Death
Ball died in the early hours of 25 April 2007 at his home in Warsash, Hampshire, following a heart attack. He was 61 years old. He suffered the fatal heart attack while attempting to put out a blaze in his garden that had started when a bonfire – on which he had earlier been burning garden waste – re-ignited and spread to a nearby fence. His funeral was held in Winchester Cathedral on 3 May 2007. Many of Ball's former football colleagues were in attendance, and the flat cap that he became famous for wearing was placed on top of his coffin. Ball is the second of the 1966 World Cup winning team to die, the first being captain Bobby Moore in 1993.
The Alan Ball Memorial Cup, a match between two squads of former international players, in the shape of "England vs The World", was played at stadium:mk in Milton Keynes on Sunday 29 July 2007, with proceeds going towards the Bobby Moore Fund for Cancer Research UK and the Warwickshire and Northamptonshire Air Ambulance Service.
Read more about this topic: Alan Ball, Jr.
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Death is not natural for a state as it is for a human being, for whom death is not only necessary, but frequently even desirable.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
“It is better to sit down than to stand, it is better to lie down than to sit, but death is the best of all.”
—Indian proverb, quoted in Sébastien-roch Nicolas de Chamfort, Maxims and Considerations, vol. 1, no. 155 (1796, trans. 1926)