Few stories in sports history match the chaotic, stranger-than-fiction drama of the 1966 FIFA World Cup. Months before England captain Bobby Moore would lift the iconic Jules Rimet Trophy, a four-year-old black-and-white mixed-breed collie named Pickles became the absolute savior of English football. Here is how a Sunday morning dog walk saved the beautiful game.
In March 1966, four months before England was set to host the World Cup, the Football Association agreed to let the solid-gold trophy be displayed at the “Sport with Stamps” rare stamp exhibition at Methodist Central Hall in Westminster.
Despite assurances of 24-hour security, the guard schedule had structural gaps. On Sunday, March 20, 1966, while a Methodist church service was taking place on the floor below, someone forced open the back doors of the building, removed the padlock from the display case, and stole the trophy. Ironically, the thieves completely ignored rare stamps worth £3 million, taking only the trophy (valued significantly lower for its physical gold).
The Metropolitan Police were utterly humiliated. Days later, a ransom note demanding £15,000 arrived. An undercover sting operation led to the arrest of a middleman, but he claimed to have no knowledge of where the actual trophy was hidden. The trail went cold.
On Sunday, March 27, exactly one week after the theft, 26-year-old Thames lighterman David Corbett stepped out of his South Norwood home in South London to take his dog, Pickles, for a walk. As Corbett was getting ready to put on the leash, Pickles wandered over to a neighbor’s parked car and began sniffing intensely at a package hidden under a laurel bush.
Corbett later recalled the moment: “It was wrapped in tightly-bound newspaper and string, laying against my neighbor’s car wheel. I picked it up and it’s quite heavy, though not very big… At the time the IRA were at large, so I personally thought it was a bomb. So I put it down. Picked it up, put it down again. Then curiosity took hold. I tore a bit off the bottom and there was a plain disc. Then I tore around and there was Brazil, Germany, Uruguay. I ran back in and said to my wife: ‘I think I’ve found the World Cup!’”
Corbett rushed the trophy to the local police station, where, in classic true-crime fashion, he was initially interrogated as the prime suspect. Once his name was quickly cleared, the nation erupted in pure relief and “Pickles-mania.”
The heroic collie became an international celebrity. Corbett collected nearly £5,000 in reward money (enough to buy a house at the time). Pickles was named “Dog of the Year,” awarded a silver medal from the National Canine Defence League, and given a year’s supply of free food from pet food manufacturer Spillers.
Pickles went on to star as an extra alongside Eric Sykes and June Whitfield in the 1966 comedic spy film The Spy with a Cold Nose. When England went on to win the World Cup that July, both Corbett and Pickles were invited to the official celebration banquet at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington. Pickles became the star of the night, famously held by players like Bobby Charlton, though he also reportedly bypassed the prestige of the evening by relieving himself on the five-star hotel’s elevator doors.
Tragically, Pickles’ time in the limelight was short. In 1967, he passed away in a tragic accident while chasing a cat. He was buried in the back garden of the house his reward money helped purchase, where his collar and medal remain highly prized pieces of football folklore (some of his medals are preserved by the National Football Museum in Manchester).
