Nostalgia

I was in Terry Paine's fan club as a kid. The card said 'life member'. When he was at St Mary's recently I showed him the membership card and asked him if everything was OK as I hadn't heard anything from the club for a while!

To be fair, he was really made up and re-signed the card/photo etc. He was THE man!

 

That squad photo must be from around 1971. Remember Tommy Jenkins signed from Swindon to replace John Sydenham. Jimmy Gabriel, Hugh Fisher and John McGrath were the backbone of the side that enabled us to more than just survive in the old first division for a number of years. Great characters!!

 

Thanks FLT enjoyed that, can't beat a bit of nostalgia?
That lot were a tough old bunch with Paine being one of the nastiest, not quite as crude as Hollywood, Docker Walker, Gabriel and McGrath, but he certainly new how to leave his boot in?

 

Paine was never properly nasty. None of the team had any truly nasty players. Many of them weren't the best upstairs [and I don't mean heading the ball] and not the fittest either. But they were generally honest and half decent, very hard professionals. If Hollywood or Gabriel lumped anyone into the stand, it wasn't because they were dirty, they just badly mistimed a tackle. Paine was different. He was quick thinking and tricky. If he left his foot in, it was rarely noticed by the ref, plus it saved the team from an awful lot worse. The funny thing about Terry is that he'd do things which bent the rules like kicking ball back to the opposition when a foul had been committed, only slightly too hard, so the opposition player would miss it and have to go and fetch it, and the ref would overlook it. This gave Saints time the regroup. He was clever. Trouble was, the Saints crowd didn't appreciate it. Today we'd laugh and shout yeah. Back then he might even have been shouted at by home fans. But his brain was always switched on, and that I appreciated.

 

I thought Jenkins was signed from Reading!

 

He was.

Emptying the bag, StG.?

 

Agree with your observations on Paine, I think he was the first player to perfect the art of diving. Remember him once being fouled 3 yards outside the box and crawling the rest of the way before withering in agony.
Great player though, quick brain and superb placer of the ball.

 

Saw him and Gery O'Brien on the pull in various watering holes in the city center on many occasions, once saw them both thrown out of the Center Inn disco [probably best not to say what they were doing at the time].
Pretty unpleasant pair.

 

Trouble is all of the fiddling about really wakes you up and there was only bloody tennis on radio 5.

 

I meant Reading. Just selected the wrong stop on the GWR.

 

And to add a very good football pundit. When I lived in Africa, he was a pundit on DSTV and his observations and critique was excellent. Better than the rubbish we have in the UK past and present.

 

Great nostalgia FLT, thanks for posting this. Got a ticket for the 79 League Cup Final via John Sydenham from my mate who worked for him at Angelsea Motors. That squad of players were all as hard as flippin nails, you wouldnt want to cross any of them on a night out nor on the pitch.

 

During the International Break, International Nostalgia. Jimmy Greaves and Terry Paine [No.7] go on a goal spree for England:

 

The celebration of 100 years of the Football Association. England v The Rest of the World. And not a flicker of FIFA in sight. Guess who the scorers are.?: