ENGLAND World Cup winner Ron Flowers left a huge £400k final gift in his will, documents show.
The legendary midfielder – part of Sir Alf Ramsay’s winning squad in 1966 – passed the massive sum to his wife and children, documents show.
Flowers was the oldest remaining player from the victorious Three Lions side when he died aged 87 in November 2021
High Court records show he left £399,600 in his estate, reduced to £391,134 after costs and debts were settled.
He passed all his possessions, including his World Cup winner’s medal, which he only received in 2009, to wife of 64 years Yvonne.
Flowers also asked to be cremated.
The Wolves icon played 49 times for England between 1955 and 1963 – including in the quarter-final run at the 1962 World Cup in Chile – scoring ten times.
But he didn’t kick a ball during the 1966 home tournament and remained an unused squad player.
He almost secured a starting spot in the Wembley Stadium triumph against West Germany after Jack Charlton fell ill just hours before the final.
Flowers recalled how boss Sir Alf promised that if “Big Jack” failed to get better from a mild cold, he would take the late Leeds United great’s place in the starting 11.
Speaking in 2015, he said: “I knew it would take more than a cold to stop Jackie.
“So it wasn’t such a letdown the next morning when I knew that I wouldn’t be playing.”
Yorkshire-born Flowers first signed for the Doncaster Rovers academy while working as a railway apprentice.
His talent on the ball meant he moved to Wolves’ feeder club Wath Wanderers before doing national service.
After completing a year in the Royal Air Force, he returned to sign for Wolves and made his debut against Stanley Matthews’ Blackpool in 1953.
Within a year, he had established his place in the team that made Wolves champions of England for the first time.
At just 21, he was called up to the England side and made his debut in a defeat to France.
Flowers remained at Wolves until 1967, making 512 appearances and scoring 37 goals as they won the First Division again in 1958 and 1959.
He played the remaining years of his career at Northampton Town and Telford United before retiring in 1971.
But he would not get any recognition for his role in England’s only World Cup until 2009, when the FA strong-armed FIFA into handing out more medals.
Flowers said the move was what manager Ramsay had wanted, adding: “He arranged it so that we would all be on the pitch together at the end of the game, whatever the score was.
“He wanted us to feel we were all in it together.”
The golf lover later opened a sports shop run by his two sons – which is still open – and was made an honorary vice-president of Wolves in 2015 and watched their promotion to the Premier League in 2018.
He was given an MBE fifty years after his retirement, in 2021, for services to football.
Wolves led tributes after his death, writing: “The blond-haired Yorkshireman trod the world football stage and faced some of the greatest players the game has seen – Puskas, Pele, di Stefano and Eusebio, to name but a few.”
World Cup final hat-trick hero Sir Geoff Hurst laid a shirt at Wembley in his honour the day after Flowers’ death.
