David Pleat, one of the best judges of young footballers that I know, rates the Tottenham Hotspur team that achieved the Football League and FA Cup double in 1960-61 as the best team he has seen.

He says you cannot compare eras. Pleat is two months older than me – I am March 1945 and he is January of that year. So we were both 15/16 watching that team.

I was at boarding school in Suffolk but used to spend Saturdays in my holidays traveling by train from my home city of Cambridge to the Northumberland Park station and then a short walk to the old White Hart Lane station to watch this team in all their glory.

No warm-up sessions in those days. The first you saw of them was six or so minutes before kick-off when they would emerge from the dressing rooms for a short pre-match kickaround.

My young eyes were always focused on the tough wing-half Dave Mackay who would protect his fellow wing-half and captain Danny Blanchflower in the days before stricter refereeing.

Little did I know that some eight years later I would be handling the Spurs end of Mackay’s transfer, or that in the years that followed I would be covering his time as the winning manager of Football League Champions Derby County in 1975 and then later covering Star Soccer matches when he was manager of........

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