After twenty minutes Spurs at last got a breathing space, not through Leeds letting up but through Spurs’ indomitable spirit at last producing a few counter-moves. Peters narrowly missed with a side flick and Chivers had two good runs. Nevertheless the Spurs moves seemed gestures, sent only to underline the superiority of Leeds.

  And then, just five minutes before half-time, as if to prove once again what a daft game football can be, Spurs scored. John Pratt sent a long hopeful lob towards the near post. Chivers jumped for it but didn’t get it. Charlton and Hunter both jumped, with Sprake waiting behind. Unaccountably all three missed and the ball bounced into the net.

  It was the sort of unfair piece of luck which teams hope for against Sprake, who is prone to such mistakes, but it had seemed impossible today with Leeds in such command and Spurs not once putting him in any real danger.

  A couple of minutes later Leeds were even. A series of fierce shots, all luckily scrambled away, finally ended with one in the Spurs net. It wasn’t a brilliant goal, considering all the brilliant moves Leeds had made, but it was well deserved.

  Leeds started the second half like the first, forcing Spurs’ defence back on its heels for twenty minutes of constant pressure. In this twenty-minute spell Leeds got their second goal. Again, it wasn’t an inspired piece of football art, simply one of Leeds’ best known dead-ball situations. Charlton came up for a free-kick, in full sight of everyone, rose in the air completely unimpeded and headed easily into the net.

  Leeds could have scored several more but were stopped by Jennings’ continued brilliance. Towards the end Spurs produced their best spell of the match. In the last twenty minutes they forced several corners and made a few breaks. They’d scored one lucky goal. It wasn’t impossible for them to do it again. With Sprake so patently insecure, Spurs just needed to get the ball in the Leeds penalty area to have a chance of forcing a draw. A draw would have been grossly unfair, but it was suddenly eminently possible. The crowd was becoming slightly impatient with Leeds’ consummate passing and ball control, urging them to go forward, begging for another goal to sink Spurs once and for all. The game finished 2–1, a scoreline which flattered Spurs, if anything. Four goals to nil would not have been unfair, yet Spurs had played well, keeping their heads and always trying. Admittedly Chivers and Gilzean had done very little, but they’d had little service, and Martin Peters had disappeared. He was finally brought off and Coates went on. Leeds were man for man superior to Spurs in every department, apart from Jennings. But though Spurs had been humbled by Leeds, they’d not been humiliated.

  While the exuberant Leeds players threw off their stocking tabs to the shrieking crowds, scattering flowers for the faithful, Spurs trooped into their dressing-room, saddened and dejected. Immediately they started arguing amongst themselves, which was even sadder. Bill demanded to know why Charlton had been allowed the header from the free-kick, saying there had been no need for the defensive wall. Pat Jennings said he’d shouted that he hadn’t wanted a wall, but they’d gone ahead and done it. The defence turned on each other, looking for someone to blame for not marking Charlton.

  ‘I was marking two men,’ shouted England. ‘It wasn’t my fault. I shouted to someone to go with him.’

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ cried Cyril Knowles.

  ‘Who was at the back?’ demanded Gilly.

  ‘Roger Morgan was,’ said England. ‘But he couldn’t have stopped Charlton. Somebody else should have been there.’

  ‘Don’t blame me,’ said Knowles. ‘It wasn’t my bloody job.’

  The voices got louder as they shouted. Bill kept silent, not joining in. Chivers and Peters sat very quietly, their heads bowed. It was mainly Gilly, Knowles and England doing all the shouting. I’d never heard the players raise their voices at each other before. Any post-match anger is usually subdued. When Bill Nicholson criticises a player, the player goes all sullen, rarely shouting back. This time the post-mortem fury was aimed at each other. After his first question Bill wasn’t blaming anybody. But watching each of them, and their fury, it was obvious that it was themselves they were blaming. The argument continued in the bath, still going over who should have been marking Charlton. They were releasing their own emotions, the pent-up tension brought about by their own impotence.

  When it had calmed down, Ray Evans said very quietly that Leeds were the better team. That was all there was to it. ‘They’re a different class.’

  Everybody nodded, agreeing they were a great team. ‘No chance,’ said Gilly sadly.

  ‘We can have no complaints,’ said Bill. The hot air had gone and the players were all humble and quietened. ‘They ran and ran off the ball,’ continued Bill. ‘The man on the ball always had two choices. We didn’t do that.’

  ‘That Giles,’ said Gilly. ‘What a player. Fantastic. No chance.’

  Bill didn’t look too downhearted. He’d seemed fatalistic beforehand and now it had happened, perhaps not as badly as he’d feared. The score at least was respectable. He told everyone to hurry. The coach was going soon.

  Elsewhere in the stand, Trevillion, modest as ever, was taking credit for the Leeds gimmicks. ‘Jack Charlton wasn’t very keen at first on the pre-match drill – he said he didn’t want to look stupid. From now on we’re going to do a different series of exercises before every match, home and away. It makes the other team feel inferior. I’ve got things planned which will blow your mind.’

  There had already been enquiries about the stocking tabs, the ones with the numbers on. ‘I’ve ordered a hundred dozen pairs to be made. Once the world sees them on TV tonight every team will go mad to have them. On each tab there was a little Beaver sign. That meant there were twenty-two Beavers out on the pitch playing for Leeds. No wonder they won.’

  Next season, so he said, he wanted to change the Leeds strip, saying that all white was boring. He fancied a shirt with a blue cross on the front and back, then Leeds could be called the Crusaders. ‘I’ve not started yet. Just wait and watch Leeds!’

  I hadn’t actually believed all his boastings the night before, convinced that no outsider could ever influence a football manager.

  On the Spurs coach to the station Chivers was looking very fed up. ‘I know they think I could have done more. I never got a ball. I had no chance, yet all I get is stick for not scoring.’ Nobody had actually said that, not even Bill, not as far as I’d noticed, but possibly a few felt it, though unfairly.

  As we drew into the station one of the players said that this was where we’d get the real stick. It wasn’t clear if he expected Spurs’ own fans to be furious, or the rivals. Just the opposite happened. The Spurs fans lined up outside the coach and cheered every player into the station. On the station hundreds of Leeds supporters going for their trains were almost as friendly, but then they had a good reason to feel pleased.

  On the train, waiting to leave, four of the Spurs directors were deep in the menu when the carriage window was suddenly opened and two scruffy Leeds supporters stuck their heads through. The directors ignored the heads, expecting a string of obscenities but not wanting to try to force them out in case they turned violent.

  ‘Go on,’ said one of the lads, amused at the uptight features of the Spurs directors, manfully pretending nothing had happened, ‘Order anything you like. It’s on the house.’

  ‘I suggest Yorkshire pud,’ said the other, his head leaning right over the table. ‘Just what you need. Put some lead in your pencil.’

  ‘You must admit,’ said the first lad, ‘the better team won.’

  The directors smiled, deciding at last to be friendly, knowing the train was about to leave.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a good goalie. We’ll swap you Jennings for Sprake. What do you think?’

  ‘No thanks,’ said one of the directors.

  The train suddenly moved, almost decapitating the two Leeds supporters, but they managed one final dig. ‘See you at Wembley then . . . next year.’

  It was a long, boring and rather depressing ride home with the train stopping at almost every station and the journey taking nearly four hours, an hour longer than coming up on the Pullman. The dining-car service was very slow. There had been a fuse in the kitchen and they were cooking by candlelight. Everyone wanted to get home as quickly as possible.

  ‘They weren’t a team today,’ said one of the directors, unable to get the match out of his head. ‘They were just a collection of players.’

  Phil Beal, further down the compartment, said he wasn’t going out. A win or a draw would have called for celebrations, but not now.

  Pat Jennings said he’d decided he would go up to Leeds again, not for the pleasure of watching their team again but to see Trevillion. He too had been surprised that the Beaver’s boasts about the Leeds team had come to pass. ‘It’s worth a try,’ he said. ‘But mind you, they’d have looked right silly buggers if we’d hammered them, after all that dancing.’

  ‘No chance,’ said Gilly. ‘But you did well, Pat.’

  ‘I’d rather have played badly if only we could have won. I don’t like playing well and losing.’

  22. PAT JENNINGS

  * * *

  ‘If Jennings had been available on that memorable occasion when the Romans met the Etruscans, Horatius surely would have had to be satisfied with a seat on the substitutes’ bench.’ So said Eric Todd of The Guardian in his report of the Leeds match. Paul Trevillion is not the only football observer who can get carried away.

  Of all the Spurs players, Pat Jennings is about the least likely to be carried away, even when the whole football press is singing his praises, which they did that day. He’s a genuine team man, quiet and retiring, with no signs of flash. His fans are always on at him to put a bit of show into his game, make it look a bit harder, just to work up the crowd excitement and draw attention to himself. Before that Leeds match Trevillion had told him that he must always pick up the ball with one hand. It’s an easy thing to do, for any good goalie, but it’s the sort of gimmick the crowd appreciates. Pat had said he would think about it, but come the game he never did it once, preferring to be dull but safe.

  Several Spurs players had had a very consistent season, but of them all, Pat Jennings could be said to have had the best season. He’d risen to the occasion, turned on the magic, far more often than any of the others. Chivers had had several memorable, brilliant games, but he’d also had some dreadfully anonymous games which are best forgotten.

  Looking back quickly over the fifty-three games which the team had played so far (only one of which Pat missed) I could remember just one off hand where he’d made a major mistake. This was the very first game of the season, away to Wolves, right back in August. He’d failed to hold the ball and Wolves had scored. He hadn’t been helped by a greasy surface or the fact that Mike England had banged into him, but all the same it had been his mistake. It had completely ruined his weekend. He’d hardly spoken afterwards to his wife Eleanor.

  ‘He never talks about the match. The only way I know how he’s got on is by his face. If he’s got a grin, I know it’s been okay. If he says nothing, it’s been bad. He’s quiet enough at the best of times, God knows, but after Wolves he wouldn’t say anything for two days.’

  ‘Goals are always someone’s mistake,’ says Pat. ‘It’s impossible to have a goal without the manager being able to point at someone who should have stopped it. Very often the obvious one is the goalie. In the outfield, they can make mistakes all the time and get away with it. One mistake with a goalie and that’s it. You can’t redeem it, the way a forward can. He can miss five and then score one and everyone’s pleased. Everybody sees a goalie’s mistakes. That’s the way it is.’

  Knowles, Kinnear and Jennings each had a few years in other jobs before they came into football. But unlike the other two, Jennings was never turned down. His home situation was so remote from the world of professional soccer that it never occurred to him to want to be a footballer. He comes from the small country town of Newry in County Down, Northern Ireland, the son of a labourer. His mother had ten children, eight of whom are living – seven boys and one girl. He was no good at school and hated every minute of it. ‘I’m not exactly illiterate but I wouldn’t say I was good at any school subjects.’ He was good at running and jumping and enjoyed Gaelic football, the only organised sport in his area. In Gaelic football, which is a combination of catching and kicking, everyone is allowed to handle the ball. ‘Professional soccer was only something I read about.’

  He left school at fifteen and went to work as a factory-hand and then as a labourer in a timber gang, felling trees up on a mountain side. ‘I would have been quite happy to have stayed a labourer for ever. It would be hard to go back now, having been through what I’ve been through, but I’m sure I would have enjoyed it fine enough. It was a good, healthy, outdoor life. It was like being in Canada, up in those mountains in the snow, dragging down the timber. It was hard. At seventeen I was doing a man’s job, being so big, but I loved it. I had no worries in them days.’

  His arrival in football was sudden and meteoric. In just over eighteen months, from never having played in any sort of football team before, he was in the English First Division. He went along to watch a team in Newry one day, thought he could do just as well as their goalie, got a few games for them and was chosen for the Northern Ireland Youth team. This team played in an international youth tournament in Bognor Regis, being beaten by England in the finals. He was seen by Watford who signed him and then re-sold him the following season, 1964, to Spurs for £27,000.

  ‘I’ve never had any coaching in my life. If I’d come up the normal way, I’d have had professional coaching from the age of eleven and been full-time on the groundstaff at fifteen. When people get on to me, trying to make me do something a certain way, I might as well pack up. I can’t do it. I was naturally good at it from the minute I tried it. So I’m just as likely to say bollocks if someone tries to tell me what to do. Bill was never a goalie, neither was Eddie, so what can they tell you?

  ‘It might have been better if I had come up the hard way. I might be a better goalie today. Look at Bob Wilson at Arsenal. He had about five years in the reserves before he got a first-team game. All the years of training and coaching he went through have probably helped to make him such a consistent goalie today.

  ‘I’m sure in my first two years Spurs would have transferred me if they could have got their money back. I was still learning and I didn’t have much confidence. I hated Saturday coming round. Since then, I’ve felt much better.’

  Eleanor, his wife, used to be a professional singer with the Hilton Show Band, which did one-night-stands all over Ireland. After they met she went on to even greater heights in England. She appeared at the London Palladium, sang on the David Frost show and toured all over the country. She brought out seven records, though none sold well. When she got married to Pat she decided to give up showbusiness for good. ‘I think I appreciate more than the other wives what it’s like to come out of the tunnel with the crowd roaring. I get more excited than Pat does. It’s a fantastic feeling. You can understand why some footballers can do things better on the field than they can in training. It changes everything when you’ve got an audience. I’d love to have it back.’

  Pat has no business interests and no investments, apart from the building society. Most of his money is tied up in a large new detached house he had recently moved into, worth about £20,000, in Broxbourne, Herts, just a few minutes away from Mike England.

  He was looking forward to the end of the season – his latest contract would then be up and he was confident of negotiating some very good terms. When Bill came to ask him what he’d done for the club this year, he would have a lot to say.

  Of all the players, Pat usually looks the most worried before a game, fussing and becoming irritable in the dressing-room. ‘It’s a great strain having to concentrate. Even in a game in which I’ve only touched the ball five times, I’m mentally shattered afterwards. I’m just as exhausted as the players who’ve been doing all the running.’

  He says he probably enjoyed his football more when he was playing for Newry. ‘I’m relieved today when every match is over. It’s a great responsibility. So many other people depend on me doing well.’

  When he plays for Northern Ireland, which he has done thirty-four times so far, he always rooms with Georgie Best. They couldn’t be more different, as far as public images go. ‘People expect George to be flash, but basically he’s very quiet. In company he’s not the one with the chat. He does live it up a lot and have a good time and he does make a lot of money, inside and out the game, but I think he deserves it all. He’s done a lot for the game. He’s a football genius. Think how much he’d get if he was a boxer. There’s an expectation whenever he’s playing. He’s got the skill and he’s always exciting. He’s like Cassius Clay.’

  When he goes home to Ulster he keeps well away from politics, though being a Catholic people are always after him for money or his signature, but he has never come out on either side. ‘I’m really not interested in politics, here or in Ireland, though I suppose if your house was being burned down you’d be forced to do something.’