.

And before Shilton and Clemence we had a childhood hero of mine, the greatest of them all, Gordon Banks. Incredibly agile, and with an excellent positional sense, Banks at times seemed impossible to beat. His sheer consistency, temperament and conspicuous lack of errors made him the ultimate goalkeeper of his time. To many young boys of the time, Banks was as much a hero as Pele, Best, Moore or Hurst and I remember crying myself to sleep when I heard on the radio that Banks had lost the sight in one eye after a car crash, that his career was over.

If you Youtube Banks, you’ll find loads of footage of the famous save from Pele in 1970 (Pele was actually shouting “Goal!” as soon as he’d made contact, and afterwards called it the best save he had ever seen), but you can get that for yourself.

Instead, have a look at this clip of Banks playing for Stoke City against West Ham in a League Cup Semi Final in 1972, saving a ferocious penalty from ’66 team mate Geoff Hurst.

The clip is also worth watching partly to get a look at a real old school 1970s pitch, and also for the spectacle of Bobby Moore putting on the gloves when the West Ham keeper was injured, and also saving a penalty.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you …

Those were the days when even our outfield players were good in goal…